How far is the ethnographic study of 'cosmologies' relevant to contemporary anthropology, and how might it illuminate understandings of the contemporary world? In this article we argue for a renewed anthropological interest in matters cosmological by seeking to disentangle the study of cosmology from the concomitants with which it was associated in earlier periods of anthropological research. In particular, we argue that an orientation toward cosmology continues to be of prime importance to the discipline insofar as it can be freed from its associations with holism and exoticism. The shift from 'high modernity' (in which orientations toward cosmos are variously constrained and circumscribed) to the flattening effects of the 'fluid' modernity of neoliberalism, we argue, has tended to thrust concerns with cosmic orders and dynamics back onto the forefront of people's lives. We end the article with a series of programmatic observations of how anthropologists might respond to these shifts, both ethnographically and analytically.
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Contemporary Cosmologies, Critical Reimaginings
Allen Abramson and Martin Holbraad
Occupied Territory at the Interstices of the Sacred
Between Capital and Community
Paul-François Tremlett
In the autumn of 2011 and the spring of 2012, the Occupy London protests, informed by the ideal of a moral, territorially defined community, caught the imagination of British and global publics. For a short while, this moral imaginary was mobilized to contest some of the most glaring contradictions of the neo-liberal city. I argue that the Occupy protests in London registered a sense of public outrage at the violation of certain 'sacred' norms associated with what it means to live with others. More concretely, I contend that Occupy London was an experiment initiated to open out questions of community, morality, and politics and to consider how these notions might be put to work. These questions were not merely articulated intellectually among expert interlocutors. They were lived out through the spatially and temporally embodied occupation of urban space.
The Politics of Faith and the Limits of Scientific Reason
Tracking the Anthropology of Human Rights and Religion
Kamari Maxine Clarke
This article explores the reality of translating or vernacularizing practices in relation to the politics of religion and the realities of faith. Taking violence as endemic to the processes of vernacularization and translation, the article articulates an analytic theory of religious faith—the way it is violated, often in the interest of making it legible within neo-liberal universalizing trends. Thinking about these realities involves understanding translations both as productive of cultural change and as manifestations of struggles over power. Many of these struggles are in the interstices among particular principles of individualism, secularism, legal rationality, and evidence. This article seeks to review the assumptions that emerge with these concepts and show their limits.
Book Reviews
Mariske Westendorp, Bruno Reinhardt, Reinaldo L. Román, Jon Bialecki, Alexander Agadjanian, Karen Lauterbach, Juan Javier Rivera Andía, Kate Yanina DeConinck, Jack Hunter, Ioannis Kyriakakis, Magdalena Crăciun, Roger Canals, Cristina Rocha, Khyati Tripathi, Dafne Accoroni, and George Wu Bayuga
against two popular strands of thought with regard to African charismatic Christianity: first, “breaking with the past” (p. 17), with regard to charismatic Christianity's link to modernity; and, second, charismatic Christianity as a response to neo-liberal
Book Reviews
Ayse Serap Avanoglu, Diana Riboli, Juan Javier Rivera Andía, Annalisa Butticci, Iain R. Edgar, Matan Shapiro, Brooke Schedneck, Mark Sedgwick, Suzane de Alencar Vieira, Nell Haynes, Sara Farhan, Fabián Bravo Vega, Marie Meudec, Nuno Domingos, Heidi Härkönen, Sergio González Varela, and Nathanael Homewood
’s dictatorship, conflict with the Chilean state, and spiritual warfare against the transnational logging companies and the spirits of neo-liberalism. In writing Francisca’s bible, Bacigalupo also wrote what is probably the best and most fair book on Mapuche
Kosher Biotech
Between Religion, Regulation, and Globalization
Johan Fischer
exposes these producers to experience-based penalties that are reflected in lower product quality ratings. A study by Campbell et al. (2011) demonstrates that although neo-liberalism has opened up new spaces for audit activity, older political and social
Money, Religion, and Symbolic Exchange in Winter Sleep
Bülent Diken
found a victim and you’re making the most of it. Stop harassing the poor man.” In a country polarized by Islamic governance, experimenting with varieties of Islamic neo-liberalism and neo-liberal Islamism, Hamdi is too easy a target for articulating a
Eschatology, Ethics, and Ēthnos
Ressentiment and Christian Nationalism in the Anthropology of Christianity
Jon Bialecki
comparatively is difficult. Rather, it is better to think of a case and try to identify one factor that might be common to many other cases, even if it is not determinative. The careful ethnographic work here shows that the historical details matter: neo-liberalism
Religion and Iconoclasm
Finbarr Barry Flood and Jaś Elsner
religious is by no means at odds with the promotion of commerce and consumerism. On the contrary, the past decades have seen a consistent association between religious and social conservatism and economic neo-liberalism. If the Islamic State endures for any
Around Abby Day’s Believing in Belonging
Belief and Social Identity in the Modern World
Christopher R. Cotter, Grace Davie, James A. Beckford, Saliha Chattoo, Mia Lövheim, Manuel A. Vásquez, and Abby Day
erode the power of traditional authorities to enforce norms and control expressions of gender. Nevertheless, neo-liberal political discourses and the rules of the capitalist market, as well as affordances of various media genres, introduce new