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The Alimentary Forms of Religious Life: Technologies of the Other, Lenience, and the Ethics of Ethiopian Orthodox Fasting
Abstract
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, in order to preserve their efficacy, must be sustained by an array of intimate relationships with more pious individuals who are fasting for others or on others’ behalf. By examining this relational economy of spiritual care, its temporalities and divisions of labor, I ask whether recent preoc- cupations with ‘technologies of the self’ in the anthropology of religion might have overlooked the relevance of ‘technologies of the other’.
... Ethnographic work on the Amhara (Levine 1965;Kebede 1999;Malara 2017) has emphasised a view of man (sew) as essentially selfish, humanity being raw material that without the moral and collective constraints of religion, kinship duties, laws and punishment will seek self-satisfaction. An important part of resisting these centrifugal forces is through eating and drinking together (Boylston 2018). ...
... Their energetic capacity was thus defined in terms of their relationship with others rather than in terms of containment within the self. This required an opening up to others which, in a context in which bodily 'closure' lies at the heart of Ethiopian Orthodoxy (Hannig 2017;Malara 2017), was understood to bring with it a degree of vulnerability. ...
... The division of pace-making duties was therefore also intended to decrease the likelihood of fluctuations in pace that were seen as unnecessarily costly in energy terms, with the overall aim being to cover the training session without 'losing anything', that is, without using too much energy and, importantly, without using more than other people. According to this division of running labour, one could gain in value only when installed within a collective, which resonates with other aesthetic, religious and social celebrations of togetherness in Ethiopia (Malara 2017). There was therefore a strong moral discourse attached to pace-making responsibilities, and discussions of pace-making and whether or not certain people 'did their duty' often dominated posttraining discussions. ...
This article describes how energy, and the ‘condition’ of the runner, achieved through the successful management of energy, is understood as trans-bodily and social by Ethiopian long-distance runners. The way energy flows between people and the environment means it is deeply implicated in how people understand relational ethics. By describing both morally appropriate training sociality as well as instances of rupture, I argue that rather than seeing competitive pressure as driving atomisation, the notion of shared energy deepens athletes’ reliance on others. By bringing together literature on energy with debates about ethics I argue that in conditions of scarcity energetic concerns become relational issues in ways that are particularly important to theorise in a moment characterised by the pressures of an economy constrained by ecological and energetic limits. The notion of ‘energetic subjectivities’ can help us make sense of these challenges from the perspectives of those caught up in them.
... For him, the difference between prayer (s'elot) and spells (abinet) was that the former 'is the relationship you have with God', while the latter 'is something related to spirits and transient (alafi) things'. Semere justified his markedly transgressive practices, which involved summoning demons, by emphasising that, as an immigrant from the countryside, he was struggling to achieve economic success in the Ethiopian capital, where networks of mutual support are weakening, and individuals compete mercilessly one against another (see Malara 2017). 'In a world of hyenas, you cannot be a sheep', he said, adding that: Nobody thinks about others. ...
... While involved in the business of magic and demon-summoning, Semere continued to observe all the prescribed Orthodox fasts, which he saw as necessary to balance his many iniquities and retain connection to his Orthodox identity (see Malara 2018). When I asked him why he was fasting, he retorted, in irritation: 'Am I not of Christian race/seed'? ...
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 its central proscriptions. Transgression, in this context, does not abolish the boundaries it violates, but reinstates their legitimacy. This dynamic prompts debtera to engage in imaginative ethical reassessments of the unstable relationship between illicit knowledge and official tenets. Through their transgressive performances, debtera enable their clients to secretly address and actualise sinful desires that otherwise remain unacknowledged or are suppressed by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. By examining this ritual management of covert desires, I conclude that the study of debtera’s secrecy illuminates fundamental complexities and contradictions in Ethiopian Orthodox sociality which operate beneath the surface of public moral discourse.
... Salomon commented: 'If half of my family is Protestant and prays for me … If I don't have the protection of the Holy Spirit, their spirit may attack me.' This logic represents both a perversion and inversion of the Orthodox mechanics of intercession-denigrated by Protestants-whereby family members solicit divine blessing on behalf of one another (Malara 2018). In a reversal of Protestant critiques of Orthodox mediation, Protestants are understood to be mediators, too, but of the demonic. ...
... For him, the frictions generated by conversion 'set son against father, mother against son, in a way which is not Ethiopian'. Similarly, Haustein and Østebø note that Protestant's 'strict prohibition of alcohol and dancing tends to divide social activities and family gatherings' (2011: 766), thus affecting some vital reproductive dynamics of the Orthodox social fabric, especially the cycles of religious fasting and feasting regulated by the Orthodox calendar (Boylston 2013;Isaac 1995;Malara 2018). Memher Girma regularly asserted that the widespread tendency of educated youth to question the beliefs of their parents is tantamount not only to 'planting the seed of discord', but to 'allowing spirits to enter a family through doubt', by adopting a sceptical stance that is typically Protestant. ...
