The Efficacy of Intimacy and Belief in Worldmaking Practices

Urmila Mohan is an anthropologist of material culture with a focus on embodied belief practices in religious and political contexts. She is the founder of the open-access digital journal The Jugaad Project, collaborates with scholars and educators globally, and is associated with the Matière à Penser group. She has researched and theorized materiality, praxis, and aesthetics in diverse contexts including religious communities and maker groups in India, Indonesia, and the U.S.

Foreword by Jean-Pierre Warnier

Acknowledgments

1. Introduction: Efficacious intimacies of worldmaking

Urmila Mohan

Part I Making the Innermost

2. Inexpressible reading: The efficacious non-discursivity of drinking the Qur’an

Hanna Nieber

3. Praying through the hands: Making objects and devotees in Umbanda

Patrícia Rodrigues de Souza

4. Objects as bodies in Michael Landy’s Shelf Life

Lindsay Crisp

Part II Techniques and Rituals of Intimacy

5. “Tisser du lien”: Textile art as a tautological performance and embodiment of an expression

Claire Le Pape

6. Rituals and riverine flows: Negotiating change in Majuli Island, Assam

Simashree Bora

7. Protective cloaks, enveloping baby carriers: Embodiment and ritual practice in Angkola Batak Ulos textiles

Susan Rodgers

8. Kokoro-dzukai as a practice of the heart in Japanese Islam and design

Lira Anindita Utami

Part III Intimacies of (Dis)enchantment

9. Intimate with the enemy: Nuclear presence, vernacular art and Post-Chornobyl transformations Elena Romashko

10. What’s solid about solidarity? Shields and efficacious intimacy in the 2020 protests in Portland, OR

Steve Marotta

11. Grieving as a practice of resistance: Bishnoi entanglements with the Indian nuclear state

Sonali Huria

12. Pause, pivot and (un)mask in early pandemic U.S.

Urmila Mohan

Afterword

Rose Wellman