Full Description
Historically in middle-class Bengali Hindu households it has been the matriarch's responsibility to arrange and maintain the domestic shrine and to perform daily rituals of deity worship and caretaking—termed in this book as domestic shrine traditions. These traditions are often assimilated with the other domestic caretaking labor women are expected to complete for their families.
Utilizing a years-long ethnography with Bengali American Hindu women, and drawing from Marxist feminist Social Reproduction Theory, this book argues that domestic shrine traditions are reproductive labor that is essential to the transnational and transgenerational sustenance of Hindu traditions and subjectivities. As the first monograph focused on Hindu women's domestic shrine traditions in the United States, this book illuminates both the value of these traditions for the women who maintain them, and how these traditions connect immigrant Hindus to family and ethno-religious identity in ways unmatched by the public Hindu temple or organization.
Contents
Introduction.- Chapter 1."I Just Do What Feels Right": Valuing Domestic Shrine Traditions as Affective Labor and Women as Devotional Authorities.- Chapter 2. "It's A Connection": Valuing Domestic Shrine Traditions as Relational Labor And Sustaining Ethno-Religious Subjectivities and Traditions in the U.S..-Chapter 3. "It's All About Me Because My Children Are the People That I Care For": Valuing Domestic Shrine Traditions as Maternal Labor and Rethinking Maternal Sacrifice.- Chapter 4. "I Don't Need To Sit In Front of Any Kind of Deity": Rejecting Domestic Shrine Traditions as a Chore and Negotiating Domestic Labor.- Chapter 5. "You Take the Best of Both Worlds": Valuing Domestic Shrine Traditions as Homemaking Labor and Remaking Hindu Womanhood.- Conclusion.
