The Migratory Tou-Tei (Earth God): Continuous Past, Living Heritage and Evolving Memory (2 of 3)
In the first blog post, we explored how the customs of Tou-Tei survive as an entanglement of an ancient Chinese cosmology and an imperial governing system, and are still practised in today’s Macau. We saw how the customs have gained layered meanings...
The Migratory Tou-Tei (Earth God): Continuous Past, Living Heritage and Evolving Memory (1 of 3)
At a lecture I attended in Macau on the relationship between the city’s urban development history and the practice of the belief of Tou-Tei (土地; “Earth God”), a speaker, historian and urbanist, made the following remark: “Tou-Tei used to represent the...
Carved in Stone: The Cult of Hārītī in Java and Bali
Nestled within a quiet valley in Central Java, Indonesia, the ninth-century Buddhist temple of Candi Banyunibo rises with serene grace amid shimmering rice paddies. Far from tourist crowds, visitors can explore its grounds in near solitude, encountering...
Women and Their Invisible Struggles (2)
Slovakia's birth rate hit a record low (8.53 per 1,000 inhabitants) in 2024 and has been declining since 2021. Though slightly above Europe's average of 8.4, the total fertility rate (1.56 children per woman) remains below the replacement level (2.1 births...
Slovak Women I Did Not Interview About Their Unplanned Pregnancies (1)
Between April and June, I was looking for respondents for the study on Pregnancy, Motherhood and Ideals of Citizenship in Slovakia. Since this was my first time doing participant interviews, I did not have many expectations besides few people warning me...
Okin and Mahmood Walk into a Bar: Feminism, Piety, and the Western Gaze
Imagine Okin, a liberal feminist, sitting across from Saba Mahmood, an anthropologist studying religion in modern societies. Picture them in a quiet bar, drinks in hand, jumping into a debate about the "F" word in religion.
The Two Additional Reforms Nepal's Living Goddess Tradition Needs: Shorter Tenure and an End to Period Stigma
On 30th September of 2025, a two-year-old girl, Aryatara Shakya, succeeded the previous child for the living goddess (Kumari) position in Nepal. She will be expected to serve 8-9 years and be dethroned once she menstruates or hits puberty because...
Is AI a Religion? ‘Prompted Religion’ as an emerging category in Lived Religion studies.
“According to my training data, AI keeps getting compared to faith.”
Why do we care so much about the fate of religion?
On 4 September this year, the national Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant published an article profiling recent sociological research on rising secularisation around the world. Debate over whether the disappearance of religion was something universal or...
The holy digital battleground: The Rise of Christian Nationalist Discourses and Anti-Muslim Violence in Spain
An elderly man from the town of Torre Pacheco (Murcia, Spain) was beaten by a group of three young people on July 9, 2025. The attackers were speaking Arabic. The image of the victim, with his face swollen, bruised and with a bloodshot eye, circulated...