The Routledge Handbook of Research Methods in the Study of Indigenous Religions offers insight into exciting developments in research among, with and by Indigenous scholars and communities. I am honored to have contributed a chapter on “Bodies and Materiality,” in Part I – “Critical Issues.”
As the Press noted, “critical themes for Indigenous people intersect strongly both with recent scholarly ‘turns’, such as embodiment, gender, performance, place, ontology, and materiality.” My chapter touches on all of these themes.
As the Editors state in their Introduction, “Laura Grillo… challenges outdated categorisations of Indigenous peoples and their religions. She deploys provocative strands in what has been called the ‘material turn’, extending and developing ‘a systematic critique of issues of power relations’, particularly around bodies and materiality. …[She surveys] damaging legacies of colonialism which have infected theories” of religions. A focus on ‘actual practice’ shapes the chapter’s reflections on bodies (including gender, sexuality and race) and materiality (including the ‘fetish’, amulets and the things of divination. Exciting, the chapter proposes that a focus on ‘materiality in practice’ (including things that things and bodies do) keeps the inequalities and negations of power in view, both in research locations and in the theorisations presented by scholars.”
The Handbook is now available in hardcover or as an ebook:
DOI: http://10.4324/9781003265207-7
The chapter in pdf:
https://www.academia.edu/129393274/Grillo_Body_and_Materiality_in_Study_of_Indigenous_Religions
