Knut A. Jacobsen - Sikhs Across Borders: Transnational Practices of European Sikhs

Sikhs Across Borders

Also Available From Bloomsbury Academic

Media, Spiritualities and Social Change, Edited by Monica Emerich
and Stewart M. Hoover

Sikhism Today, Jagbir Jhutti-Johal

Sikhs Across Borders

Transnational Practices of European Sikhs

Edited by

Knut A. Jacobsen and Kristina Myrvold

Bloomsbury Academic

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First published 2012

Knut A. Jacobsen, Kristina Myrvold and Contributors, 2012

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

Knut A. Jacobsen, Kristina Myrvold and Contributors have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.

No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury Academic or the author.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-4411-0358-1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sikhs across borders : transnational practices of European Sikhs / edited by Knut A. Jacobsen and Kristina Myrvold. First [edition].

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4411-1387-0 (hardcover) ISBN 978-1-4411-7087-3 (ebook (pdf))

1. SikhismEurope. 2. Emigration and immigrationReligious aspectsSikhism. 3. SikhsEurope. I. Jacobsen, Knut A., 1956- editor of compilation. II. Myrvold, Kristina, editor of compilation.

BL2018.S4745 2012

294.6094dc23

2012011037

Contents

List of Tables

Notes on Contributors

Barbara Bertolani has a PhD in Sociology. She is teaching Sociology, Social Politics, and Sociology of Economic processes at University of Molise (Italy). Bertolani has conducted research on intermarriages and interethnic couples in Italy. Her current research interests focus on the role of ethnic and kin-networks of first generation Punjabi migrants in the processes of migration and economic integration in Italy. She is also working on transnational networks of Indian and Pakistani rejoined women and on the Sikh second generation in Italy. In 2010 and 2011 she conducted research on the Sikhs for a project on religious pluralism at University of Padua. Her publications on the Sikhs are, among others, Mirror Games: A Fresco of Sikh Settlements among Italian Local Societies (with Federica Ferraris and Fabio Perocco) in Sikhs in Europe: Migration, Identities and Representations (Ashgate, 2011) and Religious Belonging and New Ways of Being Italian in the Self-perception of Second-generation Immigrants in Italy (with Fabio Perocco), in The Best of All Gods. The Sites and Politics of Religious Diversity in Southern Europe (Brill, forthcoming).

Quincy Cloet has a MA in History from the University of Leuven (KU Leuven, Belgium). He wrote a Masters thesis about the Belgian Sikh community, with the title Sikhs in Belgium. Self-Perception and Representation. Cloet is currently following a Master in Business Economics at the College-University of Brussels.

Sara Cosemans holds a MA degree of History at the University of Leuven (KU Leuven, Belgium) and did her Masters thesis about the Sikh community in Hesbaye. She received the Glen Chair for Intercultural Studies Award for the best thesis about immigration, minorities, and intercultural dialogue at the university.

Federica Ferraris holds a PhD in Anthropology, University of Milan-Bicocca, since 2004 and has been a Visiting Research Fellow at the Department of Anthropology, University of Sussex, between 2005 and 2012. She has done research among Sikhs in the UK and in Italy. Her publications revolve around the significance of tourist narratives and on Sikh migration and pilgrimage practices. On the Sikhs she has published Going Rural and Urban at Once: Reflections from the Roman Sikh Context (Journal of Contemporary Religion, 2009), and (with B. Bertolani and F. Perocco) Mirror Games: A Fresco of Sikh Settlements among Italian Local Societies in Sikhs in Europe: Migration, Identities and Representations (Ashgate, 2011).

Idesbald Goddeeris has an MA of Slavic Studies (1994), an MA of History (1997), and a PhD of History (2001). He is currently Associate Professor at the University of Leuven, where he teaches, inter alia, on history of European colonization and on the history of modern India. His research mainly focuses on the Cold War, migration, social movements, and the representation of the other. He has recently published articles in Vingtime Sicle (2011), Journal of Cold War Studies (2011), and Labour History Review (2010), and he co-authored a Dutch textbook on the history of India titled Een geschiedenis van India: ontmoetingen op wereldschaal (with W. Callewaert, Acco, 2010). Goddeeris is also a senior member of the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies, for which he coordinates the Leuven India Focus.

Laura Hirvi is a Doctoral Student of Ethnology at the University of Jyvskyl, Finland. Hirvi is working on her dissertation, in which she focuses on the question how Sikh immigrants in Finland and in California negotiate their identities. Her recent publications include the chapter Sikhs in Finland: Migration Histories and Work in the Restaurant Sector in Sikhs in Europe: Migration, Identities and Representations (Ashgate, 2011) and the article The Sikh Gurdwara in Finland: Negotiating, Maintaining and Transmitting Immigrants Identities (South Asian Diaspora, 2010).

Knut A. Jacobsen is professor in the History of Religions at the University of Bergen, Norway, and author and editor of numerous books and articles in journals and edited volumes on various aspects of religions in South Asia and in the South Asian diasporas. He is the author of Prakriti in Samkhya-Yoga: Material Principle: Religious Experience, Ethical Implications (Peter Lang, 1999; Indian edition Motilal Banarsidass, 2002), Kapila: Founder of Samkhya and Avatara of Vishnu (Munshiram Manoharlal, 2008) and Pilgrimage in the Hindu Tradition: Salvific Space (Routledge, 2013). Other recent publications include the edited volumes South Asians in the Diaspora: Histories and Religious Traditions (with P. Pratap Kumar, Brill, 2004); Theory and Practice of Yoga: Essays in Honour of Gerald James Larson (Brill, 2005); South Asian Religions on Display: Religious Processions in South Asia and in the Diaspora (Routledge, 2008); South Asian Christian Diaspora: Invisible Diaspora in Europe and North America (with Selva J. Raj, Ashgate, 2008); Modern Indian Culture and Society (Routledge, 2009), Sikhs in Europe: Migration, Identities and Representation (with Kristina Myrvold, Ashgate, 2011); and Yoga Powers: Extraordinary Capacities Attained Through Meditation and Concentration