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 the centrality of local Orthodoxy to Ethiopian identity, construing Protestantism as a foreign religion at odds with the country’s ancient Orthodox history. However, this ritual project is marked by profound ambiguities, as exorcism’s means, aesthetics and themes are suspiciously similar to those characteristic of Protestantism. By foregrounding ritual ambiguity, I argue that exorcism publically exposes and vividly magnifies the irreparable permeability of the very inter-religious boundaries that it seeks to demarcate. In contrast to classic understandings of ritual as an ordering process, exorcism rituals become hazardous events that balance uncertainly on the edge of the ever-present risk of becoming the other.
... In order to avoid 'individualistic' and 'centrifugal' forces (Boylston 2012: 207), it was important that training was conducted synchronously and visibly, and that runners were not seen to be trying to gain an advantage by running alone. This communitarian logic, and the building of sociality between bodies, has been described as a religious practice in Ethiopia (Boylston 2018;Malara 2018), but it extended very clearly into the sociality of running. ...
GPS watches and digital self‐tracking devices (DSTDs) have been characterized as ‘self‐tracking’ devices, assuming a dyadic relationship between individuals and technologies. Amongst Ethiopian professional runners, such devices have become increasingly sought after, and yet they are embedded in deeper relationships of collaborative work, submission, and authority. They circulate between people, tracking relationships as much as they track selves. I place their use in the context of the discourses and practices of two of the main corporations working with runners in Ethiopia to suggest that the logic of exponential acceleration upon which these corporations rely is contested by Ethiopian runners, who attempt to achieve a synthesis between external scientific knowledge and pre‐existing ideas about energy, risk, and collective work. Whilst DSTDs may offer a tantalizing opportunity to give in to individualistic urges, in fact they crystallize existing tensions in Amhara society between centrifugal desire and duties of care and reciprocity.
One of the foremost intellectuals of his generation, French philosopher of science Michel Serres (1930–2019) broke free from disciplinary dogmas. His reflections on science, culture, technology, art, and religion have proved foundational to scholars across the humanities. The contributors to Porous Becomings bring the inspirational and enigmatic world of Serres to the attention of anthropology. Through ethnographic encounters as diverse as angels and religious conversion in Ethiopia, the percolation of war in Bosnia, and incarcerated bodies crossing the Atlantic, the contributors showcase how Serres’s interrogation of the fundamentals of human existence opens new pathways for anthropological knowledge. Proposing the notion of “porosity” to characterize permeability across boundaries of time, space, literary genre, and academic discipline, they draw on Serres to map the constellations that connect humans, time, technology, and planet Earth. The volume concludes with a conversation between the editors and Vibrant Matter author Jane Bennett.
One of the foremost intellectuals of his generation, French philosopher of science Michel Serres (1930–2019) broke free from disciplinary dogmas. His reflections on science, culture, technology, art, and religion have proved foundational to scholars across the humanities. The contributors to Porous Becomings bring the inspirational and enigmatic world of Serres to the attention of anthropology. Through ethnographic encounters as diverse as angels and religious conversion in Ethiopia, the percolation of war in Bosnia, and incarcerated bodies crossing the Atlantic, the contributors showcase how Serres’s interrogation of the fundamentals of human existence opens new pathways for anthropological knowledge. Proposing the notion of “porosity” to characterize permeability across boundaries of time, space, literary genre, and academic discipline, they draw on Serres to map the constellations that connect humans, time, technology, and planet Earth. The volume concludes with a conversation between the editors and Vibrant Matter author Jane Bennett.
One of the foremost intellectuals of his generation, French philosopher of science Michel Serres (1930–2019) broke free from disciplinary dogmas. His reflections on science, culture, technology, art, and religion have proved foundational to scholars across the humanities. The contributors to Porous Becomings bring the inspirational and enigmatic world of Serres to the attention of anthropology. Through ethnographic encounters as diverse as angels and religious conversion in Ethiopia, the percolation of war in Bosnia, and incarcerated bodies crossing the Atlantic, the contributors showcase how Serres’s interrogation of the fundamentals of human existence opens new pathways for anthropological knowledge. Proposing the notion of “porosity” to characterize permeability across boundaries of time, space, literary genre, and academic discipline, they draw on Serres to map the constellations that connect humans, time, technology, and planet Earth. The volume concludes with a conversation between the editors and Vibrant Matter author Jane Bennett.
