Showing papers in "Ethnos in 2012"
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TL;DR: Tales from Facebook as discussed by the authors is an ethnographically rich book about how different people in Trinidad use Facebook in their own individual ways, and many Facebook practices are directly related to the cultural specificity of important offline phenomena in Trinidad (such as bacchanal).
Abstract: Academics in many different fields (communication studies, psychology, business studies etc.) have written about the way Facebook is used in the Western world, but we should not forget that Facebook as a phenomenon has reached many corners of the world often considered as remote. This development has taken place in a span of just seven years, and it is thus timely that anthropologists have begun to devote their attention to how Facebook is used in the communities where they work. Daniel Miller’s Tales from Facebook leads by example in this regard. Tales from Facebook is an ethnographically rich book, and I cannot hope to touch upon all the issues that it raises and manages to discuss. It is divided into two parts. The first (and most lengthy) part is a series of ethnographic cases depicting how different people in Trinidad use Facebook in their own individual ways. Part II more explicitly refers to anthropological theory and tries to draw conclusions about Facebook on a general level although still based upon the cases presented in the first part. The book is well written in an easily accessible language, and while intended for a wider audience, it still manages, through the presentation of the ethnographic cases, to refer to key themes within anthropology (exchange, agency, performance, identity, sociality, morality, time/space etc.), and many Facebook practices are shown to be directly related to the cultural specificity of important offline phenomena in Trinidad (such as bacchanal). Through the discussion of the cases, Miller shows that while Facebook as a company may be pulling in certain directions in the attempt to define what Facebook should be, users also claim ownership of Facebook and have their own agendas that are more conservative than that of the company. Miller demonstrates that Facebook cannot be reduced to what anyone in particular tries to define it as. As ‘culture’ in the making, Facebook espouses many of the social concerns that dominate people’s offline lives. Miller thus convincingly argues that it is not what is new about Facebook which makes it interesting, but actually how Facebook allows people to ‘reconnect’ to offline concerns of maintaining social networks and a sense of community – something that is made harder in contemporary times often depicted as dominated by individualism, capitalism and neo-liberalism. What I find most interesting is Miller’s comparison of Facebook with kula through Nancy Munn’s work The Fame of Gawa, which leads him to conclude that Facebook (like kula) exemplifies what anthropologists mean by ‘culture’ in that it allows the expansion of people’s (social) worlds and ‘spacetime’. Miller has elaborated on this in the online forum Open Anthropology Cooperative (http://openanthcoop.ning.com/ forum/topics/online-seminar-112-novem ber), where ideas contained in Tales from Facebook are discussed further. Miller is humble in his attention and devotedness to ethnographic material and the concerns that individual people have for the (digital) world around them, and in his insistence that theoretical discussions must be grounded in these minutiae of individual Trinidadians’ lives. While sophisticated in its approach and in the way the book shows the complexities of Facebook usage, the popular style in which the book is written sometimes tends to convey a romantic atmos-
105 citations
TL;DR: Rasanayagam as discussed by the authors discusses the constructive aspects of direct experience with the divine, the interpretation of experience through illness, and how spirits become sites for debating the form and content of Islam.
Abstract: hoods built around family connections and Islamic rituals, has been institutionalized into official mahalla committees that serve as extensions of government control. These official mahalla committees help fix the terms of public participation through close monitoring of neighborhood activities (p. 121). In the village, there remain informal mahallas centered on a mosque that manages religious and ritual life. While the informal mahalla is in a hierarchical relationship to the official mahalla committees, a reflection of power dynamics between local and national authority, the mahalla remains an ideal of moral community (p. 51). The discussion of the village–city dichotomy nicely conveys structural conditions of community involvement in framing identities and constructing religious selves. The second part of the book moves from public structuring to narratives of individual engagements with discussions of religion. Islam per se is not the object of this study. Rather, as Rasanayagam argues, ’analytical frames that set up religion, culture, and the social as discrete categories are not helpful for understanding how sociality itself can provide the quality of transcendence typically reserved for the “religious”’ (p. 95). Here, Rasanayagam addresses the constructive aspects of direct experience with the divine, the interpretation of experience through illness, and how spirits become sites for debating the form and content of Islam. As he recognizes, there are distinctions between universalist, scripturalist approaches to Islam and those rooted in local cultural practices, yet these distinctions are not always clear (p. 178): practice finds people moving freely between the two poles and contradictions are reconciled through individual experience. Fortune and misfortune are often understood relative to individual conduct (200), thus even when the mosque and the healer have conflicting conceptions of jinn (spirits capable of influencing good or evil), the individual makes sense of both conceptions as applicable, meaningful, and morally relevant. In combining the structural restrictions imposed by government attempts to control individual behavior with lifecycle experiences or tragedies of health, we see the foundational role ambiguity plays in constructing the self. People personalize their understandings of Islam out of a multiplicity of possibilities, but are always engaged by experience that is moralized. Rasanayagam has captured Islamic life as it is being debated and showed how cosmologies are negotiated and contradictions are reconciled. Arguing for a moral perspective on events, he shows that looking at actions through a lens of morality is precisely what our interlocutors are doing. Experience is what makes their worlds intelligible to them and recognizing this helps make it intelligible to us.
