Overview

According to public health orthodoxy, blood for transfusion is safer when derived from voluntary, nonremunerated donors. As developing nations phase out compensated blood collection efforts to comply with this current policy, many struggle to keep their blood stores up. Veins of Devotion details recent collaborations between guru-led devotional movements and public health campaigns to encourage voluntary blood donation in northern India. Focusing primarily on Delhi, Jacob Copeman carefully situates the practice within the context of religious gift-giving, sacrifice, caste, kinship, and nationalism. The book analyzes the operations of several high-profile religious orders that organize large-scale public blood-giving events and argues that blood donation has become a site not only of frenetic competition between different devotional movements, but also of intense spiritual creativity. Despite tensions between blood banks and these religious groups, their collaboration is a remarkable success storyÙthe nation's blood supply is replenished while blood donors discover new devotional possibilities. Download open access ebook here.

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9780813544496

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Reviews

A very impressive achievement. Copeman quite brilliantly illuminates some of the most dramatic and important developments in contemporary Indian public life.--James Laidlaw Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge An excellent piece of scholarship that synthesizes classic themes in theindological literature--sacrifice, gift-giving, caste, asceticism, guru/chela relationships--with the very contemporary and iconicallymodern, biomedical procedure of blood donation--Joseph S. Alter University of Pittsburgh Fascinating. Copeman's richly conceptualized study, in which he nimbly moves from his underlying frame of the Indian notions of gift and service to touch on a range of related topics, from national integration to Indian notions of asceticism, sacrifice, sin, and caste lucidly connects a range of Indian spiritual idioms to the seemingly unlikely, mundane context of voluntary blood donation.-- Journal of Asian Studies No book covers the same terrain or anything close to what Copemanaccomplishes with VEINS OF DEVOTION. It is an extraordinarily smart bookthat sets the standard for future work on biomoral exchange in anthropology.--Lawrence Cohen University of California, Berkeley Veins of Devotion is a fascinating ethnography of everyday tissue exchange in urban India. For medical anthropologists, Copeman expands the dimensions of ideology, structure, and agency in bodily donation. For scholars of religion and South Asia, he provides a new venue for analyzing the shifting domains of sacred and secular in contemporary urban India. Accessibly written, this volume is eminently teachable for a graduate or upperdivision undergraduate course. It is an excellent work of scholarship.-- American Ethnologist

"A very impressive achievement. Copeman quite brilliantly illuminates some of the most dramatic and important developments in contemporary Indian public life.--James Laidlaw ""Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge"" An excellent piece of scholarship that synthesizes classic themes in theindological literature--sacrifice, gift-giving, caste, asceticism, guru/chela relationships--with the very contemporary and iconicallymodern, biomedical procedure of blood donation--Joseph S. Alter ""University of Pittsburgh"" Fascinating. Copeman's richly conceptualized study, in which he nimbly moves from his underlying frame of the Indian notions of gift and service to touch on a range of related topics, from national integration to Indian notions of asceticism, sacrifice, sin, and caste lucidly connects a range of Indian spiritual idioms to the seemingly unlikely, mundane context of voluntary blood donation.-- ""Journal of Asian Studies"" No book covers the same terrain or anything close to what Copemanaccomplishes with VEINS OF DEVOTION. It is an extraordinarily smart bookthat sets the standard for future work on biomoral exchange in anthropology.--Lawrence Cohen ""University of California, Berkeley"" Veins of Devotion is a fascinating ethnography of everyday tissue exchange in urban India. For medical anthropologists, Copeman expands the dimensions of ideology, structure, and agency in bodily donation. For scholars of religion and South Asia, he provides a new venue for analyzing the shifting domains of sacred and secular in contemporary urban India. Accessibly written, this volume is eminently teachable for a graduate or upperdivision undergraduate course. It is an excellent work of scholarship.-- ""American Ethnologist"""

Author Information

Jacob Copeman is a research fellow at Jesus College at Cambridge University in England.

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