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"Narayan, Kirin"
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Narrating Creative Process
Like many other artisan groups across South Asia, Gujar Sutars claim descent from the Hindu deity Vishwakarma, or \"Universe maker,\" and tell stories about him-their divine forefather-and also about his sons, his daughters, and talented craftsmen in more recent historical times. While many deities carry weapons, offering fierce protection with multiple arms, Vishwakarma holds tools.\\n For members of the Gujar Sutar community living in urban areas like Mumbai, hosting Randal Ma serves as a means of group connection and collaboration.
Journal Article
Storytellers, Saints, and Scoundrels
Swamiji, a Hindu holy man, is the central character of Storytellers, Saints, and Scoundrels. He reclines in a deck chair in his modern apartment in western India, telling subtle and entertaining folk narratives to his assorted gatherings. Among the listeners is Kirin Narayan, who knew Swamiji when she was a child in India and who has returned from America as an anthropologist. In her book Narayan builds on Swamiji's tales and his audiences' interpretations to ask why religious teachings the world over are so often couched in stories.For centuries, religious teachers from many traditions have used stories to instruct their followers. When Swamiji tells a story, the local barber rocks in helpless laughter, and a sari-wearing French nurse looks on enrapt. Farmers make decisions based on the tales, and American psychotherapists take notes that link the storytelling to their own practices. Narayan herself is a key character in this ethnography. As both a local woman and a foreign academic, she is somewhere between participant and observer, reacting to the nuances of fieldwork with a sensitivity that only such a position can bring.Each story s reproduced in its evocative performance setting. Narayan supplements eight folk narratives with discussions of audience participation and response as well as relevant Hindu themes. All these stories focus on the complex figure of the Hindu ascetic and so sharpen our understanding of renunciation and gurus in South Asia.While Storytellers, Saints, and Scoundrels raises provocative theoretical issues, it is also a moving human document. Swamiji, with his droll characterizations, inventive mind, and generous spirit, is a memorable character. The book contributes to a growing interdisciplinary literature on narrative. It will be particularly valuable to students and scholars of anthropology, folklore, performance studies, religions, and South Asian studies.
eBook
My family and other saints
In 1969, young Kirin Narayan’s older brother, Rahoul, announced that he was quitting school and leaving home to seek enlightenment with a guru. From boyhood, his restless creativity had continually surprised his family, but his departure shook up everyone— especially Kirin, who adored her high-spirited, charismatic brother.
eBook
Technophany and Its Publics: Artisans, Technicians, and the Rise of Vishwakarma Worship in India
The worship of Vishwakarma, a god long associated with India's hereditary artisans and their tools, has achieved new relevance with the rise of industrial capitalism in South Asia. No longer moored solely to artisanal caste interests, worship of the god heralds a range of publics in which technē (crafting, fabricating, or making) is an exalted activity and public concern. Using “technophany” as a conceptual framework, we argue that deifications of technology and technicity sit at the core of Vishwakarma worship. Rather than treat religion and technology as ontologically distinct modalities of being-in-the-world, we use this framework to show how artisans, technicians, mechanics, and engineers use Vishwakarma worship to bring industrial technologies into alignment with the cosmos. Drawing on historical and ethnographic materials, we push beyond earlier scholarship that has treated Vishwakarma worship as a holdover from peasant culture or as a set of practices pitted against industrial capitalism.
Journal Article
How Native Is a \Native\ Anthropologist?
The dichotomy separating 'outsider' and 'insider' anthropologists is discussed. It would be more profitable to view anthropologists in terms of shifting identifications in interpenetrating communities and power relations.
Journal Article
Chekhov as Ethnographic Muse
Anton Chekhov walked into a book I was writing about fifty pages into the first draft. He wasn’t yet leaning on the cane that so often appears in photographs of him from the years that his energy was diminished by tuberculosis, and he didn’t yet peer through a pince-nez. He came striding into my manuscript with energetic purpose: a tall bearded young man with dark hair combed back from his forehead.
I had been drafting chapters, trying to work out how ethnographers might acquire tools for vivid storytelling used by writers of creative nonfiction and also how writers of creative
Book Chapter