86 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that emotions are not just irrational whims and ideosyncrasies residing in the ethnographer, but are generated in relations in and with the field and are themselves an important source of knowledge about the field.
Abstract: The book is divided into three parts. In part one (James Davies, Michael Jackson, Vincent Crapanzano and Francine Lorimer) the stage is set and ideas from psychoanalysis (e.g. ‘counter-transference’) are used to reflect on fieldwork epistemology. Part two (Arthur Kleinman and Lindsay Smith, Ghassan Hage, and Elisabeth Hsu) investigates what happens when anthropologists study fields, which are themselves traumatised (Israel– Palestine conflict, post-Maoist China, and Grandmothers at Plaza de Mayor in Argentine). Part three (Kirsten Hastrup, Tanya Luhrman, and Joanna Cook) discusses and exemplifies non-cognitive modes of research, i.e. emotional, bodily and imaginal states, whichcanwork asaccess points for knowing. The authors come to appreciate the epistemological value of emotions from different theoretical positions: Jamesian pragmatism, Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, French phenomenology, Bakhtinian semiotics and epistemological lessons learned from quantum mechanics, etc. This is no problem, however, because the contributions are tied together by a powerful and coherent argument: Emotions are not just irrational whims and ideosyncrasies residing in the ethnographer. They are generated in relations in and with the field. Emotions not only reveal something about the ethnographer, but are themselves an important source of knowledge about the field. The contributions in the book each make a strong case that emotions – and the recognition of them – contribute in a positive sense to ethnographic research. Taking subjectivity seriously in this way, however, by no means implies that the authors surrender to a let-it-all-hang-out subjectivism. Instead, the point is, in the editor’s words: ‘to build a more comprehensive epistemology in terms of which field emotions and their methodological pertinence may be more consistently and systematically researched’ (p. 22). Overall this is a book of great merit. The volume makes a very fruitful, strongly argued and richly exemplified case for taking emotions seriously in our research. Emotions in the Field thus provides an efficient anti-dote to most textbooks on ‘qualitative methods’ and their implicit rationalist epistemologies and positivist orientations. Every fieldworker could get inspiration from reading it, and post-graduate courses in ethnographic methods could benefit from its different contributions.
46 citations
42 citations
TL;DR: In this article, an ontogenetic and pragmatic approach to spirit possession based on a historically and cognitively informed ethnography is proposed, which takes into account the interrelationality of cultural contexts and patterns of thinking, feeling and interacting involved in learning possession.
Abstract: Our introduction builds on existing approaches in possession studies to explore a less-developed path focused on processes of ‘learning possession’. We propose here an ontogenetic and pragmatic approach to spirit possession based on a historically and cognitively informed ethnography. Our main aim is to suggest an analytical framework able to take into account the interrelationality of cultural contexts and patterns of thinking, feeling and interacting involved in learning possession. Our epistemological framework is based on the notion of cultural expertise, defined as the culturally relevant matching of emotion, perception and reasoning in an assemblage pertaining to the process of learning a particular skill, as well as the creative and open-ended process in which experts learn to ‘play’ with shared social, aesthetic, moral and performative values.
