A hermeneutic engagement with
Maithili folk songs allows this book
to hinge upon the notions of
living and dying in the contemporary
world despite the admission that
medicine, insurance, market, and
media may condition human
experiences. Amidst the binaries of
union and separation, rigid religion
and fluid faith, popular and folk,
modernity and tradition, central to
this book is the pluralism of cultural
script(s) and their philosophical
musings on living and dying, folk
philosophy, cultural subversion as
well as reconciliation. Predominantly
sung by women, the folksongs of
Mithila are woven around calendar
of events, rites of the passage, and
everyday life situations. The cultural
scape of sound and sight thus
conjures a fusion of epistemology
and ontology, knowledge and
existential being, the classicalSanskritic-textual
and the folksubaltern-oral.
Straddling
the
particular
context
of Maithili
folksongs
and the generic
aspects of
folk
world
view,
steering
across
Hinduism, tradition and modernity,
and folklore in the age of mechanical
reproduction, this book contributes
to the sociology and social
anthropology of, inter alia, folklore,
religion, gender and mythology.
Moreover, this makes for a
contribution into sociology and
social anthropology of death in
South Asia.
About the Author
Dev Nath Pathak teaches Sociology
at the South Asian University, New
Delhi. His current research interest
focuses on the popular and
performative cultural politics in
South Asia. His publications include
Intersections in Sociology, Art and Art
History: A Conversation with Parul
Dave-Mukherji (2016) and
Performative Communication:
Cultural Politics in South Asia
(forthcoming). He is reviews editor
of Society and Culture in South Asia,
journal of Department of Sociology,
South Asian University.
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