Relational Religion by Håkon Naasen Tandberg ISBN 9783666564741, 3666564747 instant download

Relational Religion by Håkon Naasen Tandberg ISBN 9783666564741, 3666564747 instant download

Håkon Naasen Tandberg explores how, when, and why humans relate to the non-human world. Based on two ethnographic fieldworks among the Parsis in Mumbai, the research focuses on the role of temple fires in the lives of present-day Parsi Zoroastrians in India as an empirical case. Through four ethnographic portraits, the reader will get a deeper look into the lives of four Parsi individuals, and how their individual biographies, personalities, and interhuman relationships, along with religious identities and roles, shape—and to a certain extent are shaped by—their personal relationships with non-human entities. The book combines affordance theory, exchange theory, and social support to analyze such relationships, and offers suggestive evidence that relationships with non-human entities—in this case the Zoroastrian temple fires—can be experienced as no less real, important, or meaningful than those with other human beings.