Ethnography of Religion
1,274 Followers
Recent papers in Ethnography of Religion
Book Review Published in CHAOS 59
Tim Jensen Rothstein, Mikael Rothstein & Jørgen Podemann Sørensen (Red.)
Gyldendals Religionshistorie – Ritualer, Mytologi, Inkonografi
Gyldendal, 2012. 763 s.
Tim Jensen Rothstein, Mikael Rothstein & Jørgen Podemann Sørensen (Red.)
Gyldendals Religionshistorie – Ritualer, Mytologi, Inkonografi
Gyldendal, 2012. 763 s.
Geist- oder Wunderheiler, schamanische, spirituelle oder mediale Heiler: Viele von ihnen verstehen sich als vermittelndes Medium, um mit zumeist unsichtbaren Kräften, Strömen oder Wesen auf Hilfe suchende Klienten einzuwirken. Ehler Voss... more
This article is a case study of a lay Buddhist community that employs a business model called “living hall” (Shenghuo guan 生活馆) to facilitate the practice of Tibetan Buddhism among its members. The living hall model is explored in the... more
Anthropology of Religion: The Basics is an accessible and engaging introductory text organized around key issues that all anthropologists of religion face. This book uses a wide range of historical and ethnographic examples to address not... more
Focusing on religious creativity in an ethnography of the predominantly Flemish Wiccan community called Greencraft, I seek to problemize the notions of neo-colonialism and neo-nationalism. The group represents a particularly interesting... more
When a new baby arrives among the Beng people of West Africa, they see it not as being born, but as being reincarnated after a rich life in a previous world. Far from being a tabula rasa, a Beng infant is thought to begin its life filled... more
The Tablighi Jama'at (TJ) is widely regarded as the largest movement of grassroots Islamic revival in the world yet remains significantly under-researched. This thesis examines the British branch of the movement based on sustained... more
This is an ethnography of people on the island of Buton, Southeast Celebes (Indonesia).
One prominent characteristic of historic Pentecostal praxis is lively, ecstatic music. After tracing the roots of Pentecostal music and its developments up to the present, this study investigates the production and experience of... more
This is a draft of an article that will appear with some further revisions in American Ethnologist. Please seek permission before citing or distributing this draft, as there may be a more updated version to share.
This chapter argues that the value of ethnography for interreligious studies lies in its its ability to complement and clarify the critiques of modernity already present within this burgeoning field. Ethnography and interreligious studies... more
Amid growing interest in mindfulness studies focusing on Buddhist and Buddhism-derived practices, this article argues for a comparative and ethnographic approach to analogous practices in different religious traditions and to their... more
Cottee’s book, in essence, is a moving and empirically rich collection of tales of human suffering. Beyond the intergenerational incomprehension hinted at by Farhad above, one also senses the basic tension of the autonomous... more
Badania etnologiczne nad kultem św. Wojciecha w polskiej kulturze ludowej w województwie warmińsko-mazurskim koncentrowały się w rejonie Pogórza Dzierzgońsko-Rychlickiego (Pomezania), a także na Warmii i Mazurach. Podobnie jak w całej... more
This is a vivid and illuminating ethnographic account of an emerging force in contemporary Gambian social and religious life: the Tablīghī Jamā’at (TJ). Through the prism of five detailed biographical narratives, Janson evokes the... more
This article examines the question of the researcher's bodily experience in the production of ethnographic knowledge, discussing fieldwork in the Brazilian Spiritualists Christian Order Vale do Amanhecer (Valley of the Dawn). Focussing on... more
What are the social roles and discursive functions of conspiracy theories? The interpretative analysis is based on long term anthropological fieldwork in a Hungarian New Age group, a Neo-Pagan (neo-shamanistic) movement, and a Christian... more
En este trabajo propongo algunas ideas para reflexionar sobre el papel de la etnografía en los estudios antropológicos de la religión. Para ello se revisará la pertinencia de conceptos como experiencia, existencia, estructura, e... more
