Birgit Meyer

Bio: Birgit Meyer is an academic researcher from Utrecht University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Modernity & Christianity. The author has an hindex of 40, co-authored 123 publications receiving 5450 citations. Previous affiliations of Birgit Meyer include University of Amsterdam & International Institute of Minnesota.

'Make a Complete Break With the Past.' Memory and Post-Colonial Modernity in Ghanaian Pentecostalist Discourse'

Abstract: L'A. montre comment le discours des pentecotistes dans le contexte de la politique du Ghana amene a un rejet de la politique gouvernementale. L'article explore le lien du pentecotisme a la memoire et a la modernite et montre comment la conversion pentecotiste implique une rupture avec le passe et la tradition et implique une acceptation de la modernite sans soumission.

Christianity in Africa: From African Independent to Pentecostal‐Charismatic Churches

Abstract: ▪ Abstract Taking as a point of departure Fernandez's survey (1978), this review seeks to show how research on African Independent Churches (AICs) has been reconfigured by new approaches to the anthropology of Christianity in Africa, in general, and the recent salient popularity of Pentecostal-Charismatic Churches (PCCs) in particular. If the adjectives “African” and “Independent” were once employed as markers of authentic, indigenous interpretations of Christianity, these terms proved to be increasingly problematic to capture the rise, spread, and phenomenal appeal of PCCs in Africa. Identifying three discursive frames—Christianity and “traditional religion,” Africa and “the wider world,” religion and politics—which organize(d) research on AICs and PCCs in the course of the past 25 years, this chapter critically reviews discussions about “Africanization,” globalization and modernity, and the role of religion in the public sphere in postcolonial African societies.

Translating the Devil. Religion and Modernity among the Ewe in Ghana.

Abstract: This book offers an ethnography of the emergence of a local Christianity and its relation to changing social, political and economic formations among the Peki Ewe in Ghana. Focusing on the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, which arose from encounters between the Ewe and German Piestist missionaries, the author examines recent conflicts leading to the secession of many pentecostally oriented members, which it places in a historical perspective. The main argument is that, for the Ewe, involvement with modernity goes hand in hand with new enchantment, rather than disenchantment, of the world. At the grassroots level, the study focuses on the image of the Devil, which the missionaries communicated to the Ewe through translation and which currently receives much attention in the Pentecostal churches. It is shown that this image played and still plays a crucial role in the local appropriation of Christianity, since diabolisation confirmed the existence of local gods and witchcraft and incorporated them into Christian belief as demons. Comparing the discourses and practices of mission and Pentecostal churches, the study reveals that the latter pay much more attention to Satan - especially through ‘deliverance’ rituals. Pentecostalism’s increasing popularity thus stems from the fact that it ties into historically generated, local understandings of Christianity, which, despite a declared dislike of non-Christian religious practices, stand much closer to Ewe religion than missionary Christianity.With its emphasis on the hybrid image of the Devil and people’s obsession with occult forces as a way to mediate the attractions and discontents of modernity, this book sheds light on a hitherto neglected dimension in studies of African Christianity.

Globalization and Identity. Dialectics of Flow and Closure.

Abstract: Introduction. (Birgit Meyer and Peter Geshiere). Nationalism and Transnationalism. Cirassian Encounters: The Self as Other and the Production of the Homeland in the North Caucasus. (Seteney Shami). Transnationalism in the Era of Nation--States: China, 1900--1945. (Prasenjit Duara). The French Colonial Policy of Assimilation and the Civility of the Originaires of the Four Communes (Senegal): A Nineteenth Century Globalization Project. (Mamadou Diouf). Enforcing the Human Rights of Citizens and Non--Citizens in the Era of Maastricht: Some Reflections on the Importance of States. (Jacqueline Bhabha). Commodities and Fantasies. Small Product, Big Issues: Value Contestations and Cultural Identities in Cross--Border Commodity Networks. Commodities and the Power of Prayer: Pentecostalist Attitudes Towards Consumption in Contemporary Ghana. (Birgit Meyer). Domesticating Diamonds and Dollars: Identity, Expenditure and Sharing in Southwestern Zaire (1984--1997). (Filip De Boeck). Globalization and the Power of Indeterminate Meaning: Witchcraft and Spirit Cults in Africa and East Asia. (Peter Geschiere). Theoretical Reflections. Time and the Global: Against the Homogeneous, Empty Communities in Contemporary Social Theory. John D. Kelly. Globalization and Virtuality: Analytical Problems Posed by the Contemporary Transformation of African Societies. (Wim van Binsbergen). Dead Certainty: Ethnic Violence in the Era of Globalization. (Arjun Appadurai). Epilogue: On Some Reports from a Free Space. (Ulf Hannerz). Notes on Contributors. Index

The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy and the Order of Knowledge

Abstract: What is the meaning of Africa and of being African? What is and what is not African philosophy? Is philosophy part of Africanism ? These are the kind of fundamental questions which this book addresses. North America: Indiana U Press

Occult economies and the violence of abstraction: notes from the South African postcolony

Abstract: Postcolonial South Africa, like other postrevolutionary societies, appears to have witnessed a dramatic rise in occult economies: in the deployment, real or imagined, of magical means for material ends. These embrace a wide range of phenomena, from "ritual murder," the sale of body parts, and the putative production of zombies to pyramid schemes and other financial scams. And they have led, in many places, to violent reactions against people accused of illicit accumulation. In the struggles that have ensued, the major lines of opposition have been not race or class but generation—mediated by gender. Why is all this occurring with such intensity, right now? An answer to the question, and to the more general problem of making sense of the enchantments of modernity, is sought in the encounter of rural South Africa with the contradictory effects of millennial capitalism and the culture of neoliberalism. This encounter, goes the argument, brings "the global" and "the local"— treated here as analytic constructs rather than explanatory terms or empirical realities—into a dialectical interplay. It also has implications for the practice of anthropology, challenging us to do ethnography on an "awkward" scale, on planes that transect the here and now, then and there,

Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (review)

Abstract: Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Briggs, Asa and Peter Burke. 2005. A Social History of the Media from Gutenberg to the Internet. Cambridge: Polity Press. Chun, Wendy Hui Kyong. 2006. \"Introduction: Did Somebody Say New Media?\" In Wendy Hui Kyong Chun and Thomas Kennan eds., New Media/Old Media: A History and Theory Reader. New York: Routledge, pp. 1-11. Deibert, Ronald. 1997. Parchment, Printing and Hypermedia: Communication in World Order Transformation. New York: Columbia University Press. Elsaesser, Thomas. 2006. \"Early Film History and Multi-Media: An Archaeology of Possible Futures?\" In Wendy Hui Kyong Chun and Thomas Kennan eds., New Media/Old Media: A History and Theory Reader. New York: Routledge, pp. 13-26. Jenkins, Henry. 2006. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press. Luhman, Niklas. 2000. The Reality of the Mass Media. Cambridge: Polity Press. Mirzoeff, Nicholas. 2006. \"Network Subjects or, The Ghost is the Message.\" In Wendy Hui Kyong Chun and Thomas Keenan eds., New Media/Old Media: A History and Theory Reader. New York: Routledge, pp. 335-345. Saenger, Paul. 1997. \"Introduction\" to Space Between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading. Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp. 1-17. Thorburn, David and Henry Jenkins eds. 2003. Rethinking Media Change: The Aesthetics of Transition. Boston: MIT Press.