32 citations
TL;DR: This paper explored the relationship between faith and skepticism among Coptic Orthodox Christians in Egypt, particularly through the lens of the miraculous and concluded that if socio-political miracles often say something about the narrator's piety, they are also stories that highlight a commitment to persecution as central to Christian faith while simultaneously offering joy and empowerment to the Copts that recount and listen to them.
Abstract: The relationship of faith and skepticism has rarely been discussed by anthropologists. Drawing on ethnographic work among Coptic Orthodox Christians in Egypt, this article explores this relationship, particularly through the lens of the miraculous. By focusing on what might be at stake in Coptic miraculous tales that address Coptic Church-State relations as well as Muslim-Christian sectarian tensions, this article pushes for an analysis of faith and skepticism that sees them as products of social relationships. An emphasis is placed on skepticism not as opposing faith, but as potentially cultivating it, especially when that skepticism is of the Muslim Other. I conclude by suggesting that if socio-political miracles often say something about the narrator's piety, they are also stories that highlight a commitment to persecution as central to Christian faith while simultaneously offering joy and empowerment to the Copts that recount and listen to them.
25 citations
TL;DR: The authors identify and place the anthropology of Christianity, to offer an account of its originality and achievements, and to point out some limiting tendencies The argument in brief is this: anthropologists have neglected Christianity for reasons that now seem implausible.
Abstract: This article seeks to identify and place the recent scholarship termed the ‘anthropology of Christianity’, to offer an account of its originality and achievements, and to point out some limiting tendencies The argument in brief is this: anthropologists have neglected Christianity for reasons that now seem implausible There is a small body of work that overtly recognizes this neglect and seeks to rectify it In this work of rectification, there is a particular relationship to theology; some anthropologists of Christianity seek to rehabilitate Christian categories, drawing on John Milbank's writing in particular While applauding this approach, I point to Susan Harding's work as offering a particular emphasis: it recognizes that when categories of investigation and the phenomenon under examination change simultaneously (which we may term an ‘event’), a more subtle ethnographic and explanatory performance is called for
24 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that novitiate should be regarded as a complex learning process involving specific assemblages of contextual, cognitive, body-sensory and emotional aspects.
Abstract: In Eastern Christianity novitiate is a period of learning to experience the presence of God in one's life and the world. Novices follow the hesychast prayer, a mystical tradition that leads them to an experiential knowledge of God. In this paper, I argue that novitiate should be regarded as a complex learning process involving specific assemblages of contextual, cognitive, body-sensory and emotional aspects. By educating their attention and emotion novices learn to see beyond and within reality and thus discover the potentiality of people and things ‘in the likeness of God’. Religious transmission happens not only through embodied practice and the active acquisition of religious knowledge but, more importantly, through the work of the imagination. Novices' orientation towards the transcendent requires an expansion of the imaginative capacities beyond their ‘routine’ functioning. Imagination could be thus seen as a key cognitive capacity through which they learn to experience God.
22 citations
TL;DR: The authors examines the different effects of Christianity on Christians of Damascus during the Feast of the Holy Cross and argues that the problem of belief is not settled by pointing to a particular Christian and Western heritage or to default reactions against imagined certainties; rather the interplay between faith and scepticism may be a productive lens through which to grasp local Christian concerns.
Abstract: This article examines the different effects Christianity has among Christians of Damascus. Instead of focusing on devout subjects, I trace out the ramifications Christianity has in different settings. Christianity sets different kinds of foregrounds and backgrounds which in this article are attended to during the Feast of the Holy Cross. During this Christian feast, a great variety of themes are brought into play with different kinds of relations to what it is to be a Christian in Damascus. I argue that what I term tonalities of immediacy is a fertile way to understand how contingencies and histories are played upon in concrete situations. The problem of belief, I argue, is not settled by pointing to a particular Christian and Western heritage or to default reactions against imagined certainties; rather the interplay between faith and scepticism may be a productive lens through which to grasp local Christian concerns.
22 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a case study from Malawi is used as a basis for a discussion of the role of aesthetics in bureaucratic practice and some of its implications, including mediating between seemingly incompatible norms, and between local and abstract social realities.
