Yogesh Snehi, Spatializing Popular Sufi Shrines in Punjab: Dreams, Memories, Territoriality

Abstract

The book overall is packed full of interesting and original ideas and approaches, and lays open invigorating new avenues to explore caste, labour, performance, marginality and the field of performing arts in India and its researchers. The focus on aesthetics and the constructive and positive exploration of aspects such as disgust, pollution, obscenity and viscerality are some of the most illuminating and important contributions, as well as the chapter on historiography. However, at the same time, the book is let down by over-theorisation, convolutedness and a lack of adequate ethnographic engagement. It is tantalising, refreshing and stimulating, but also does not deliver in terms of its execution to the potential that exists in the basic topic, field, framework and level of study undertaken.