Religion in the Himalaya takes all sorts of new forms: videos of gods on cell phones, compact disks of Tibetan lama eulogies, photocopied pilgrim guides, and websites for Nepali goddesses, to name just a few. Because they do not mesh cleanly with the scriptural categories by which academics have traditionally attempted to understand religion, such modern phenomena are often brushed under the carpet or touted as oddities. Thankfully, the scholars included in the edited volume Religion and Modernity in the Himalaya have begun the arduous task of filling the lacuna of research on religion in the modern Himalaya. Spanning many nations and religious traditions, the Himalaya is nevertheless defined as its own region of academic interest, and the volume explores both how modernity conditions religion and, conversely, how religion shapes modernity.

Posing modernity as “an era of the consciousness of the new” (p. 7), which is not an objective social fact but a “powerful field of popular discourse and cultural production” (p. 110), the volume argues that the Himalaya is characterized by two features: peripherality and emplacement. Peripherality refers to the tension between center and margin, and to how many in the Himalaya perceive themselves as being on the borders of modernity. For instance, in chapter 2, Luke Whitmore examines “the local need to develop a methodology of ‘bifocality’” (p. 25). Emplacement indicates the ongoing negotiation between people, communities, and place. As co-editor Megan Adamson Sijapati writes in the introduction, “The importance of place to religious practitioners’ understanding of themselves and the divine and material worlds around them cannot be overstated” (p. 10).

The volume's point of departure is “lived religion,” which the authors never precisely define, but stems, through a paramparā of Robert Orsi, David Hall, Todd Lewis, and David Gellner, from the French tradition of “la religion vécue,” which are ethnographically contextualized studies that focus on how the interpretations of ordinary people are conditioned by ideology, family, community, and gender. As Sijapati writes in the introduction, “Himalayan locales provide views into the lived worlds of religious traditions and give primacy to these traditions as a way to better understand them but also to better understand the fabric of family, kinship, belonging, and identity” (p. 8). This leads to an understanding of religion that is not at odds with modernity. As Kathrine Miller indicates in chapter 8, for many in the Himalaya there is no “incommensurability between religion and other modes of knowing” (p. 147).

The chapters are arranged thematically. Part one, “Space, Place, and Material Modernities,” consists of chapters 2–4, and examines how local environments shape religious subjectivities, worldviews, and practices. Whitmore, in chapter 2, analyzes the relationship between the local, regional, and global by examining tourism-cum-pilgrimage at the Shaivite temple of Kedarnath. In chapter 3, Holly Gayley documents the Tibetan Buddhist use of video compact disks to eulogize lamas. Andrea Pinkney, in chapter 4, analyzes how māhātmyas, pilgrim guides, are used in Uttarakhand, to understand how lived religion has transformed as infrastructure has modernized.

Part two, “Gods and Place: Migration, Deities, and Identities,” consisting of chapters 5 and 6, illustrates the relationship between regional deities, place, and gendered identity. In chapter 5, co-editor Jessica Vantine Birkenholtz examines recent transformation of the Nepali goddess Svasthani. In chapter 6, Radhika Govindrajan explores the gendered reception of the local god Ganganath.

The final part, “Education, Governance, Official Discourses, and Religion,” consists of chapters 7–9 and addresses how religion is used by institutions and developed by authorities, and also by others, to resist modernity. Nadine Plachta, in chapter 7, documents the strides that Buddhist nuns are making in gaining access to monastic knowledge and education. In chapter 8, Miller focuses on northern Pakistan to map the relationship between types of schools and concepts of modernity. In the volume's final chapter, Elizabeth Allison analyzes the challenges faced when modern bureaucratic efforts at environmentalism clash with local, religiously informed views of waste.

As can be seen from this embarrassment of riches, Religion and Modernity in the Himalaya showcases the work of many talented emerging scholars. The volume not only argues persuasively for the study of the Himalaya as a cultural region, but also begins the labor of filling the gap in scholarship about modernity and religion. Like many edited volumes arranged by topic, however, the book suffers from the lack of a well-articulated, central theoretical focus, particularly when it comes to the subject of religion. If the chapters have a central conclusion, which some chapters infer explicitly, while others implicitly, it could be called a “mutatis mutandis theory of religion,” which argues that while necessary modern innovations have been made to lived religion, they have left the authentic core of the traditions intact. As Birkenholtz writes in her chapter on the Svasthānī Kathā, “recent innovations capitalize on modern technologies to employ mass media outlets, yet, they have not undermined the core integrity of the tradition, namely, the historic stability and adaptability of both … narratives and the practices surrounding them” (p. 92). As Gayley argues, modern religion should not be analyzed as “rites out of place” (p. 46), but rather, as Whitmore posits, should be understood “to be part of a single continuum or experience and practice rather than as an opposing binary of inauthentic media representations or authentic ritual practice” (p. 37). As Miller illustrates for Hunza, modernity is perceived “as fulfilling the essence of their tradition rather than superseding it” (p. 148).

In short, Religion and Modernity in the Himalaya is a valuable volume that should be read by everyone working on religion in the Himalayan region, and bodes well for future scholarship on modernity and religion. While the volume plants the seeds, however, the field still has room for growth, and I have a twofold challenge for this cohort of upcoming scholars. First, what are the unique features of Himalayan religion compared to other geographic regions, particularly Asia, and specifically South Asia? Second, how can this uniqueness be generalized, and theorized so as to be compared to how these religious traditions are practiced elsewhere? My hunch is that these answers will not only provide a better understanding of Himalayan religion, but also allow those of us who dwell on the contemporary globe to navigate more successfully through this thing we call modernity.