Ordinary Lives and Grand Schemes

Samuli Schielke is a research fellow at the Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin. His research interests include Islam, festive culture, subjectivity and morality, and migration and aspiration in Egypt.

“The great merit of this book consists in taking the practices of the people “on the ground” into account. It thereby addresses a gap: the moments when grand schemes and daily practices come together, often in contradiction or in complex and open ways… a compelling and inspirational volume.” · Allegra Laboratory“Anthropologists will find many valuable references and many useful ideas and models for future research. As part of an expanding literature on the everyday, the collected essays suggest the advances still to be made by applying the notion of 'vernacular' or 'popular' to religion and to culture more generally.” · Anthropology Review Database“Composed of eight ethnographically rich essays… [this] important, trenchant edited volume… offers a decisive intervention into the study of religion in an ‘unfixed’ world by modifying the category of religion with the analytic field of the ‘everyday’.” · American Ethnologist“This volume is very well put-together. The editors have done a good job to rein in the various authors to a single collective argument… It's an important volume on an important issue.” · Jon Mitchell, University of Sussex“The topic of everyday religion is becoming an increasingly attractive in the social sciences of religion, as an alternative to more orthodox and canonical accounts of religious phenomena… This volume sets out to debate the concept of ‘everyday religion’ in a very explicit and straightforward manner… The final result is a convincing volume with diverse and challenging case studies that open different paths for the discussion of the main theme.” · Ruy Blanes, Institute of Social Sciences at the University of Lisbon

• IntroductionSamuli Schielke and Liza DebevecChapter 1. Divination and Islam: Existential Perspectives in the Study of Ritual and Religious Praxis in Senegal and GambiaKnut GrawChapter 2. Postponing Piety in Urban Burkina Faso: Discussing Ideas on When to Start Acting as a Pious MuslimLiza DebevecChapter 3. Everyday Religion, Ambiguity and Homosocial Relationships in Manitoba, Canada from 1911 to 1949Alison R. MarshallChapter 4. ‘Doing Things Properly’: Religious Aspects in Everyday Sociality in Apiao, ChiloéGiovanna BacchidduChapter 5. The Ordinary within the Extraordinary: Sainthood Making and Everyday Religious Practice in Lesvos, GreeceSéverine ReyChapter 6. Say a Little Hallo to Padre Pio: Production and Consumption of Space in the Construction of the Sacred at the Shrine of Santa Maria delle GrazieEvgenia MesaritouChapter 7. Going to the Mulid: Street-smart Spirituality in EgyptJennifer PetersonChapter 8. Capitalist Ethics and the Spirit of Islamization in EgyptSamuli SchielkeAfterword: Everyday Religion and the Contemporary World: The Un-Modern, or What Was Supposed to Have Disappeared but Did NotRobert A. OrsiNotes on ContributorsBibliographyIndex