Trust Matters
Parsi Endowments in Mumbai and the Horoscope of a City
Seiten
2023
Duke University Press (Verlag)
978-1-4780-2057-8 (ISBN)
Duke University Press (Verlag)
978-1-4780-2057-8 (ISBN)
Leilah Vevaina explores how the Parsi charitable trusts in Mumbai shape and constrain the life and death of the Parsi community and the city as a whole.
Although numbering fewer than 60,000 in a city of more than 12 million people, Mumbai’s Parsi community is one of the largest private landowners in the city due to its network of public charitable trusts. In Trust Matters Leilah Vevaina explores the dynamics and consequences of this conjunction of religion and capital as well as the activities of giving, disputing, living, and dying it enables. As she shows, communal trusts are the legal infrastructure behind formal religious giving and ritual in urban India that influence communal life. Vevaina proposes the trusts as a horoscope of the city—a constellation of housing, temples, and other spaces providing possible futures. She explores the charitable trust as a technology of time, originating in the nineteenth century, one that structures intergenerational obligations for Mumbai’s Parsis, connecting past and present, the worldly and the sacred. By approaching Mumbai through the legal mechanism of the trust and the people who live within its bounds as well as those who challenge or support it, Vevaina offers a new pathway into exploring property, religion, and kinship in the urban global South.
Although numbering fewer than 60,000 in a city of more than 12 million people, Mumbai’s Parsi community is one of the largest private landowners in the city due to its network of public charitable trusts. In Trust Matters Leilah Vevaina explores the dynamics and consequences of this conjunction of religion and capital as well as the activities of giving, disputing, living, and dying it enables. As she shows, communal trusts are the legal infrastructure behind formal religious giving and ritual in urban India that influence communal life. Vevaina proposes the trusts as a horoscope of the city—a constellation of housing, temples, and other spaces providing possible futures. She explores the charitable trust as a technology of time, originating in the nineteenth century, one that structures intergenerational obligations for Mumbai’s Parsis, connecting past and present, the worldly and the sacred. By approaching Mumbai through the legal mechanism of the trust and the people who live within its bounds as well as those who challenge or support it, Vevaina offers a new pathway into exploring property, religion, and kinship in the urban global South.
Leilah Vevaina is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Inheritances 1
1. In Perpetuity: The Trust and Timely Obligations 27
2. Presents and Futures: The Trust and Obligation’s Asymmetries 52
3. No House, No Spouse: The Bombay Parsi Punchayet 75
4. The Beneficiary, the Law, and Sacred Space 105
5. From Excarnation to Ashes: Trust to Trust 128
6. Awakening the “Dead Hand”: Liquid and Solid Properties 146
Conclusion: An Unsettled (E)state 167
Notes 175
References 185
Index 201
| Erscheinungsdatum | 03.11.2023 |
|---|---|
| Zusatzinfo | 12 illustrations |
| Verlagsort | North Carolina |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Maße | 152 x 229 mm |
| Gewicht | 476 g |
| Themenwelt | Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte |
| Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie | |
| Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie | |
| ISBN-10 | 1-4780-2057-1 / 1478020571 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1-4780-2057-8 / 9781478020578 |
| Zustand | Neuware |
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