Abstract: Based on ethnographic research carried out in Malawi, this article discusses some bureaucratic procedures that are implemented with enthusiasm, even though they do not produce the effects they are designed for. These procedures seem to be more meaningful as aesthetic expressions rather than being the result of instrumental considerations. They create an image, albeit temporary, of a ‘legible’, well-organised society and a knowledgeable, caring state. That image may not reflect current realities in Malawi, but it points towards a future form of statehood towards which the country is progressing. The case study from Malawi is used as a basis for a discussion of the role of aesthetics in bureaucratic practice and some of its implications, including mediating between seemingly incompatible norms, and between local and abstract social realities.
20 citations
TL;DR: This paper explored how the court's threshold practices form validating witnesses whose embodied deference contributes to the constitution of the courtroom as a space of privileged speech, and suggested that court spectators are not incidental, but are integral to juridical spectacle and the authority of law.
Abstract: While the ethnography of contemporary courtrooms has been dominated by a concern with speech, this article considers how a silent, validating public is constructed within court complexes. Drawing on fieldwork at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (Arusha, Tanzania), I explore how the court’s threshold practices form validating witnesses whose embodied deference contributes to the constitution of the courtroom as a space of privileged speech. I suggest, therefore, that court spectators are not incidental, but are integral to juridical spectacle and the authority of law.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors defend that learning possession means in the first place to learn to identify and react to specific emotional states in accordance with cultural representations and expectations, and that emotional learning would take place through two potential processes during ritual activity.
Abstract: Drawing on first-hand ethnographical data from the Xang"o, an Afro-Brazilian Cult in Recife (Brazil), I defend that learning possession means in the first place to learn to identify and react to specific emotional states in accordance with cultural representations and expectations. This emotional learning would take place through two potential processes during ritual activity. On the one hand a powerful coupling process linking “uncanny” body arousals to mythological imagination captured by the highly evocative content of songs, invocations, objects and substances during ritual activity. Ritual features such as archetypality, rigidity, regularity, redundancy and spatial and temporal delimitation are propitious for eliciting and “boosting” this coupling process. On the other hand, a social referencing process through which emotional and behavioral reactions towards possessed persons act for novices as reliable indicators of how to recognize, interpret and regulate their own emotional states associated with...
TL;DR: In this article, the question of nostalgic consumption in East Germany was reconsidered as embedded not within a national or a regional (post-socialist) politics of time, but rather within a global post-Fordist reconfiguration of the relation between time, consumption, and politics.
Abstract: This article reconsiders the question of nostalgic consumption in East Germany as embedded not within a national or a regional (post-socialist) politics of time, as much literature has done, but rather within a global post-Fordist reconfiguration of the relation between time, consumption, and politics. Examining an underclass East Berlin neighborhood that has come to epitomize ‘pastness’, I show the salience of material prosperity – or its lack – in shaping the senses of time of its inhabitants. Especially for the younger generation, nostalgic commodities mediate the growing abyss between loss and accumulation, futures and pasts, nostalgic longings and unrealistic aspirations. I argue that the nexus of time, politics, and consumption has been transformed with the fading away of what has been called the future perfect (the political temporality of utopian projects) and its metamorphosis into what I term here the past conditional, the temporality of lost futures, irredeemable opportunities, and vanquished p...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore ethnography of municipal elections, promise-making and miracles to show how Christians problematise both friendship and politics on a settler frontier in Brazilian Amazonia.
Abstract: This paper explores ethnography of municipal elections, promise-making and miracles to show how Christians problematise both friendship and politics on a settler frontier in Brazilian Amazonia. Bringing these themes together generates new anthropological perspectives on each, while complementing Derrida's critique of Schmitt's friend–enemy distinction – his definition of the political. Yet the main ethnographic point complicates the argument that both Schmitt and Brazilianist anthropologists critiquing clientelism have made: that Christianity reflects and legitimises the political order. In contrast, I show how the problem of friendship, produced through Christian concerns with the constancy of presence, legitimises and deligitimises politics at once. The overarching message is that politics, friendship (sociality) and Christianity – usually kept analytically separate – are uniquely clarified where they intersect, as they pass through persons, who foreground and background these domains themselves.
TL;DR: The authors traces such learning to early forms of socialisation into gender, focusing on motility and bodily comportment, as central to the way in which the lived body of gender moves between different practical environments.
