Women’s Leadership and Transnational Belonging in the Global Hindu Adhiparasakthi Tradition

Scholars in the social sciences have long observed that migration has been a central concern of ethnographers across disciplines. For ethnographers today research interests continue to expand focusing analysis on how the global intersects with the local in communities across borders. When theoretical analysis is employed alongside ethnographic fieldwork, the links between the global and the local come into sharper focus and we are able to make further connections across multiple locations in the lives of individual agents. Based on fieldwork in India and North American immigrant communities within the Hindu Adhiparasakthi tradition, this paper investigates the role of women’s leadership and ritual authority, community-building, and how religious communities are sustained locally in a transnational context. These components illustrate networks of people working transnationally to achieve a greater expression of community across borders, one that places devotion, service, and a sense of interconnectedness at the heart of everyday life.