One of the foremost intellectuals of his generation, French philosopher of science Michel Serres (1930–2019) broke free from disciplinary dogmas. His reflections on science, culture, technology, art, and religion have proved foundational to scholars across the humanities. The contributors to Porous Becomings bring the inspirational and enigmatic world of Serres to the attention of anthropology. Through ethnographic encounters as diverse as angels and religious conversion in Ethiopia, the percolation of war in Bosnia, and incarcerated bodies crossing the Atlantic, the contributors showcase how Serres’s interrogation of the fundamentals of human existence opens new pathways for anthropological knowledge. Proposing the notion of “porosity” to characterize permeability across boundaries of time, space, literary genre, and academic discipline, they draw on Serres to map the constellations that connect humans, time, technology, and planet Earth. The volume concludes with a conversation between the editors and Vibrant Matter author Jane Bennett.
One of the foremost intellectuals of his generation, French philosopher of science Michel Serres (1930–2019) broke free from disciplinary dogmas. His reflections on science, culture, technology, art, and religion have proved foundational to scholars across the humanities. The contributors to Porous Becomings bring the inspirational and enigmatic world of Serres to the attention of anthropology. Through ethnographic encounters as diverse as angels and religious conversion in Ethiopia, the percolation of war in Bosnia, and incarcerated bodies crossing the Atlantic, the contributors showcase how Serres’s interrogation of the fundamentals of human existence opens new pathways for anthropological knowledge. Proposing the notion of “porosity” to characterize permeability across boundaries of time, space, literary genre, and academic discipline, they draw on Serres to map the constellations that connect humans, time, technology, and planet Earth. The volume concludes with a conversation between the editors and Vibrant Matter author Jane Bennett.
One of the foremost intellectuals of his generation, French philosopher of science Michel Serres (1930–2019) broke free from disciplinary dogmas. His reflections on science, culture, technology, art, and religion have proved foundational to scholars across the humanities. The contributors to Porous Becomings bring the inspirational and enigmatic world of Serres to the attention of anthropology. Through ethnographic encounters as diverse as angels and religious conversion in Ethiopia, the percolation of war in Bosnia, and incarcerated bodies crossing the Atlantic, the contributors showcase how Serres’s interrogation of the fundamentals of human existence opens new pathways for anthropological knowledge. Proposing the notion of “porosity” to characterize permeability across boundaries of time, space, literary genre, and academic discipline, they draw on Serres to map the constellations that connect humans, time, technology, and planet Earth. The volume concludes with a conversation between the editors and Vibrant Matter author Jane Bennett.
One of the foremost intellectuals of his generation, French philosopher of science Michel Serres (1930–2019) broke free from disciplinary dogmas. His reflections on science, culture, technology, art, and religion have proved foundational to scholars across the humanities. The contributors to Porous Becomings bring the inspirational and enigmatic world of Serres to the attention of anthropology. Through ethnographic encounters as diverse as angels and religious conversion in Ethiopia, the percolation of war in Bosnia, and incarcerated bodies crossing the Atlantic, the contributors showcase how Serres’s interrogation of the fundamentals of human existence opens new pathways for anthropological knowledge. Proposing the notion of “porosity” to characterize permeability across boundaries of time, space, literary genre, and academic discipline, they draw on Serres to map the constellations that connect humans, time, technology, and planet Earth. The volume concludes with a conversation between the editors and Vibrant Matter author Jane Bennett.
One of the foremost intellectuals of his generation, French philosopher of science Michel Serres (1930–2019) broke free from disciplinary dogmas. His reflections on science, culture, technology, art, and religion have proved foundational to scholars across the humanities. The contributors to Porous Becomings bring the inspirational and enigmatic world of Serres to the attention of anthropology. Through ethnographic encounters as diverse as angels and religious conversion in Ethiopia, the percolation of war in Bosnia, and incarcerated bodies crossing the Atlantic, the contributors showcase how Serres’s interrogation of the fundamentals of human existence opens new pathways for anthropological knowledge. Proposing the notion of “porosity” to characterize permeability across boundaries of time, space, literary genre, and academic discipline, they draw on Serres to map the constellations that connect humans, time, technology, and planet Earth. The volume concludes with a conversation between the editors and Vibrant Matter author Jane Bennett.