Abstract: This paper examines forms of affliction that are understood as a kind of possession, all the more afflictive because they are experienced as ‘coming out of nowhere’. It is easier to specify the kind of learning associated with valued forms of possession, which occur in the context of ritual performances that entail informal apprenticeships. The sense in which afflictive possession is ‘learned’ is far more diffuse, and occurs much earlier than the point at which diagnosis occurs. This paper traces such learning to early forms of socialisation into gender, focusing on motility and bodily comportment, as central to the way in which the lived body of gender moves between different practical environments. In an environment that includes spirits and deities, female movement acts as guarantor, not only of social stability, but of cosmological order and disorder.
TL;DR: The authors discusses conversion to Protestantism in the Zapotec communities of the State of Oaxaca in Southern Mexico, focusing on the adverse effects of conversion and scrutinising the choices of individuals who do not convert or who return to their previous faith.
Abstract: This article discusses conversion to Protestantism in the Zapotec communities of the State of Oaxaca in Southern Mexico. Conversion to Protestantism in these predominantly Catholic villages has a rupture effect on converts' relationships with their families as well as the Catholic majority. This transformation can be interpreted as a ‘social cost’, which influences religious choices made by individuals and the sustainability of their new religious affiliations. The cost is generally higher for native villagers than for migrants to the communities. Focusing on the adverse effects of conversion and scrutinising the choices of individuals who do not convert or who return to their previous faith contributes to a more nuanced understanding of religious change. The process is often far more complex and multi-directional at the local level than macro-level trends of rapid Protestant growth suggest.
TL;DR: This article used historical and ethnographic data to analyse the Great Repentance, a violently emotional conversion movement that swept through the Indonesian island of Nias from colonial conquest around 1915, with recurrences until the 1960s.
Abstract: In this article, I use historical and ethnographic data to analyse the Great Repentance, a violently emotional conversion movement that swept through the Indonesian island of Nias from colonial conquest around 1915, with recurrences until the 1960s. Against rationalist and materialist explanations, I argue for a constitutive role for emotion in the conversion process. I show how the techniques and idioms of Protestant missionaries suppressed indigenous meanings and encouraged a native emphasis on ‘the speaking heart’. The existential dilemmas of modern Christians in Nias, their sense of exclusion, can be accounted for by the paradoxical ethical and affective legacy of the repentance movement. The article is a contribution to both the study of emotion in historical perspective and to the analysis of conversion.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors propose that Espiritistas' talents derive from the unique relationships they construct with their muertos (the protective dead), allowing them to receive, discern, and interpret valuable information for others.
Abstract: This article attempts to come to terms with the phenomenology of learning in the popular Cuban spirit mediumship practice of espiritismo. Espiritistas' talents derive from the unique relationships they construct with their muertos (the protective dead), allowing them to receive, discern, and interpret valuable information for others. Learning here does not result from explicit knowledge transmission but from a guided expansion of consciousness, where the neophyte learns to attend to the particulars of the spirit world through his or her imagination and sensation. I associate this process with what Ingold has described as the ‘education of attention’, and use his concept of ‘entanglement’ to propose that learning mediumship be conceptualized as implying the development of a particular kind of person. I have further used Latour's definition of ‘acquiring a body’ as ‘learning to be affected’ to better understand the mutual constitution of the spiritual landscape and the self.
TL;DR: The authors argue that the anthropology of Christianity must encompass believers, skeptics and observers, in that the differences Christianity makes never are simple or singular and argue that this must be paired with a focus on the particular assemblage made in and across contexts The effect of Christianity is therefore best conceived of in the bundling of affects, forms, ideologies and practices.
Abstract: In this introduction, we take our point of departure in the question: what difference does Christianity make? We argue that the anthropology of Christianity must encompass believers, skeptics and observers, in that the differences Christianity makes never are simple or singular We pose the play between foregrounds and backgrounds as a viable way to venture, but argue that this must be paired with a focus on the particular assemblage made in and across contexts The effect of Christianity is therefore best conceived of in the very bundling of affects, forms, ideologies and practices We contend that a focus on Christianity within anthropology should not be conceived as yet another subdisciplinary move, but is a focus that revitalizes the discipline of anthropology writ large The theoretical elaboration on foregrounds and backgrounds we argue is of purchase beyond the focus on Christianity
TL;DR: The authors argue that the sheer ambiguity of what occurs in so-called religious contexts can be seen as constitutive of both subjectivity and religious attachment, and add that if our creation of an "Anthropology of Christianity" is an act of foregrounding a particular religion for analytical purposes, this act must always be viewed as a temporary move, inevitably open to being "backgrounded" by other analytical framings.
