Introduction

This chapter serves as the Introduction and articulates the book’s core argument: Hindu women’s domestic shrine traditions are a valuable reproductive labor that sustains Hindu individuals, traditions, and subjectivities. It is written for a general audience and, therefore, provides detailed explanations of Social Reproduction Theory and its notion of reproductive labor, as well as the historical and religious contexts necessary for understanding middle-class Bengali Hindu domestic shrine traditions. It furthermore briefly explains my ethnographic process and the feminist ethnographic methodology that guided my research. Finally, it provides a brief overview of each of the chapters.