One of the foremost intellectuals of his generation, French philosopher of science Michel Serres (1930–2019) broke free from disciplinary dogmas. His reflections on science, culture, technology, art, and religion have proved foundational to scholars across the humanities. The contributors to Porous Becomings bring the inspirational and enigmatic world of Serres to the attention of anthropology. Through ethnographic encounters as diverse as angels and religious conversion in Ethiopia, the percolation of war in Bosnia, and incarcerated bodies crossing the Atlantic, the contributors showcase how Serres’s interrogation of the fundamentals of human existence opens new pathways for anthropological knowledge. Proposing the notion of “porosity” to characterize permeability across boundaries of time, space, literary genre, and academic discipline, they draw on Serres to map the constellations that connect humans, time, technology, and planet Earth. The volume concludes with a conversation between the editors and Vibrant Matter author Jane Bennett.
One of the foremost intellectuals of his generation, French philosopher of science Michel Serres (1930–2019) broke free from disciplinary dogmas. His reflections on science, culture, technology, art, and religion have proved foundational to scholars across the humanities. The contributors to Porous Becomings bring the inspirational and enigmatic world of Serres to the attention of anthropology. Through ethnographic encounters as diverse as angels and religious conversion in Ethiopia, the percolation of war in Bosnia, and incarcerated bodies crossing the Atlantic, the contributors showcase how Serres’s interrogation of the fundamentals of human existence opens new pathways for anthropological knowledge. Proposing the notion of “porosity” to characterize permeability across boundaries of time, space, literary genre, and academic discipline, they draw on Serres to map the constellations that connect humans, time, technology, and planet Earth. The volume concludes with a conversation between the editors and Vibrant Matter author Jane Bennett.
One of the foremost intellectuals of his generation, French philosopher of science Michel Serres (1930–2019) broke free from disciplinary dogmas. His reflections on science, culture, technology, art, and religion have proved foundational to scholars across the humanities. The contributors to Porous Becomings bring the inspirational and enigmatic world of Serres to the attention of anthropology. Through ethnographic encounters as diverse as angels and religious conversion in Ethiopia, the percolation of war in Bosnia, and incarcerated bodies crossing the Atlantic, the contributors showcase how Serres’s interrogation of the fundamentals of human existence opens new pathways for anthropological knowledge. Proposing the notion of “porosity” to characterize permeability across boundaries of time, space, literary genre, and academic discipline, they draw on Serres to map the constellations that connect humans, time, technology, and planet Earth. The volume concludes with a conversation between the editors and Vibrant Matter author Jane Bennett.
One of the foremost intellectuals of his generation, French philosopher of science Michel Serres (1930–2019) broke free from disciplinary dogmas. His reflections on science, culture, technology, art, and religion have proved foundational to scholars across the humanities. The contributors to Porous Becomings bring the inspirational and enigmatic world of Serres to the attention of anthropology. Through ethnographic encounters as diverse as angels and religious conversion in Ethiopia, the percolation of war in Bosnia, and incarcerated bodies crossing the Atlantic, the contributors showcase how Serres’s interrogation of the fundamentals of human existence opens new pathways for anthropological knowledge. Proposing the notion of “porosity” to characterize permeability across boundaries of time, space, literary genre, and academic discipline, they draw on Serres to map the constellations that connect humans, time, technology, and planet Earth. The volume concludes with a conversation between the editors and Vibrant Matter author Jane Bennett.
One of the foremost intellectuals of his generation, French philosopher of science Michel Serres (1930–2019) broke free from disciplinary dogmas. His reflections on science, culture, technology, art, and religion have proved foundational to scholars across the humanities. The contributors to Porous Becomings bring the inspirational and enigmatic world of Serres to the attention of anthropology. Through ethnographic encounters as diverse as angels and religious conversion in Ethiopia, the percolation of war in Bosnia, and incarcerated bodies crossing the Atlantic, the contributors showcase how Serres’s interrogation of the fundamentals of human existence opens new pathways for anthropological knowledge. Proposing the notion of “porosity” to characterize permeability across boundaries of time, space, literary genre, and academic discipline, they draw on Serres to map the constellations that connect humans, time, technology, and planet Earth. The volume concludes with a conversation between the editors and Vibrant Matter author Jane Bennett.
One of the foremost intellectuals of his generation, French philosopher of science Michel Serres (1930–2019) broke free from disciplinary dogmas. His reflections on science, culture, technology, art, and religion have proved foundational to scholars across the humanities. The contributors to Porous Becomings bring the inspirational and enigmatic world of Serres to the attention of anthropology. Through ethnographic encounters as diverse as angels and religious conversion in Ethiopia, the percolation of war in Bosnia, and incarcerated bodies crossing the Atlantic, the contributors showcase how Serres’s interrogation of the fundamentals of human existence opens new pathways for anthropological knowledge. Proposing the notion of “porosity” to characterize permeability across boundaries of time, space, literary genre, and academic discipline, they draw on Serres to map the constellations that connect humans, time, technology, and planet Earth. The volume concludes with a conversation between the editors and Vibrant Matter author Jane Bennett.