Extant academic literature on the Tablighī Jamā‘at provides the rudiments of a schema for understanding its modalities of expansion in new socio-cultural milieus. This paper first explicates these modalities in more detail and applies... more
Researching issues ‘close to home’ is an increasingly prominent aspect of contemporary fieldwork and the complexity of (post)modern identities complicate traditional binaries of insider / outsider. The landscape of research with and about... more
Immer mehr Menschen wenden sich in prekären Lebenslagen Konzepten jenseits klassischer Therapieangebote zu. Auf welche Weise und mit welchen Zielen werden diese alternativen Sinnentwürfe genutzt? Inwiefern helfen sie, den Alltag neu zu... more
In this public lecture delivered at Cardiff University’s Centre for the Study of Islam in the UK, Riyaz Timol presents the findings of his doctoral research on the Tablighi Jama’at (TJ) in modern Britain. Though widely regarded as the... more
The ‘Emerging Church’ is an American-born movement that dates to the late 1990s. It is fundamentally a movement of cultural critique in which the primary interlocutor is the dominant tradition in the United States, conservative... more
In post-World War II America, U.S. Evangelicalism became a religion deeply entrenched with suburbanization and commercial sprawl. This article examines the growing phenomenon of middle-class white Evangelicals who are returning to the... more
This Introduction presents the main arguments debated in this Special Issue upon the construction of ethnographic knowledge in researching among participants of religious and spiritual groups through the lenses of bodily experience,... more
Contemporary Anthropology of Religion is proudly sponsored by the Society for the Anthropology of Religion,. and is co-edited by Don Seeman and Tulasi Srinivas. We seek proposals for ethnographic monographs and edited volumes that... more
In this article, I examine how urban missional evangelicals in the United States cultivate a sense of place. Being “missional” refers to the desire to be a missionary in one's own society, an idea that has spread widely through the... more
A recent theoretical move among ethnographers of religion challenges the social scientific tendency to reduce people’s beliefs and practices to one or another religious tradition, to a religious affiliation assumed to operate as a master... more
This book review was published in Bulletin 129 of the British Association for the Study of Religion. See also the link: https://issuu.com/davidrobertson59/docs/bulletin_129-min
This session examines the processes through which academic knowledge production takes place about Muslim communities in Britain using, as a case study, the speaker's recently completed PhD on the British branch of the transnational... more
Despite its rituals of rupture and discourse of discontinuity, Pentecostalism does not always succeed in dislodging church participants from their pre-existing religious worlds. This paper connects the eclectic, everyday engagements of... more
Recent scholarship on Pentecostalism in the global South gives the impression of a singular trajectory of inexorable growth. In this chapter, I offer a counternarrative, not in denial of the widely reported statistical evidence but in... more
Published in: Robert W. Jensen and Eugene Korn editors, Swords into Plowshares: Reflections on Religion and Violence (Essays from the Institute for Theological Inquiry). Center for Jewish and Christian Understanding and Cooperation... more
INDIVIDUALISM AND THE NEW CONVERSION ITINERARIES: NEW AGE AND RELIGIOUS RELEARNING
The State of Israel was consolidated in the early twentieth century as the homeland of the Jewish people. While nominally secular, it also acknowledged in law and practice the complex , possibly inextricable relationship between ethnic,... more
일반적으로 선교는 신자가 (기독교)신의 명령을 받아 수행하는 것으로 이해된다. 그리고 기독교인에게 있어서 선교는 “하나님 나라”와 같은 대의를 이루기 위한 수단이나 때로는 목적 그 자체로 - 흔히 교회론에서 교회의 사명이나 존재의의와 같은 방식으로 - 여겨져 왔다. 하나님의 백성들의 모임인 교회는 지상명령(과 문화명령)이나 선교적 사명을 자신의 존재 이유(혹은 목적)로 믿어왔다. 그러나 어떤 대의든지 그것의 옳고 그름이나... more