Abstract: In my afterword to this special issue, I provide my own theoretical framing of issues relating to foregrounding and backgrounding Christianity, and argue that the sheer ambiguity of what occurs in so-called religious ‘contexts’ can be seen as constitutive of both subjectivity and religious attachment. I add that if our creation of an ‘Anthropology of Christianity’ is an act of foregrounding a particular religion for analytical purposes, this act must always be seen as a temporary move, inevitably open to being ‘backgrounded’ by other analytical framings.
TL;DR: The authors examines the growing gender instability in marriage in Japan as married women navigate through the morally contentious realm of extramarital activities to negotiate a new sense of self, and argues for sexuality as an increasingly embattled terrain for socio-historical manoeuvrings, media enticements, marital strategies, and personal insurgencies in po...
Abstract: Women's sexuality in Japan has persistently been linked to reproduction, while men's sexuality is associated with play, and the patriarchal structure of Japanese society even endorses male infidelity. In recent years, however, there are indications, especially in the popular media in Japan, that many married women are ‘playing like men’ by turning to extramarital activities to re-negotiate the meaning of sexuality and the bounds of marriage. While their behaviour can be interpreted as autonomous acts of affirming themselves as subjects of their own desire, dominant power structures still exist in Japanese society to restrict women's sexuality. This article examines the growing ‘gender instability’ in marriage in Japan as married women navigate through the morally contentious realm of extramarital activities to negotiate a new sense of self, and argues for sexuality as an increasingly embattled terrain for socio-historical manoeuvrings, media enticements, marital strategies, and personal insurgencies in po...
TL;DR: The My God My Land as mentioned in this paper is a well written and accessible book whose main strength lies in its thorough and perceptive ethnography and in the author's nuanced understanding of the complex and multifaceted role of Christianity (or Christianities) in Fijian social, cultural and political of life.
Abstract: to the land, connectedness, family, community and reciprocity, ancestral spirits and not least of reconciliation. Though Christian churches in many cases and to different extents reject and challenge aspects of Fijian culture and tradition, Ryle also shows how a contextualization and local integration of Christianity takes place. These processes are highlighted through the book’s perceptive and fine grained analysis of rites of reconciliation and funerals where relations, both between the living and between the living and the dead are nourished. Chapter 6 offers a particularly intriguing analysis of Catholic Charismatic rituals of healing and reconciliation. Here Ryle convincingly shows how traditional understandings of illness, healing and well being as embedded in social relationships are incorporated into such rituals where emphasis lays on both vertical (human-divine) and horizontal (human– human) connectedness, the latter being created through different practices of tangible bodily relationality (such as prayers for healing during which the participants kneel and touch the altar and each other). In addition the book offers a vivid picture of the complex and intimate intersections of politics, Christianity and tradition in Fiji. Ryle describes how notions and re-definitions of tradition have strongly influenced politics and social life after independence from colonial rule. And she demonstrates how conservative Protestants have used an old-testament theology to promote an exclusivist, Christian political identity and attempt to make Christianity the official religion of the state in an otherwise multiethnic society with a significant non-Christian minority. The final chapter (Chapter 7) of the book discusses the role of the churches in processes of reconciliation after three military coups (in 1987, 2000 and 2006). My God My Land is a well written and accessible book whose main strength lies in its thorough and perceptive ethnography and in the author’s nuanced understanding of the complex and multifaceted role of Christianity (or Christianities) in Fijian social, cultural and political of life. The book will appeal to readers with an interest in Fijian and pacific history and society and more broadly in themes such as Christianity and cultural contextualization and religion and politics. Martin Lindhardt University of Copenhagen – Ethnology # Martin Lindhardt
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors analyse how social subjects from low-income communities in a historically peripheral country like Brazil access and process the economic ideas now prevalent in the contemporary world by examining the rationalizations involved in the adherence to the individualist message of prosperity theology.
