Winner of the Environmental Design Research Association's 2018 Achievement Award The pluralism of South Asia belies any singular reading of its heritage. In spite of this diversity, its cultural traditions retain certain attributes that are at their core South Asian—in their capacity to self‐organize, enact and reinvent cultural memories, and in their ability to retain an intimate connection with nature and landscape. This volume focuses on the notion of cultural landscape as a medium integrating multiple forms of heritage and points to a new paradigm for conservation practices in the South Asian context. Even though the construct of cultural landscape has been accepted as a category of heritage, its potent use in heritage management in general and within the South Asian context in particular has not been widely studied. The volume challenges the prevalent views of heritage management in South Asia that are entrenched in colonial legacies and contemporary global policy frameworks.

Winner of the Environmental Design Research Association's 2018 Achievement Award The pluralism of South Asia belies any singular reading of its heritage. In spite of this diversity, its cultural traditions retain certain attributes that are at their core South Asian—in their capacity to self‐organize, enact and reinvent cultural memories, and in their ability to retain an intimate connection with nature and landscape. This volume focuses on the notion of cultural landscape as a medium integrating multiple forms of heritage and points to a new paradigm for conservation practices in the South Asian context. Even though the construct of cultural landscape has been accepted as a category of heritage, its potent use in heritage management in general and within the South Asian context in particular has not been widely studied. The volume challenges the prevalent views of heritage management in South Asia that are entrenched in colonial legacies and contemporary global policy frameworks.

Most people view cultural heritage sites as static places, frozen in time. In Cultural Landscapes in India, Amita Sinha subverts the idea of heritage as static and examines the ways that landscapes influence culture and that culture influences landscapes. The book centers around imagining, enacting, and reclaiming landscapes as subjects and settings of living cultural heritage. Drawing on case studies from different regions of India, Sinha offers new interpretations of links between land and culture using different ways of seeing—transcendental, romantic, and utilitarian. The idea of cultural landscape can be seen in ancient practices such as circumambulation and immersion in bodies of water that sustain engagement with natural elements. Pilgrim towns, medieval forts, religious sites, and contemporary memorial parks are sites of memory where myth and history converge. Engaging with these spaces allows us to reconstruct collective memory and reclaim not only historic landscapes, but ways of seeing, making, and remembering. Cultural Landscapes in India makes the case for reclaiming iconic landscapes and rethinking conventional approaches to conservation that take into consideration performative landscape as heritage.

This volume breaks new ground by conceptualizing landscape as a dynamic cultural complex in which the natural world and human practice are inextricably linked and are constantly interacting. It examines the social and cultural construction of space in the early medieval period in South Asia, as manifest in society, religious architecture and as shaped through trade and economic transactions.

This book breaks new ground by examining trans-oceanic connectivity through the perspective of coastal shrines and maritime cultural landscapes across the Bay of Bengal and the South China Sea. It covers a period of expanding networks and cross-cultural encounters from the 3rd century BCE to the 13th century CE. The book examines the distinctiveness of these shrines, and highlights their interconnections, and their role in social integration in South and Southeast Asia. By drawing on data from shipwreck sites, the author elaborates on the material and religious intersections and transmissions between cultures across the seas. Many of these coastal shrines survived into the colonial period when they came to be admired for their aesthetic value as ‘monuments’. As nation states of the region became independent, these shrines were often inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List on account of their Outstanding Universal Values. The book argues that in the 21st century there is a need to promote the cultural connectivity of the past as transnational heritage on UNESCO’s global platform to preserve and protect our shared heritage. The volume will be essential reading for academics and researchers of archaeology, anthropology, museum and heritage studies, history of South and Southeast Asia, religious studies, cultural studies, and Asian studies.

The volume looks at how South Asian art was sourced for external appreciation at a variety of institutions in Europe, North America, and Asia from the mid-19th century onward. These essays speak to the colonial legacies that created such collections but that now must be viewed though a post-colonial lens. The volume also addresses contemporary concerns for todays's museums: collecting, building and practices, provenance, and repatriation.

From the Himalayas to the Ganges River, South Asia is full of breathtaking landscapes. Cities are often crowded and bustling, with ancient architecture alongside new buildings. Readers will explore the exciting, unique landscapes and cityscapes of South Asia through vivid full-color photographs and maps, and fact-filled text and sidebars. Your readers will discover the ways people in South Asia have adapted to the landscapes, as well as how climate change may affect their cities in the future.

In Landscapes in India, Amita Sinha shows that landscapes can be read like languages, as arrangements of symbols that reveal cultural values. South Asian landscapes'rich with formalized symbols, from the Cosmic Tree in Buddhist landscapes to cities patterned on mandalas'offer a training ground for reading landscapes everywhere. In a readable narrative heavily illustrated with spectacular color photographs, Sinha introduces readers to sacred and secular landscapes, identifying archetypal forms that have evolved over millennia. According to Sinha, landscape symbols express all that a culture holds dear and externalize deeply felt emotions'of security, kinship, and relationship with the divine. Architects, landscape architects, and planners will rely on this beautiful book's idation of archetypal forms and how they co-evolve with nature and culture. Landscapes in India also offers fresh perspectives for travelers and readers interested in geography, anthropology, and religion.

Although South Asian cookery and gastronomy has transformed contemporary urban foodscape all over the world, social scientists have paid scant attention to this phenomenon. Curried Cultures–a wide-ranging collection of essays–explores the relationship between globalization and South Asia through food, covering the cuisine of the colonial period to the contemporary era, investigating its material and symbolic meanings. Curried Cultures challenges disciplinary boundaries in considering South Asian gastronomy by assuming a proximity to dishes and diets that is often missing when food is a lens to investigate other topics. The book’s established scholarly contributors examine food to comment on a range of cultural activities as they argue that the practice of cooking and eating matter as an important way of knowing the world and acting on it.