Aesthetic Formations

BIRGIT MEYER is Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at VU University Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She is the author of Translating the Devil. Religion and Modernity Among the Ewe in Ghana, and co-editor of Globalization and Identity (with Peter Geschiere), Magic and Modernity (with Peter Pels) and Religion, Media and the Public Sphere (with Annelies Moors). She is also co-editor of the journal Material Religion.

'Aesthetic Formations invites us into the most exciting research on religion and media today. More than a collection of essays, the book has the coherence of a campaign, with each chapter theoretically coordinated and animated by vivid ethnographic accounts, full of wonders. A model of collaborative research, this book is a landmark in cultural studies of religion, media, the senses, and the social dynamics of conflict and community.' - David Chidester, Professor of Religious Studies, University of Cape Town, South Africa and author of Authentic Fakes: Religion and American Popular Culture 'This compelling volume argues that in order to understand the strong social connections that modern religions nurture, we need to attend to their aesthetic mediation in a variety of sensory forms and practices. The essays demonstrate the thesis in a concerted and accessible way that scholars and students of religion will welcome.' - David Morgan, Professor of Religion, Duke University, USA 'This is a groundbreaking new collection that invites us into the 'intellectual space' created by a lively and deeply original group of anthropologists whose work grapples with the experiential shape of religion in an increasingly mediated world. Their exciting new work offers us a welcome and at times dizzying journey through contemporary postcolonial religiosity - from Latin America to Africa to South Asia - to understand how the uptake of new media forms intensifies and reshapes the sensory worlds of religious practices and identities, from their fundamental location in the body, and its extensions into the world via television, radio, and film. This is important and essential reading for anyone interested in religion or media, and dispels any lingering illusion that one precludes the other.' - Faye Ginsburg, David B. Kriser Professor of Anthropology and Co-Director, Centre for Religion and Media, New York University, USA

• Introduction: From Imagined Communities to Aesthetic Formations: Religious Mediations, Sensational Forms and Styles of Binding; B.Meyer  PART I: BOUNDARY POLITICS 'Don't ask questions, just observe!': Boundary Politics in Bahian Candomblé; M.van de Port   Purity and the Devil: Community, Media and the Body: Pentecostal Adherents in a Favela in Rio de Janeiro; M.Oosterbaan   'More Sexpression Please!' Screening the Female Voice and Body in the Bangladesh Film Industry; L .Hoek PART II: RELIGION IN THE PUBLIC REALM Tamil Mythological Cinema and the Politics of Secular Modernism; S.Putnam Hughes   Modern Religions, Modern Media: Islamic Renewal in Northern Nigeria; B.Larkin  The Sonic Architects of a New Babel: The Politics of Belonging of DJ Shadow and Fernando Clarke; F.Guadeloupe  PART III: MEDIATING IMMEDIACY  Breath, Technology and the Making-Of Community Canção Nova in Brazil; M.J.de Abreu   Modes of Binding, Moments of Bonding: Mediating Divine Touch in Ghanaian Pentecostalism and Traditionalism; M.de Witte   Prophecy on Stage: Fame and Celebrities in the Context of the Raelian Movement; C.Machado Seized by the Spirit: The Mystical Foundation of Squatting among Pentecostals in Caracas (Venezuela) Today; R.Sanchez