One of the foremost intellectuals of his generation, French philosopher of science Michel Serres (1930–2019) broke free from disciplinary dogmas. His reflections on science, culture, technology, art, and religion have proved foundational to scholars across the humanities. The contributors to Porous Becomings bring the inspirational and enigmatic world of Serres to the attention of anthropology. Through ethnographic encounters as diverse as angels and religious conversion in Ethiopia, the percolation of war in Bosnia, and incarcerated bodies crossing the Atlantic, the contributors showcase how Serres’s interrogation of the fundamentals of human existence opens new pathways for anthropological knowledge. Proposing the notion of “porosity” to characterize permeability across boundaries of time, space, literary genre, and academic discipline, they draw on Serres to map the constellations that connect humans, time, technology, and planet Earth. The volume concludes with a conversation between the editors and Vibrant Matter author Jane Bennett.
The Non-Aligned Movement formed the backbone of Yugoslavia’s foreign policy during the Cold War. As one of the founders of the Non-Aligned Movement, Yugoslavia sought to maintain, as much as possible, a balance within the Movement, which encompassed countries with differing political affiliations and systems, some of which had close relations with the opposing blocs led by the USA or USSR. After the Ethiopian revolution of 1974, which overthrew Emperor Haile Sellasie, the country was led by the Derg, a junta officially known as the Provisional Military Administrative Council, which was in 1977 taken over by a Marxist-ideological current led by Mengistu Haile Meriam, who openly showed sympathy for the Soviet bloc. The Ogaden War between Ethiopia and Somalia in 1977-1978 would prove to be a turning point in Ethiopia’s foreign policy, which moved toward closer political and economic cooperation with the USSR and Cuba. Closer ties to Cuba was a particular concern for Yugoslavia, due to Cuba’s desire to impose itself as the leader of the Non-Aligned Movement and thus turn the balance of political forces within the Movement to its advantage. In this paper we want to explore political and economic relations between Ethiopia and Yugoslavia, including economic relations between the Socialist Republic of Croatia and Ethiopia, from 1975, when a new revolutionary Ethiopian diplomatic delegation came to Yugoslavia to continue Ethiopian-Yugoslavian relations, and ending in 1990, with the disintegration of Yugoslavia and socialist systems in general, when the Yugoslav role in the Non-Aligned Movement slowly eroded. The paper will also present the joint Yugoslav-Ethiopian project Nekemte, which was implemented during the 1980s and aimed at showcasing methods to increase agricultural production in Ethiopia.
This review represents a dialogic experiment developing the comparative analytical category of religious orthodoxies. To explore the category, we profile scholarship on Jewish and Christian orthodoxies, neither of which fits into the Protestant ideas of religion, secularism, and modernity that still implicitly undergird the anthropology of religion. For religious orthodoxies, the heart of religious experience is correctness and continuity, rather than personal transformation and reform. Furthermore, the imbrication of the political with the theological that is definitive of religious orthodoxies holds promise for new understandings of politics and religion's potential for social action. By including different relationships of scale in a range of social formations and institutional dynamics, religious orthodoxies provide insight into the mutually constitutive relationship between practice and belief; the taken-for-grantedness of material mediation of presence in orthodox traditions; the ethical dimension of practice; and the entanglements of orthodoxies, heterodoxies, and heresies.
Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Anthropology Volume 51 is October 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
This article explains the recent emergence of Orthodox Christianity in a majoritarian Evangelical Protestant community in southern Ethiopia. Examining conversion motives and forms of religious engagement, I show that Orthodoxy is attractive to erstwhile followers of traditional practice because it affords them the solution to a value conflict. Joining an institutionalized ‘religion’ associated with national elites, converts attain the respectability formerly denied them by Evangelicals. And since Orthodoxy is less puritan than local Evangelicalism, conversion does not come at the expense of conviviality. An ethnographic discussion of this process of value harmonization provides the basis for a conceptual contribution to anthropological value theory, while also offering new insights for the debate about different modalities of Christian change. Convivial mais respectable : le christianisme orthodoxe comme solution aux conflits de valeurs dans le sud de l’Éthiopie Résumé Le présent article explique la récente émergence du christianisme orthodoxe dans une communauté à majorité protestante évangélique du sud de l’Éthiopie. En examinant les motifs de conversion et les formes d'engagement religieux, l'auteur montre que l'orthodoxie attire les anciens tenants des pratiques traditionnelles parce qu'elle leur offre la solution à un conflit de valeurs. En adhérant à une « religion » institutionnalisée associée aux élites nationales, les convertis gagnent la respectabilité qui leur était refusée jusque‐là par les évangéliques. En outre, parce que l'orthodoxie est moins puritaine que l’évangélisme local, la conversion ne se fait pas au prix de la convivialité. Une discussion ethnographique de ce processus d'harmonisation des valeurs constitue la base d'une contribution conceptuelle à la théorie anthropologique des valeurs, tout en jetant un nouvel éclairage sur le débat relatif aux différentes modalités de changement du christianisme.
Practising Orthodox Christians in the central Serbian town of Kraljevo ‘work on’ their salvation by striving to live a ‘liturgical life’ structured around attending the Divine Liturgy, taking Divine Communion regularly, and fasting. However, in these committed churchgoing circles there is little explicit eschatological discussion about the Second Coming. The paper argues that the intensity of fasting practices in the liturgical everyday not only produce more proximate expectations, but also provide potential glimpses of the Divine now, thus removing the emphasis on a far-sighted eschatological vision. With a concerted focus on working on oneself in the present, the liturgical day-to-day does not need an abstract, sequential future to imbue it with meaning. But, just as such a lifestyle is a path to salvation, so too it produces social differentiation: churchgoing Orthodox find themselves out of kilter with contemporary Serbian society.
The Rastafari movement stands as one of the most instantly recognizable and socially influential spiritual groups of the last century. Having successfully crossed into the realm of popular culture with the worldwide popularity of reggae music, the movement has been able to achieve a level of recognition from the global public that other contemporary religious groups have not. However, knowledge of the groups’ practices and beliefs beyond reggae, the veneration of ganja (cannabis) and recognition of the divinity of His Majesty Haile Selassie remains limited. This is very much the case amongst Rastafari dietary practices, something central to the daily observance of all Rastafari, and yet a facet underexplored in academic circles. As such, this study aims to draw attention to an integral component of Rastafari spirituality through interviews conducted in Jamaica and the UK, whilst also formulating and exploring an innovative Rastafari hermeneutical approach.
en In 2018, social anthropology finds itself increasingly concerned with its technical, legal and political conditions of possibility. The long‐term effects of austerity, financialisation and the technological transformation of media on teaching, research and publishing have led to intense struggles over the labour and property regimes underpinning the discipline. In responding to these challenges, anthropologists seem to be re‐conceptualising their own personhood and labour through the diverse conceptualisations of their interlocutors. However, it is also important to remember what makes social anthropology and its unique professional challenges but a small facet of a larger human condition. By way of conclusion, I offer kinship (the public's constitutive other) as one potential means of grappling with the limitations of social anthropology's own publicity.
L'anthropologie sociale européenne en 2018: un public de plus en plus récursif
fr En 2018, l'anthropologie sociale se trouve de plus en plus concernée par les conditions techniques, juridiques et politiques de son existence. Les effets à long terme de l'austérité, de la financiarisation et de la transformation technologique des médias sur l'enseignement, la recherche et l’édition conduisent à d'intenses luttes en ce qui concerne les régimes de travail et de propriété sur lesquels se base la discipline. En réponse à ces défis, les anthropologues semblent re‐conceptualiser leur statut d'individu et leur travail à travers des conceptualisations diverses de leurs interlocuteurs. Néanmoins, il est également important de garder à l'esprit ce que fait de l'anthropologie sociale et des défis professionnels uniques auxquels elle se confronte simplement un aspect restreint de la condition humaine globale. En guise de conclusion, l'article propose que la parenté (l'Autre constitutif du public) représente un moyen potentiel d'interroger les limites de la publicité dont bénéficie l'anthropologie sociale.
This chapter analyses the conspicuous not-praying of a young man in Aceh, Indonesia, a place where normative Islam has recently moved to the very forefront of the public domain. Acknowledgment of his own religious negligence, I show, played a central role in his understanding of personal religiosity, his intention of becoming a better Muslim, and his transformation from a relatively unbound youth to an adult with increasing social and individual responsibilities. I use this case to demonstrate the significance of a more broadly shared religious ethics in Aceh, in which future expectations, and the moral values of sincerity and intention, are valued over and above obvious shortcomings in outward behaviour. The basic sense that things might change, I argue, constitutes an important creative and motivating force within Acehnese social and religious life. It calls attention, moreover, to a generally under-recognized flexibility toward ethical formation in contexts that have been strongly affected by the global Islamic revival.
This article cautions against an ‘earnest turn’ within the anthropology of religion, pointing up the tendency for anthropologists of religion to over-emphasize the role of discipline in the construction of the religious subjecthood over mechanisms of leniency and compromise. Taking the Catholic Church as an example, I show how discipline and lenience have been co-constitutive of Christian subjectivities, as different movements in a gigantic choreography which have spanned and evolved over several centuries. By looking at certain technologies of lenience that have emerged over the course of Catholic history, I trace an alternative genealogy of ‘the Christian self’; one in which institutional growth, power, and survival depended not only upon the formation of disciplined bodies and interior dispositions but also upon a carefully managed division of labour between clergy and laity, as well as upon a battery of legal commutations and practical avoidances aimed at minimizing the effort and pain of the ascetic approach. Taking the concept of ‘lapsedness’ as cue, I ask to what extent the ‘lapsed Catholic’, rather than indexing an ever-increasing tendency towards secularism, might already be contained and accounted for within Catholicism as a living, evolving form.
The Stranger at the Feast is a pathbreaking ethnographic study of one of the world's oldest and least-understood religious traditions. Based on long-term ethnographic research on the Zege peninsula in northern Ethiopia, the author tells the story of how people have understood large-scale religious change by following local transformations in hospitality, ritual prohibition, and feeding practices. Ethiopia has undergone radical upheaval in the transition from the imperial era of Haile Selassie to the modern secular state, but the secularization of the state has been met with the widespread revival of popular religious practice. For Orthodox Christians in Zege, everything that matters about religion comes back to how one eats and fasts with others. Boylston shows how practices of feeding and avoidance have remained central even as their meaning and purpose has dramatically changed: from a means of marking class distinctions within Orthodox society, to a marker of the difference between Orthodox Christians and other religions within the contemporary Ethiopian state.
Since the early 1970s, the small town of Mayapur in West Bengal has been home to a multinational Gaudiya Vaishnava community of International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) devotees, popularly known as the Hare Krishnas. Although the land of Mayapur is understood to be sacred and therefore conducive to spiritual life, devotees often struggle with the practices and prohibitions that are deemed indispensable for their salvation. They are also, however, both prone to and adept at articulating their inability to live up to the ideals of Krishna consciousness, so much so that narrating failure itself becomes a privileged mode of moral self-cultivation. Devotees inhabit the moral system not simply by conforming to a set of Vaishnava ideals but by articulating their failure to do so consistently within Vaishnava moral narratives that account for the aperture between precept and practice. In other words, they inhabit the moral system by failing well. This article contributes to recent debates in the ethical turn that center on the twin problems of identifying and locating ethics. I suggest that beyond a focus on virtue, the anthropology of ethics must also account for how people relate to vices, and how moral systems accommodate the problem of moral failure.
en Understood in terms of action and efficacy, the regnant notion of agency in anthropology is juxtaposed with an ethnographic category of failure. Agency is problematized and refined through the fieldwork‐grounded analysis of a faltering reform of a Sufi order in Macedonia, where failure was perceived and racially marked as the intrinsic incapacity of ‘Gypsies’ to commit to ritual action and overcome their propensity towards vice, thus achieving a desired self‐transformation into virtuous beings.
Un catalogue de vices : sentiment d'échec et incapacité d'agir parmi les Roms musulmans de Macédoine
fr Résumé
Abordée sous l'angle de l'action et de l'efficacité, la notion d'agencéité qui prédomine en anthropologie se juxtapose à une catégorie ethnographique de l'échec. L'agencéité est ici problématisée et affinée grâce à une analyse fondée sur un travail de terrain concernant une réforme vacillante d'un ordre soufi en Macédoine, où l'échec a été perçu et marqué racialement comme l'incapacité intrinsèque des « gitans » à s'engager dans une action rituelle et à vaincre leur propension au vice pour atteindre la transformation en êtres vertueux à laquelle ils aspiraient.
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 asymmetrical terms rather than as egalitarian forms of relationship. As such, they play into wider discourses of hierarchy, but also serve to blur the distinction between legitimate authority and illegitimate power.
Popular representations of Pakistan's North-West Frontier have long featured simplistic images of tribal blood feuds, fanatical religion, and the seclusion of women. The rise to power of the radical Taliban regime in neighboring Afghanistan enhanced the region's reputation as a place of anti-Western militancy. Immersed in the lives of the Frontier's villagers for more than ten years, Magnus Marsden's evocative study of the Chitral region challenges all these stereotypes. His exploration contributes much to understanding religion and politics within and beyond the Muslim societies of southern Asia.
