This book offers a wide range of critical perspectives on how secularism unfolds and has been made sense of across Europe and Asia. The book evaluates secularism as it exists today – its formations and discontents within contemporary discourses of power, terror, religion and cosmopolitanism – and the focus on these two continents gives critical attention to recent political and cultural developments where secularism and multiculturalism have impinged in deeply problematical ways, raising bristling ideological debates within the functioning of modern state bureaucracies. Examining issues as controversial as the state of Islam in Europe and China’s encounters with religion, secularism, and modernization provides incisive and broader perspectives on how we negotiate secularism within the contemporary threats of terrorism and other forms of fundamentalism and state-politics. However, amidst the discussions of various versions of secularism in different countries and cultural contexts, this book also raises several other issues relevant to the antitheocratic and theocratic alike, such as: Is secularism is merely a nonreligious establishment? Is secularism a kind of cultural war? How is it related to "terror"? The book at once makes sense of secularism across cultural, religious, and national borders and puts several relevant issues on the anvil for further investigations and understanding.

The definitive guide to one of the world’s most beautiful islands, with the most in-depth coverage available to the country’s superb beaches, magnificent wildlife, verdant tea plantations and majestic Buddhist remains. The guide’s wealth of practical information includes the best maps of Sri Lanka in any guide, the full rundown on getting there and around, plus meticulously researched reviews of all the very best places to stay, eat, drink and shop, in all price categories, from serene oceanside Ayurveda retreats to atmospheric colonial-era tea estate bungalows. Introductory sections on food, drink, health, cultural customs, outdoor activities and specialist tour operators will give you all the practical info you need to know to plan your visit, and there’s also extensive expert background on everything else you need to know about Sri Lanka, from the history of the ancient Buddhist kingdoms through all the lowdown on the contemporary political scene. Helpful inserts on tea, Buddhism and the island’s highlights round out the coverage, fleshed out with awe-inspiring photography.

Spirituality is, too often, subsumed under the heading of religion and treated as much the same kind of thing. Yet spirituality extends far beyond the spaces of religion. The spiritual makes geography strange, challenging the relationship between the known and the unknown, between the real and the ideal, and prompting exciting possibilities for charting the ineffable spaces of the divine which lie somehow beyond geography. In setting itself that task, this book pushes the boundaries of geographies of religion to bring into direct focus questions of spirituality. By seeing religion through the lens of practice rather than as a set of beliefs, geographies of religion can be interpreted much more widely, bringing a whole range of other spiritual practices and spaces to light. The book is split into three sections, each contextualised with an editors’ introduction, to explore the spaces of spiritual practice, the spiritual production of space, and spiritual transformations. This book intends to open to up new questions and approaches through the theme of spirituality, pushing the boundaries on current topics and introducing innovative new ideas, including esoteric or radical spiritual practices. This landmark book not only captures a significant moment in geographies of spirituality, but acts as a catalyst for future work.

Sacred Modernity tours the natural places of Sri Lanka in order to examine the relationship between nature and religion that some Sinhalese Buddhists have developed there. Working through case studies of Sri Lanka's most prominent national park, Ruhuna, and its post-1950s modernist architecture—known as tropical modernism—Tariq Jazeel reveals the ways Sinhalese Buddhists have interwoven their negotiation of nature with their continued production of a post-colonial identity. He shows how this production minoritizes Tamil, Muslim, and Christian non-Sinhala in the nation's natural, environmental, and historical order. A sophisticated study of the complexities that lie between nature and culture, Sacred Modernity also demonstrates a social science that works beyond Eurocentric conceptions, offering new contexts for postcolonial theory, cultural studies, and geography.

"The Iconic House features one hundred of the most important and influential architect-designed houses in the world."--Inside cover.

Travel, Space, Architecture defines a new theoretical territory in architectural and urban scholarship that frames the processes of spatial production through the notion of travel.The book presents seventeen key case studies that range from interrogations of architectural travel and notions of belonging and nationhood to challenging established geopolitical hierarchies.