Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Alter-Politics Reconsidered: From Different Worlds to Osmotic Worlding

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Critical Anthropological Engagements in Human Alterity and Difference

Part of the book series: Approaches to Social Inequality and Difference ((ATSIAD))

Abstract

Kathinka Frøystad criticizes the tendency of anchoring the alter-political imagination of alternative futures in studies of radical alterity of the kind favored by a vocal section of the ontological turn. Such studies are certainly useful for reassessing the nature/culture distinction that perpetuates climate change. Yet their tendency to analyze cosmologies, religions, and “worlds” as distinct and contrasting carries an uncanny Abrahamic echo besides feeding into a lethal politics of difference. Drawing on ethnography from a multi-faith neighborhood in the North-Indian city of Kanpur, Frøystad argues that, it is equally relevant to look for “osmotic worlding” as for “different worlds”. To develop an alter-political project of rethinking religious plurality, the first step must be to dismantle the very idea of radical alterity.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 89.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 119.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 119.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Asad, T. 1993. Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bessire, L., and D. Bond. 2014. Ontological Anthropology and the Deferral of Critique. American Ethnologist 41(3): 440–456.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bigelow, A. 2010. Sharing the Sacred: Practicing Pluralism in Muslim North India. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bourdieu, P. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Burdick, J. 1993. Looking for God in Brazil: The Progressive Catholic Church in Urban Brazil’s Religious Arena. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carrithers, M. 2000. On Polytropy: Or the Natural Condition of Spiritual Cosmopolitanism in India: The Digambar Jain Case. Modern Asian Studies 34(4): 831–861.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carrithers, M., M. Candea, K. Sykes, and M. Holbraad. 2010. Ontology is Just Another Word for Culture. Motion Tabled at the 2008 Meeting of the Group for Debates in Anthropological Theory, University of Manchester. Critique of Anthropology 30(2): 152–200.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Census of India. 2011. Table C-1 (A): Population by Religious Communities—Urban Agglomerations/Cities with 1,00,000 & above Population. New Delhi: Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chopra, R. 2015. Nodes and Networks: Intersections of Street Spaces, Ritual Objects and Sacred Imagination, Amritsar, Punjab. Paper presented at Indian Cosmopolitan Alternatives workshop arranged by the University of Bergen. Panjim, 2 January.

    Google Scholar 

  • D’Andrade, R. 1995. Moral Models in Anthropology. Current Anthropology 36(3): 399–408.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Das, V. 1995. Critical Events: An Anthropological Perspective on Contemporary India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Descola, P. 2013. Beyond Nature and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2014. Modes of Being and Forms of Predication. Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 4(1): 271–280.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fabian, J. 1983. Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Flueckiger, J.B. 2006. In Amma’s Healing Room: Gender and Popular Islam in South India. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Frøystad, K. 2005. Blended Boundaries: Caste, Class and Shifting Faces of ‘Hinduness’ in a North Indian City. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2006. Anonymous Encounters: Class Categorization and Social Distancing in Public Places. In The Meaning of the Local: Politics of Place in Urban India, eds. H. Donner and G. De Neve. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gellner, E. 1995. Anthropology and Politics: Revolutions in the Sacred Grove. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Graeber, D. 2015. Radical Alterity Is Just Another Way of Saying ‘Reality’. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 5(2): 1–41.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Guenzi, C. 2012. The Allotted Share: Managing Fortune in Astrological Counseling in Contemporary India. Social Analysis 56(2): 39–55.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hacker, P. 1983. Inklusivismus: Eine indische Denkform. Vienna: Institute für die Indologie der Universität Wien.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hage, G. 2012. Critical Anthropological Thought and the Radical Political Imaginary. Critique of Anthropology 32(3): 385–308.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2015. Alter-Politics: Critical Anthropology and the Radical Imagination. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Halbfass, W. 1988. ‘Inclusivism’ and ‘Tolerance’ in the Encounter between India and the West. In India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding, ed. W. Halbfass. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Holbraad, M. 2012. Truth in Motion: The Recursive Anthropology of Cuban Divination. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Holbraad, M., M.A. Pedersen, and E. Viveiros de Castro. 2014. The Politics of Ontology: Anthropological Positions, January 13, 2014 [Cited 7 February 2016]. http://culanth.org/fieldsights/462-the-politics-of-ontology-anthropological-positions .

  • MacBeath, A. 1952. Experiments in Living: A Study of the Nature and Foundation of Ethics or Morals in the Light of Recent Work in Social Anthropology. London: Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mohammad, A. 2013. The Festival of Pirs: Popular Islam and Shared Devotion in South India. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Moore, H. 2014. Signs of the Times: Anthropology, Undecidability and Politics. 50th Anniversary Lecture, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo, 14 October.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pedersen, M.A. 2012. Common Nonsense: A Review of Certain Recent Reviews of the “Ontological Turn”. [cited 7 February 2016]. Available from http://aotcpress.com/articles/common_nonsense/ .

  • de Pina-Cabral, J. 2014. World: An Anthropological Examination (Part 2). Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 4(3): 149–184.

    Google Scholar 

  • Samuel, G. 2008. The Origins of Yoga and Tantra: Indic Religions to the Thirteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Sarkar, S. 1996. Indian Nationalism and the Politics of Hindutva. In Making India Hindu: Religion, Community, and the Politics of Democracy in India, ed. D. Ludden. Delhi: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1999. Conversions and Politics of Hindu Right. Economic and Political Weekly 26(26 June–2 July): 1691–1700.

    Google Scholar 

  • Scheper-Hughes, N. 1995. The Primacy of the Ethical: Propositions for a Militant Anthropology. Current Anthropology 36(3): 409–440.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Spear, P. 1949. India, Pakistan and the West. London: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Todd, Z. 2014. An Indigenous Feminist’s Take on the Ontological Turn: ‘Ontology’ is Just Another Word for Colonialism. Uma (in)certa antropologia 2014 [cited 7 February 2015]. Available from http://culanth.org/fieldsights/462-the-politics-of-ontology-anthropological-positions .

  • Tsing, A. 2010. Worlding the Matsutake Diaspora: Or, Can Actor-Network Theory Experiment with Holism? In Experiments in Holism: Theory and Practice in Contemporary Anthropology, eds. T. Otto and N. Bubandt. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vigh, H.E., and D.B. Sausdahl. 2014. From Essence Back to Existence: Anthropology beyond the Ontological Turn. Anthropological Theory 14(1): 49–73.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Viveiros de Castro, E. [1986] 1992. From the Enemy’s Point of View: Humanity and Divinity in an Amazonian Society. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1998. Cosmological Dexis and Amerindian Perspectivism. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Society (N.S.) 4(3): 469–488.

    Google Scholar 

  • Werbner, P. 2003. Pilgrims of Love: The Anthropology of a Global Sufi Cult. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zorgati, R.J. 2015. The Lead Books of Granada: Hybridity and Cultural Memory. In The Formative Past and the Formation of the Future: Collective Remembering and Identity Formation, eds. T. Stordalen and S.A. Naguib. Oslo: Novus Forlag.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Kathinka Frøystad

Authors
  1. Kathinka Frøystad
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway

    Bjørn Enge Bertelsen

  2. University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway

    Synnøve Bendixsen

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2016 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Frøystad, K. (2016). Alter-Politics Reconsidered: From Different Worlds to Osmotic Worlding. In: Bertelsen, B., Bendixsen, S. (eds) Critical Anthropological Engagements in Human Alterity and Difference. Approaches to Social Inequality and Difference. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40475-2_10

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40475-2_10

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-40474-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-40475-2

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation