Diego Maria Malara

• PhD
• University of Glasgow

Conversations with Tim Ingold offers a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the work of Tim Ingold, one of the leading anthropologists of our time. Presented as a series of interviews conducted by three anthropologists from the University of Glasgow over a period of two years, the book explores Ingold's key contributions to anthropology and...

Religious affiliation is almost universal in Ethiopia, which means that religions amass significant political capital but may also act as potential catalysts for conflict. After five decades of ostensibly secular politics—first under a socialist dictatorship and then driven by the EPRDF’s strict insistence that religion and state be separated; reli...

Based on ethnographic studies conducted in several African countries, this volume analyses the phenomenon of deliverance – which is promoted both in charismatic churches and in Islam as a weapon against witchcraft – in order to clarify the political dimensions of spiritual warfare in contemporary African societies. Deliverance from evil is part and...

https://allegralaboratory.net/the-montanelli-case-sexuality-race-and-colonial-forgetting-in-blm-italy/

Debtera are Ethiopian Orthodox ritual specialists known for their advanced religious education, as well as for engaging in illicit magic. This article traces how their secret magical knowledge and practices emerge from the official Orthodox tradition. Yet, while drawing on this tradition, the debtera’s ritual repertoire also transgresses some of it...

This article discusses the exorcism of Protestant spirits from Ethiopian Orthodox hosts in Addis Ababa. This controversial ritual is animated by injunctions to draw essential distinctions and boundaries between Protestantism and Orthodoxy, at a time of religious liberalisation. The expulsion of Protestant spirits provides an occasion to reaffirm th...

Focusing on the practice of fasting, this article traces the ethi- cal efforts and conundrums of Ethiopian Orthodox Christians who take their religion seriously, but do not necessarily see themselves as disci- plined believers. I argue that the flexibility and lenience of the Orthodox system allow for morally ambivalent disciplinary projects that,...

Questions of discipline are, today, no less ubiquitous than when under Foucault’s renowned scrutiny, but what does ‘discipline’ in diverse religious systems actually entail? In this article, we take ‘lenience’ rather than discipline as a starting point and compare its potential, both structural and ideological, in religious contexts where disciplin...

The classical sociological literature on Amhara hierarchy describes a society based on open relations of domination and an obsession with top-down power. This article asks how these accounts can be reconciled with the strong ethics of love and care that ground daily life in Amhara. We argue that love and care, like power, are understood in broadly...