Rethinking Religion and Globalization: The Transnational Sathya Sai Movement
Berkley Center Postdoctoral Fellow Lecture & Lunch:
Tulasi Srinivas
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Berkley Center
Tulasi Srinivas used the example of the little known yet successful, contemporary, Hindu-Muslim Sathya Sai Movement to examine how public, urban, religious practice and spiritual devotion productively function in a global frame. Using visual material from her eight year long transcontinental study, she analyzed how religious objects, sacred space, and devotional memory in the Sai tradition sharpen questions of “tradition” and “modernity” and “self” and “other.” Srinivas discussed her emergent theory of the dynamics of religion and globalization to focus on lessons for a productive inter- religious dialogue.
Tulasi Srinivas received her Ph.D. from Boston University. Her research and writing focuses on the dynamics of globalization and culture, particularly as it relates to India, and Hindu- Muslim syncretic religious traditions. She has written widely on the subject in numerous article and book chapters. In 1998-2000 she was the Director of the India Site for a ten nation study of cultural globalization funded by the Pew Foundation and the Smith Richardson foundation, and jointly directed by the Institute for Culture, Religion and World Affairs at Boston University, and the Harvard Academy of International and Area studies at Harvard University. The findings were published as an edited volume; “Many Globalizations”
(Oxford University Press: 2001). Srinivas has won many awards for her work on the Sathya Sai movement, and has been invited to present at international and national conferences. She is currently a Post doctoral fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion Peace and World Affairs where she is completing a book on the Sathya Sai Movement tentatively titled “Frontiers of Faith: Rethinking Religion and Globalization."