This special issue of the Cambridge Journal of Anthropology entitled ‘Always Something Extra’: Ethnographies of Grace is guest edited by Michael Edwards and Méadhbh McIvor.
At the time of writing, the anthropology of religion is enjoying a renaissance of attention and critical thinking. This is apparent in the wealth of scholarship on questions of ‘the good’ and the ethical, some of which has sought to build bridges with more politically inclined ethnography. The editors of this special issue have produced an original and ambitious contribution to this field by interrogating one of the most enduring concepts in the anthropology of Christianity: Grace. The editors invite us to re-examine the implicit centrality of Grace to many anthropological understandings of reciprocity and gifting, and to think through the role of grace in everyday lived experience. More broadly, their collection demands that anthropologists carefully appraise and theorise the Christian assumptions that often underpin their engagements with theology.
The special issue is made up of an introduction by Michael Edwards and Méadhbh McIvor, articles by Julian Sommerschuh, Nofit Itzhak, Gareth Breen, Giuseppe Tateo, Neena Mahadev, and Hans Steinmüller, and an afterword by Vincent Lloyd.
This issue of the journal closes with Juan del Nido's review of Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian and Philip Mirowski's Nine Lives of Neoliberalism; Jessica Whyte's The Morals of the Market; and James Carrier's After the Crisis.
I hope that you find the issue interesting.
Andrew Sanchez