Bersih Desa: Larung Sungai Jagir Surabaya
Takes place at the time of rice harvesting, fish from river. Houses and gardens are cleaned, fences white-washed, village roads and path repaired. Once enacted to remove evil…
Tag: Religion
Will “Faith Not Fear” Spread the Coronavirus?
U.S. President Donald Trump spoke at an evangelical megachurch in south Miami in January 2020. Lynn Sladky/AP Photo As Easter fast approaches, epidemiologists and observers worry that the…
Wohin steuert die grösste Demokratie der Welt? Indiens politische Zukunft droht düster zu werden.
Millionen von Menschen protestieren in Indien gegen ein neues Staatsbürgerschaftsgesetz, das Muslime explizit ausschliesst. Seit Premierminister Modis Machtantritt wurde die muslimische Bevölkerung de…
Isabel Laack on her book, Aztec Religion and Art of Writing
https://brill.com/view/title/54201 Interview by Patawee Promsen Patawee Promsen: Can you share more about how you have come to be interested in this research topic, especially Nahua pictorial writing…
India’s Third Gender Rises Again
Laxmi Narayan Tripathi, high priestess of a convent of hijras, takes selfies with admirers at India’s 2019 Kumbh Mela religious festival. Ina Goel Laxmi Narayan Tripathi sat on…
Special Issue: “Religious Dynamics in Post-Revolutionary Egypt”
The social science journal Social Compass released a special issue in French and English on “Religious dynamics in post-revolutionary Egypt” (or “Dynamiques religieuses dans l’Égypte…
The Liminality of Grief in Trauma
As time continues to press forward after the April 30 shooting at UNCC, I have continued to reflect, think about my experience, and discuss the experiences with others…
Jon Bialecki on his book, A Diagram for Fire
https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520294219/a-diagram-for-fire Interview by Anna Eisenstein Anna Eisenstein: Your book identifies the miracle as the defining feature of American Charismatic Evangeli…
How Hearts Align in a Muslim Ritual
Devotees gather for the Sufi ritual of dhikr in downtown Istanbul. Dimitris Xygalatas In downtown Istanbul, Turks in religious garb filter into a large, multistory building. Behind the…
Religion and politics in the US: How the Christian Right moves away from Jesus
Along with an anthropology degree, I also completed a degree in philosophy with a focus on philosophy of religion. My primary interests in that are theodicies (excuses for…
Islam, Humanitarianism and everyday religion #MUHUM
In this intervention I argue that charitable or humanitarian practices among contemporary Muslims— and everyday religiosity more generally—are constituted and experienced not only through differences …
Rethinking difference: Muslim and Christian lives in comparative perspective
Image credit: David Evers, Flickr, Creative Commons. By Daan Beekers, Hansjörg Dilger and Daniel Nilsson DeHanas. In recent decades, the anthropology of religion has produced detailed and d…
Book: Ritualisierung – Mediatisierung – Performance
Luger, M., Graf, F., & Budka, P. (Eds.). (2019). Ritualisierung – Mediatisierung – Performance. (Ritualization – Mediatization – Performance). Göttingen: V&R Unipress/…
Teaching Evolution in the South: Framing Evolutionary Theory for Religious Students
I am a biocultural anthropologist and teach at a university in the southern United States of America. This means that many of my students are religious and haven’t…
Angie Heo on her new book, The Political Lives of Saints
https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520297982/the-political-lives-of-saints Interview by Alice Yeh Alice Yeh: Talk of persecution and extinction often accompanies media coverage of Christians in the …
Fluid Masculinity: The case of Krishna
As Rama becomes more and more the icon of “virile Hinduism” and the symbol of a new kind of hegemonic, patriarchal, masculinity, so Krishna is held up as…
Lecture: Ritual & Religion in Social and Cultural Anthropology
Together with Martin Luger, I am organizing a lecture on ritual and religion in social and cultural anthropology at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology of the…
Gods, AIs, and Mormon Transhumanism
I’d like to start this post by juxtaposing two scenes. The first one is set about two years ago, and occurred on the third floor of the Provo,…
Michaela Schäuble: Ecstasy: A review of two recent exhibitions on consciousness-expanding experience
In his classic Ecstatic Religion: A Study of Shamanism and Spirit Possession, I. M. Lewis (1971) contends that ritual, belief, and spiritual experience are the three cornerstones of…
How Do We Know Which Historical Accounts Are True?
It all started with a stray goat. On an otherwise nondescript day in the spring of 1947, a young Bedouin boy searched for a goat that had strayed…
Mitoni Rite
Javanese people have a tradition to celebrate seven months of pregnancy. Procot, iwel-iwel, rujak buah, bubur merah, tumpeng and nasi golong. Habits that have been preserved for a…
Mitoni Rite
Javanese people have a tradition to celebrate seven months of pregnancy. Procot, iwel-iwel, rujak buah, bubur merah, tumpeng and nasi golong. Habits that have been preserved for a…
Reclaiming “Allahu Akbar” from Semantic Pejoration
Allāhu akbar, the Arabic phrase meaning “God is the greatest,” has gained connotations in US public discourse that differ vastly from its meaning among Muslims. Understanding this process…
Islamisches Gemeindeleben in Berlin
Studie zur Vielfalt islamischen Lebens Autorinnen: Prof. Dr. Riem Spielhaus und Nina Mühe Die Studie gibt einen Überblick über islamisches Gemeindeleben in Berlin. Sie untersucht die religiöse Ausr…