Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere / Edition 1

by Birgit Meyer, Annelies Moors

Overview

". . . one of those rare edited volumes that advances social thought as it provides substantive religious and media ethnography that is good to think with." —Dale Eickelman, Dartmouth College

Increasingly, Pentecostal, Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, and indigenous movements all over the world make use of a great variety of modern mass media, both print and electronic. Through religious booklets, radio broadcasts, cassette tapes, television talk-shows, soap operas, and documentary film these movements address multiple publics and offer alternative forms of belonging, often in competition with the postcolonial nation-state. How have new practices of religious mediation transformed the public sphere? How has the adoption of new media impinged on religious experiences and notions of religious authority? Has neo-liberalism engendered a blurring of the boundaries between religion and entertainment? The vivid essays in this interdisciplinary volume combine rich empirical detail with theoretical reflection, offering new perspectives on a variety of media, genres, and religions.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780253217974
Publisher:	Indiana University Press
Publication date:	12/01/2005
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Birgit Meyer is Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the Free University, Amsterdam.

Annelies Moors holds the ISIM Chair at the International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World, University of Amsterdam.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
IntroductionBirgit Meyer and Annelies Moors
Part I. Mediated Religion and Its New Publics
1. Cassette Ethics: Public Piety and Popular Media in EgyptCharles Hirschkind
2. Future in the Mirror: Media, Evangelicals, and Politics in Rio de JaneiroPatricia Birman
3. Communicating Authority, Consuming Tradition: Jewish Orthodox Outreach Literature and Its Reading PublicJeremy Stolow
4. Holy Pirates: Media, Ethnicity, and Religious Renewal in IsraelDavid Lehmann and Batia Siebzehner
Part II. Public Religion and the Politics of Difference
5. Representing Family Law Debates in Palestine: Gender and the Politics of PresenceAnnelies Moors
6. Morality, Community, Publicness: Shifting Terms of Public Debate in MaliDorothea E. Schulz
7. Media and Violence in an Age of Transparency: Journalistic Writing on War-Torn MalukuPatricia Spyer
8. Mediated Religion in South Africa: Balancing Airtime and Rights ClaimsRosalind I. J. Hackett
9. Rethinking the "Voice Of God" in Indigenous Australia: Secrecy, Exposure, and the Efficacy of MediaFaye Ginsburg
Part III. Religious Representations and/as Entertainment
10. Synchronizing Watches: The State, the Consumer, and Sacred Time in Ramadan TelevisionWalter Armbrust
11. Becoming "Secular-Muslims": Yaşar Nuri Öztürk as a Super-subject on Turkish TelevisionAyşe Öncü
12. Gods in the Sacred Marketplace: Hindu Nationalism and the Return of the Aura in the Public SphereSudeep Dasgupta
13. The Saffron Screen? Hindu Nationalism and the Hindi FilmRachel Dwyer
14. Impossible Representations: Pentecostalism, Vision, and Video Technology in GhanaBirgit Meyer
Contributors
Index

Editorial Reviews

". . . an important contribution to a flourishing ethnographic literature on the globalizing nexus of religion and media . . . Taken together, these chapters complexify and energize the 'public sphere' as Jurgen Habermas conceptualizes this realm, and also show mass mediation's close relationship to religious identity politics. . . . Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere deepens the inquiry into the 'new politics of belonging' . . . that mass media facilitate in realms of faith making. As is apparent in the book's fine introduction . . . anthropology has much to gain by continuing its engagements along these lines."—American Anthropologist

From the Publisher

. . . an important contribution to a flourishing ethnographic literature on the globalizing nexus of religion and media . . . Taken together, these chapters complexify and energize the 'public sphere' as Jurgen Habermas conceptualizes this realm, and also show mass mediation's close relationship to religious identity politics. . . . Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere deepens the inquiry into the 'new politics of belonging' . . . that mass media facilitate in realms of faith making. As is apparent in the book's fine introduction . . . anthropology has much to gain by continuing its engagements along these lines.

American Anthropologist