Subproject:
C 04 Religious Resources: Value Creation and Value Conversion of Resources in Central and South Asia

Project leadership:
Dr. Shahnaz Nadjmabadi, Prof. Dr. Roland Hardenberg

Staff:
Yanti Hölzchen M.A., Katharina Müller M.A., Lisa Züfle M.A.

Regions:
India, Kyrgyzstan, Iran

Which means are necessary to form, preserve and to extend religious groups? How are things and foods made into something sacred?

The subproject ‚Religious Resources: Value Creation and Value Conversion of Resources in Central and South Asia‘ investigates how the meanings and values of resources change between religious and non-religious contexts. In particular processes of sacralization and profanation are in focus. Three case studies in India, Kyrgyzstan and Iran investigate religious resources based on ethnographic and ethnohistorical data. The study will examine the sacred dish of the Jagannatha Temple (India), new mosques in Kyrgyzstan, and the Astan e Qods Razawi Foundation (Iran). The aim of the studies is to identify the interrelations between religion, economy and state. All this is done to identify how conflicts over religious resources arise. Therefore they make an important contribution to the theories of ‘ritual economy’ and ‘religious markets’.

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