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Dear ANTHROPOLOGY-MATTERS Subscribers,
Those members who have an interest in the relationship between Anthropology and Christianity- as demonstrated by the seminar posted below (Foregrounds and Backgrounds - Ventures in the Anthropology of Christianity)- may also be interested in the following two titles published by Duke University Press:
The Anthropology of Christianity
By Fenella Cannell, London School of Economics
"The anthropology of Christianity comes of age in this book. Fenella Cannell's astute depiction of the paradoxes of religious transcendence and her acute analysis of the obstacles in shifting Christianity from predecessor, opponent, or silent partner of social science to full object of anthropological inquiry find fruition in eleven exemplary studies of local formations of Christianity from around the world. No student of religion will want to miss this timely work."-Michael Lambek, editor of A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion
"The Anthropology of Christianity is a very fine and stimulating set of essays, framed elegantly by a terrific introductory piece by Fenella Cannell and a thoughtful, thought-provoking, and stylish essay by Webb Keane. One of the collection's great virtues is that the essays are quite diverse in the interpretive directions they pursue even as they unanimously, and quite compellingly, make the case for rethinking the anthropology of Christianity."-Donald Brenneis, University of California, Santa Cruz
The Anthropology of Christianity provides vivid ethnographic explorations of particular, local Christianities as they are experienced by different groups around the world. At the same time, the contributors, all anthropologists, rethink the vexed relationship between anthropology and Christianity. As Fenella Cannell contends in her powerful introduction, Christianity is the critical "repressed" of anthropology. To a great extent, anthropology first defined itself as a rational, empirically-based enterprise quite different from theology. The theology it repudiated was, for the most part, Christian. Cannell asserts that anthropological theory carries within it ideas profoundly shaped by this rejection. Because of this, anthropology has been less successful in considering Christianity as an ethnographic object than it has in considering other religions. This collection is designed to advance a more subtle and less self-limiting anthropological study of Christianity.
Together the contributors show that it not sufficient for anthropologists to assume that they know in advance what the Christian experience is; each local variation must be encountered on its own terms.
Visit: http://www.dukeupress.edu/cgibin/forwardsql/search.cgi?template0=nomatch.htm&template2=books/book_detail_page.htm&user_id=1275497647&Bmain.item_option=1&Bmain.item=12071 for more information.
Duke University Press
Jan 2007 368pp £18.99 PB: 9780822336464
SPECIAL DISCOUNTED PRICE OF £12.50 to ANTHROPOLOGY-MATTERS Subscribers
Postage and Packing £2.75
(PLEASE QUOTE REF NUMBER: AC270109AM for discount)
To order a copy please contact Marston on 44(0)1235 465500 or email [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]> or visit our website www.combinedacademic.co.uk <http://www.combinedacademic.co.uk>
Capitalism and Christianity, American Style
By William E. Connolly, Johns Hopkins University
"William E. Connolly is a towering figure in contemporary political theory whose profound reflections on democracy, religion, and the tragic unsettle and enrich us. In this powerful work he casts his philosophical gaze on the internal dynamics of the American Empire-especially the role of Christian traditions and capitalist practices. The result is vintage Connolly, namely, indispensable!" Cornel West , Princeton University
"I immensely enjoyed reading Capitalism and Christianity, American Style. William E. Connolly offers insight, innovation, and wisdom. He brings substantive theorizing to the pressing political concerns of the moment, providing a sense of momentum and sheer energy. This book is relevant, in the strongest sense." Nigel Thrift, author of Knowing Capitalism
"In these times, we desperately need William E. Connolly's impassioned study of inequality and the destruction of nature, his sheer awe at living-ness itself, his philosophy of immanent naturalism and deployment of the Deleuzian assemblage, and, especially, the interdisciplinary concreteness of his proposals for a resonance machine of resistance on the left. Along with Connolly's description of an ethos, or spiritualization, of academic engagement, a key contribution of this book is to advance what has been dangerously lacking on the left, a powerful analytics of the right's resonance machine and its recognition that the intellectual and the corporeal, the theological and the secular, never exist in purified, 'clean' categories."-Linda Kintz, author of Between Jesus and the Market: The Emotions That Matter in Right-Wing America
"Capitalism and Christianity, American Style is the latest tour do force by William Connolly, who has been a leader in political theory for the past several decades...it is hard to find flaw in a book that is based on much of Connolly's recent work...it is a stirring call to action...if you, like me, sometimes tire of either utopian visions of revolution or dystopian accounts of the forthcoming end of the world, you will likely enjoy this book...Connolly's prose reflects the fundamental humility that is at the core of his message...the book is not just about political theory, but it is also a way forward." Jason Dittmer, University College London
Visit: http://www.dukeupress.edu/cgibin/forwardsql/search.cgi?template0=nomatch.htm&template2=books/book_detail_page.htm&user_id=1275497647&Bmain.item_option=1&Bmain.item=17506 for more information.
