Objects, object-ness, and shadows of meanings: carving prayer beads and exploring their materiality alongside a Khaksari Sufi Murshid

Prayer beads, through processes of craftsmanship and trade, arrive at meanings, significations, and imaginative associations that are inscribed by religious-cultural codes or social networks. The shadows of meanings overwhelm their material existence as prayer beads despite their lives beginning bef...

Full description

Saved in:  
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Material religion
Main Author: Saramifar, Younes (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Check availability: HBZ Gateway
Journals Online & Print:
Drawer...
Fernleihe:Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste
Published: Taylor & Francis 2018
In: Material religion
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Iran / Khāksār / Prayer cord / Sacred object
IxTheo Classification:AG Religious life; material religion
BJ Islam
Further subjects:B anthropology of materiality
B Islam
B objectness
B speculative realism
B object-oriented ontology
B Sufism
B Rosary
B Surplus
B OOO
Online Access: Volltext (kostenfrei)
Description
Summary:Prayer beads, through processes of craftsmanship and trade, arrive at meanings, significations, and imaginative associations that are inscribed by religious-cultural codes or social networks. The shadows of meanings overwhelm their material existence as prayer beads despite their lives beginning before their enactment within the socio-cultural and religious networks. Therefore, alongside an Iranian Sufi murshid, I follow the object-ness and the life of rosaries and prayer beads in an "apprenticeship ethnographic" journey. I address the material life of rosaries to explain how their object-ness contributes to their materiality and meaning formation that they gain in a Sufi order. An approach informed by speculative realism and object-oriented ontology (OOO) is chosen to examine what it means to study a religious object-in-itself. I follow the religiously loaded object and its spiritual traces by way of OOO to forgo the meanings and relationships that shadow the objects.
ISSN:1751-8342
Contains:Enthalten in: Material religion
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1080/17432200.2018.1487765