In this paper, I explore the way in which examples are used in sermons among the pious followers of Our Lady of Soufanieh in Damascus, Syria. In the sermons, a particular logic of seriation functions to present specific models and exemplars as prisms of lives to be imitated. The framing of these lives takes place through entextualizations, whereby the life of some is made into texts that others are told to emulate. The process of making life into text and text into life is explored in the production of examples at the weekly Saturday sermons in Soufanieh. While directly related to life as lived, such sermons also stand for a broader class of life as forma vitae, that is, lives to be followed. I thus explore the example as exemplum, a particular moral story used for edification and didactic purposes, one which situates the listener at the centre of the story by integrating the miraculous happenings in Soufanieh with the response of the individual. The sermons thus serve to examine exemplification and the modelling of sainthood in Damascus in the years preceding the current civil war.
Starting from the insights of van Gennep in his work on taboo in Madagascar and using ethnographic material collected among Malagasy speakers in Mayotte, this article attempts to approach te subject of taboo from a practice perspective. It views the observance of taboo as a kind of performative act with moral consequences, and argues for the significance of taboo in the constitution of personhood and society and hence of the relationships between them. It argues further that embodiment forms a primary means of legitimating various claims and disclaimers and that the observance of taboos forms a means of naturalizing cultural rules.
Whereas early liberal thinkers developed the concept of the ethically accountable continuous forensic modern European person in contrast to what they saw as the discontinuous and hence unaccountable mimetic person, I argue that forensic and mimetic are better understood both as ideologies of personhood and as dimensions of all persons rather than as fully distinctive kinds of persons. I present an account of persons as accountable for their acts but show that this is not limited to the maximally continuous and autonomous person of liberal ideology. I review other forms of personhood encountered cross-culturally and suggest that the mimetic dimension offsets some of the problems inherent in an exclusively forensic model.
In this article, I focus on the practice of listening to tape-recorded sermons among contemporary Muslims in Egypt as an exercise of ethical self-discipline. I analyze this practice in its relation to the formation of a sensorium: the visceral capacities enabling of the particular form of Muslim piety to which those who undertake the practice aspired. in focusing on both the homiletic techniques of preachers and the traditions of ethical audition that inform the contemporary practice of sermon listening, I explore how sermon listeners reconstruct their own knowledge, emotions, and sensibilities in accord with models of Islamic moral personhood. Normative models of moral personhood grounded in Islamic textual and practical traditions provide a point of reference for the task of ethical self-improvement, [embodiment, senses, disciplinary practice, reception, media, sermons, Islam]
Abstract In this special issue, we examine the problem of empathy in anthropological theorizing and practice. Noting the relative lack of explicit interest in or systematic exploration of empathy in anthropology, we explore some of the issues related to defining, recognizing, and enacting empathic-like processes in cultural context. We also highlight similarities and differences in the way contributors examine empathy, and based on this comparative perspective, we raise a number of questions for further research and discussion. We conclude by noting some of the issues not addressed by this small collection of articles and by suggesting why anthropologists in particular have so much to contribute to the study of empathy. [empathy, intentionality, theory of mind, intersubjectivity]
So much has been written in recent years on Muslims who consciously and consistently aim to be pious, moral, and disciplined that the vast majority of Muslims who – like most of humankind – are sometimes but not always pious, at times immoral, and often undisciplined have remained in the shadow of an image of Islam as a perfectionist project of self-discipline. Taking the month of Ramadan, as a time of exceptional piety, as a starting-point, this paper tries to account for the different views and experiences that young people of Muslim faith in a northern Egyptian village articulate, the models of action and subjectivity they have access to, and the contradictory outcomes that the Islamic revivalist ideal of perfection has for some of them.
Il a tellement été question, ces dernières années, de musulmans consciemment et constamment soucieux d’être pieux, moraux et disciplinés que la grande majorité des musulmans, qui sont parfois pieux mais pas toujours, parfois immoraux et souvent indisciplinés, comme le reste de l’humanité, est restée dans l’ombre de cette image de l’islam comme projet d’autodiscipline perfectionniste. En prenant pour point de départ le Ramadan, période de piété particulière, l’auteur tente de rendre compte de différents points de vue exprimés par les jeunes musulmans d’un village du Nord de l’Égypte, des modèle d’action et de subjectivité qui leur sont ouverts et des résultats contradictoires que donne pour certains d’entre eux l’idéal de perfection portée par l’idée d’un renouveau islamique.
Toward an of the Act
- Lambek
andDaanBeekers Introduction The Productive Potential of Moral Failure in Lived InBeekersandKloos
- Kloos
Tom The of the Approaching the Sacred in an Ethiopian Orthodox Christian Community diss School of
- Boylston
- Bloch
Faith and the Intersubjectivity of Care in Botswana
- Klaits
- Boylston