Veins of Devotion
264 pages, 6 x 9
11
Paperback
Release Date:18 Nov 2008
ISBN:9780813544496
Veins of Devotion
Blood Donation and Religious Experience in North India
SERIES:
Studies in Medical Anthropology
Rutgers University Press
According to public health orthodoxy, blood for transfusion is safer when derived from voluntary, nonremunerated donors. As developing nations phase out compensated blood collection efforts to comply with this current policy, many struggle to keep their blood stores up.
Veins of Devotion details recent collaborations between guru-led devotional movements and public health campaigns to encourage voluntary blood donation in northern India. Focusing primarily on Delhi, Jacob Copeman carefully situates the practice within the context of religious gift-giving, sacrifice, caste, kinship, and nationalism. The book analyzes the operations of several high-profile religious orders that organize large-scale public blood-giving events and argues that blood donation has become a site not only of frenetic competition between different devotional movements, but also of intense spiritual creativity.
Despite tensions between blood banks and these religious groups, their collaboration is a remarkable success storyùthe nation's blood supply is replenished while blood donors discover new devotional possibilities.
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An excellent piece of scholarship that synthesizes classic themes in theindological literature--sacrifice, gift-giving, caste, asceticism,guru/chela relationships--with the very contemporary and iconicallymodern, biomedical procedure of blood donation
No book covers the same terrain or anything close to what Copemanaccomplishes with VEINS OF DEVOTION. It is an extraordinarily smart bookthat sets the standard for future work on biomoral exchange in anthropology.
A very impressive achievement. Copeman quite brilliantly illuminates some of the most dramatic and important developments in contemporary Indian public life.
Fascinating. Copeman's richly conceptualized study, in which he nimbly moves from his underlying frame of the Indian notions of gift and service to touch on a range of related topics, from national integration to Indian notions of asceticism, sacrifice, sin, and caste lucidly connects a range of Indian spiritual idioms to the seemingly unlikely, mundane context of voluntary blood donation.
Veins of Devotion is a fascinating ethnography of everyday tissue exchange in urban India. For medical anthropologists, Copeman expands the dimensions of ideology, structure, and agency in bodily donation. For scholars of religion and South Asia, he provides a new venue for analyzing the shifting domains of sacred and secular in contemporary urban India. Accessibly written, this volume is eminently teachable for a graduate or upperdivision undergraduate course. It is an excellent work of scholarship.
An excellent piece of scholarship that synthesizes classic themes in theindological literature--sacrifice, gift-giving, caste, asceticism,guru/chela relationships--with the very contemporary and iconicallymodern, biomedical procedure of blood donation
No book covers the same terrain or anything close to what Copemanaccomplishes with VEINS OF DEVOTION. It is an extraordinarily smart bookthat sets the standard for future work on biomoral exchange in anthropology.
A very impressive achievement. Copeman quite brilliantly illuminates some of the most dramatic and important developments in contemporary Indian public life.
Fascinating. Copeman's richly conceptualized study, in which he nimbly moves from his underlying frame of the Indian notions of gift and service to touch on a range of related topics, from national integration to Indian notions of asceticism, sacrifice, sin, and caste lucidly connects a range of Indian spiritual idioms to the seemingly unlikely, mundane context of voluntary blood donation.
Veins of Devotion is a fascinating ethnography of everyday tissue exchange in urban India. For medical anthropologists, Copeman expands the dimensions of ideology, structure, and agency in bodily donation. For scholars of religion and South Asia, he provides a new venue for analyzing the shifting domains of sacred and secular in contemporary urban India. Accessibly written, this volume is eminently teachable for a graduate or upperdivision undergraduate course. It is an excellent work of scholarship.
Jacob Copeman is a research fellow at Jesus College at Cambridge University in England.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Generative Generosity
Chapter 3: The Reform of the Gift
Chapter 4: Devotion and Donation
Chapter 5: Blood Donation in the Zone of Religious Spectacles
Chapter 6: Utility Saints and Donor-Soldiers
Chapter 7: The Nehruvian Gift
Chapter 8: Conclusion
Glossary of Gurus and Organizations
References
Index
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Generative Generosity
Chapter 3: The Reform of the Gift
Chapter 4: Devotion and Donation
Chapter 5: Blood Donation in the Zone of Religious Spectacles
Chapter 6: Utility Saints and Donor-Soldiers
Chapter 7: The Nehruvian Gift
Chapter 8: Conclusion
Glossary of Gurus and Organizations
References
Index
About the Author
