Yoga in Ubud, Bali

See Pages, 'The Yoga Barn, Ubud, Bali'

Just returned from a short trip to Tasmania. Check out the highlights on Page 'Tasmanian Highs'

conferences

For conferences that I'd like to go to in 2014, see Page 'Conferences in 2014'. If you have any to suggest along the same lines, would love to hear about them.

My Publications

A second book published in 2013 is: The Religious Life of Dress: Global Fashion and Faith, published by Bloomsbury (Berg), London and New York.

Some reviews of this book:

'Lucidly written, this is a superb account of religious life, its rites and taboos read through dress and embellishment. Hume engages new ground in her world-wide coverage of Western religions, Islam, the great Eastern faiths, and mystical ceremonies. With exceptional insight she demonstrates that the sensorial and transformative lie at the heart of these embodied practices.'
                                       Margaret Maynard, The University of Queensland, Australia 

'Hume's emphasis on the smell, feel, texture, and types of cloth used in religious practice is particularly original, as is her discussion of dress associated with the dead. This unique volume underscores the ways that clothing contributes to people's identities and their sense of moral order, in this world and beyond.'
                                                    Elisha P. Renne, University of Michigan, USA

'By digging beneath appearances, Lynne Hume enables the reader to acquire an embodied sense of the varieties of religious devotion and experience through what people wear'.
                                       David Howes, Concordia University, Canada

Book is available in hardback, paperback and as an ebook.
www.bloomsbury.com

What's a WWOOFer?

Clue: It's not a dog.

See 'WWOOF' in Pages

Key words

anthropology; sensorial anthropology; spiritual anthropology; consciousness studies; altered states; rites and ceremonies; dress and religious practices; travel; alternative spiritualities

Interview on ABC-CLIO

Published 2 hours ago 'Interview with Lynne Hume, co-author of The Varieties of Magical Experience': http://abcclio.blogspot.com/

House for Sale

I'm selling my beautiful house in the country. Just 10 km from Maleny, and 1.5 hours drive from Brisbane, in Queensland.

See photos on Page 'House for Sale'.

It's a lovely quiet acre in the country, very green with a large variety of birds and wildlife. Suit a couple or family who like to feel as if they are on retreat, and who like gardening. Good for writers and artists. It has wrap-around verandahs (3 sides), Queensland style; soft breeze on the northern verandah with lovely aspect. 3 bedrooms, fireplace, gazebo, and a circle at the bottom of the garden suitable for rituals, meditation, contemplation ...
Good price. If interested, leave a comment, or email me at : lynnelhume@gmail.com

Carpet Snake

Carpet snake consuming flying fox - found this on  my front path as I was leaving for work one morning.

Anthropologists, writes Paul Stoller, are ‘sojourners of the between’(p.4): between languages, cultures, and apprehensions of reality.

Stoller, Paul, 2009, The Power of the Between: an Anthropological Odyssey, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Like Stoller, I have found that when we are engaged in fieldwork, we don’t really fit in, but when we return home, we are never quite the same again. Some travelers can experience something similar if they are conscious, aware travelers, staying for several months in a different culture, imbibing more than the tourist brochures tell them, being open to new ways of seeing the world and being in it; feeling, smelling, tasting, sensing another way of life, another set of beliefs. Sometimes what we have taken for granted for so long is all turned upside down. We progress a little further on the road to being more aware of the world around us, and of ourselves, becoming transformed in either subtle or startling ways, never to be quite the same again. We have crossed the abyss.