Duke University Press
May 2008 216pp £16.99 PB: 9780822342724
SPECIAL DISCOUNTED PRICE OF £11.00 to ANTHROPOLOGY-MATTERS Subscribers
Postage and Packing £2.75
(PLEASE QUOTE REF NUMBER: CC270109AM for discount)
To order a copy please contact Marston on 44(0)1235 465500 or email [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]> or visit our website www.combinedacademic.co.uk <http://www.combinedacademic.co.uk>
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ingie Hovland" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, January 26, 2009 2:30 PM
Subject: Fw: CFP The anthropology of Christianity
Seminar: Foregrounds and Bac
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* http://www.anthropologymatters.com *
* A postgraduate project comprising online journal, *
* online discussions, teaching and research resources *
* and international contacts directory. *
******************************************************
Call for Papers: Deadline 1 February 2009
Seminar: Foregrounds and Backgrounds - Ventures in the Anthropology of
Christianity
Date: Thursday the 23 and Friday the 24 of April 2009
Venue: University of Copenhagen. Room: Udvalgsværelse 1,
Fællesadministrationen, Nørregade 10, 1017, Copenhagen K.
Organisers: Andreas Bandak and Jonas Adelin Jørgensen in collaboration
with The Danish Research School in Anthropology and Ethnography, The
Research Education Programme Religion and Society, and The Danish
Research School for Regional Studies.
Key note speakers: Dr. Timothy Jenkins, Faculty of Divinity,
University of Cambridge, author of Religion in English Everyday Life.
Oxford: Berghahn (1999) and Dr. Matthew Engelke, Department of Anthropology,
London School of Economics, author of A Problem of Presence. Beyond
Scripture in an African Church. Berkeley: University of California
Press (2007).
Background and aim: The seminar will engage with a number of recent
anthropological studies of Christianity (Robbins 2004; 2007, Cannell
et al 2006, Keane 2007, Engelke & Tomlinson et al 2006). Emblematic to
these studies is a common interest in Christianity as a lived
dimension of sociality, which is to be understood positively as a
feature with both direct and indirect implications. This constitutes a
break with a certain tradition in anthropology and the social sciences
that have often paid little attention to Christianity, or if so only
as a foreign insert with few local implications. >From this
perspective, local varieties of Christianity are often explained with
recourse to economic incentives rather than substantial changes in
conceptions of self and society. However, with the recent studies a
new central question is posed: what difference does Christianity make
(Cannell 2006:44)?
This question is fundamental not just to anthropology but can be
conceived of as a point of intersection for the study of Christianity
across anthropology, sociology, science of religion, philosophy of
religion, and Christian theology and hence it is the opening question
for this interdisciplinary seminar. An interdisciplinary study of
Christianity might contribute to an understanding of how the secular
and the religious can be lived and practised by focusing on lived
relations in their longevity, time and discontinuity. At the same time
the different disciplines touch upon a common set of theoretical and
methodological challenges. The exact implications of these common
theoretical and methodological considerations for the study of
Christianity are being negotiated among anthropologists as well as
theologians and scientists of religion. Furthermore, in recent years
empirical studies of local meanings of Christianity has been
supplemented with focus on collectives, rituals, o!
r meaning and the limits of meaning, immanence and transcendence, and
continuity and rupture.
With this seminar we wish to amplify the recent studies by focussing
on instances where faith and religiosity are foregrounds as e.g. in
conversion or experience of direct address during sermons, and when
the same faith and religiosity is turned into background and quite
other questions gain in actuality. Hence, the interplay between
foreground and background will be the central analytical approach, and
our claim is that this very take could yield a basis for an
interdisciplinary understanding of relations between secularity and
religiosity. By emphasising the play between background and
foreground, we want to challenge the dichotomy which characterises
much contemporary thinking on religiosity and secularity. Through a
number of empirical studies of Christianity, we want to address how
the secular and the religious takes form on the background of each
other, and how this interplay invites to a rethinking of the relation
between major theoretical concepts such as modernity a!
nd religion. Therefore, we invite senior as well as upcoming scholars
to present their work and to discuss it within the frame of background
and foreground, secularity and religiosity.
Form: The seminar will bring together senior and upcoming Danish and
international scholars for joint ventures in the anthropology of
Christianity. Key note speakers will give presentations, and PhD
students working with the themes of the seminar are invited to give 30
minute presentations. All papers are followed joint discussion. We
encourage perspectives from a variety of disciplines working with
studies of Christianity. Presenting at the seminar is rewarded with 3
ECTS. The seminar is open to all who wish to attend without giving a
paper.
Suggested Reading:
- Cannell, Fenella (2006) 'Introduction: the Anthropology of
Christianity', p.1-50, i Fenella Cannell (red.): The Anthropology of
Christianity. Durham: Duke University Press.
- Hann, Chris (2007), 'The Anthropology of Christianity per se', p.
383-414 in Arch. Europ. Sociol, XLVIII, 3 (2007).
- Tomlinson, Matt & Matthew Engelke (2006) 'Meaning, Anthropology,
Christianity', p.1-37, in Matthew Engelke & Matt Tomlinson (red.): The
Limits of Meaning: case studies in the anthropology of Christianity.
Oxford: Berghahn.
- Robbins, Joel (2007) 'Continuity thinking and the problem of Christian
culture: belief, time, and the Anthropology of Christianity', p.5-38,
in Current Anthropology, vol. 48 (1).
Registration: Scholars and Ph.D. students who wish to present a paper
should register for the seminar by submitting an abstract, contact
information, and affiliation no later than February 1st 2009. Please
note that the number of participants is limited. For listeners who
wish to participate without a paper kindly register. For further
information and registration please contact either of the organisers
Andreas Bandak Ph.D. Fellow &
Jonas Adelin Jørgensen Assistant Research Professor Department of
Cross-cultural and Regional Studies / Faculty of Theology University
of Copenhagen [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask]
_______________________________________________
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best wishes,
Clare
Clare Cottrell
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Combined Academic Publishers
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