Abstract: This article analyses how social subjects from low-income communities in a historically peripheral country like Brazil access and process the economic ideas now prevalent in the contemporary world by examining the rationalizations involved in the adherence to the individualist message of prosperity theology Based on the classical Weberian premise of a relation between religious ethics and economic ethos (Weber, Max 1987 A Etica Protestante e o Espirito do Capitalismo Sao Paulo: Livraria Pioneira Editora), I analyse the commitment of faith made with the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God by members of a network of worshippers formed by around 20 men aged between 18 and 45 years with low levels of schooling, living in favelas of Rio de Janeiro, in order to comprehend how the principles of neoliberal cosmology, adopted as central elements of Brazilian economic policy since the 1990s, have been incorporated by people from the poorest sectors of urban Brazil
TL;DR: Brosius, Christiane as mentioned in this paper, India's Middle Class: New forms of Urban Leisure, Consumption and Prosperity. New Delhi: Routledge. 2010. 404 pp.
Abstract: Brosius, Christiane. 2010. India's Middle Class: New forms of Urban Leisure, Consumption and Prosperity. New Delhi: Routledge. 404 pp. Christiane Brosius's impressive volume is a welcome study of t...
TL;DR: In 2010, South Africa hosted the first World Cup in soccer ever to take place on the African continent as mentioned in this paper, which was the first time soccer has been played on the continent.
Abstract: In 2010, South Africa hosted the first World Cup in soccer ever to take place on the African continent. Twenty years after the fall of Apartheid, South Africa presents a series of fractured and contradictory images to the outside world. It is, on the one hand, an economic powerhouse in sub-Saharan Africa, but on the other hand a society in which socio-economic inequalities have continued to flourish and increase. What can anthropology tell us about contemporary South Africa? As part of an ongoing series in public anthropology, Professor Thomas Hylland Eriksen and Postdoctoral Fellow Sindre Bangstad sat down for a public conversation with Professors John L. and Jean Comaroff in The House of Literature in Oslo, Norway, on 28 September 2010.
TL;DR: McMahan et al. as mentioned in this paper have published a book, "Buddhism in the Modern World", which is a very welcome addition to the burgeoning literature on Buddhism in the modern world.
Abstract: David L. McMahan, ed. 2012. Buddhism in the Modern World. London and New York: Routledge. 329 pp.ISBN: 978-0-415-78015-5 Buddhism in the Modern World is a very welcome addition to the burgeoning li...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors re-examine the relationship among political violence, sovereignty and the state of exception through the lens of the question of the lamas, a power struggle between the early Mongolian socialist state and the Buddhist establishment in the 1920s-1930s.
Abstract: Drawing upon extensive archival research, in this paper I re-examine the relationship among political violence, sovereignty and the state of exception through the lens of ‘the question of the lamas’, a power struggle between the early Mongolian socialist state and the Buddhist establishment in the 1920s–1930s. I use the Mongolian case to argue for a revisioning of the state of exception as ‘technologies of exception’, to better highlight the fluid nature of the exception. These technologies of exception were a range of policies, propaganda and forms of violence that were enacted at various times. It was only with the failure of all prior technologies of exception that mass killing was taken up. Mongolia thus offers a useful case study in the relationship among sovereignty, exception and political violence in contingent states.
TL;DR: Among a number of organisational factors promoting growth of South Indian Pentecostalism, conversion stories and discussions on "worldliness" and "holiness" serve to emphasise a clear commitment and a distinctive PentECostal experience as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Among a number of organisational factors promoting growth of South Indian Pentecostalism, conversion stories and discussions on ‘worldliness’ and ‘holiness’ serve to emphasise a clear commitment and a distinctive Pentecostal experience. Despite Pentecostalism's Protestant rhetoric, the experiences and discussions surrounding golden jewellery offer a critical correction to the modern iconoclastic notion of separation between spirit and matter.1
TL;DR: Davies, J. and Spencer, D. as discussed by the authors, 2010. Emotions in the Field: the Psychology and Anthropology of Fieldwork Experience. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Abstract: Davies, J. and D. Spencer. 2010. Emotions in the Field: the Psychology and Anthropology of Fieldwork Experience. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. xi, 276p. Emotions in the Field is an excel...