Valentina Napolitano - Böcker

Political theology is widely discussed but little understood. Across the humanities and critical social sciences, even in popular discussion of current events, it has become a buzzword. Yet there is no consensus about its very definition.This field-changing interdisciplinary book brings together three of the leading voices in political theology—a Christian theologian, a critical theorist, and an anthropologist—to offer new entry points to understand religion and politics. They explore similarities and differences in their approaches, guiding readers through scholarship in their own fields while also advancing a shared vision that speaks to crucial questions of justice in the contemporary world.Rejecting the notion that political theology is a closed field with an established canon, the authors show it to be an open-ended, lively conversation that welcomes new participants. They demonstrate how voices and approaches from decolonial theory, Black studies, feminist and queer theory, new materialism, and ethnography, both in the Global North and in the Global South, are transforming the field.This book addresses concerns about political theology’s ties to authoritarian and antidemocratic movements, demonstrating that an engaged political theology sheds critical light on volatile topics such as populism, racism, and ethnoreligious nationalism. At once accessible to students and groundbreaking for scholars, What Is Political Theology? provides a state-of-the-art global understanding.

Political theology is widely discussed but little understood. Across the humanities and critical social sciences, even in popular discussion of current events, it has become a buzzword. Yet there is no consensus about its very definition.This field-changing interdisciplinary book brings together three of the leading voices in political theology—a Christian theologian, a critical theorist, and an anthropologist—to offer new entry points to understand religion and politics. They explore similarities and differences in their approaches, guiding readers through scholarship in their own fields while also advancing a shared vision that speaks to crucial questions of justice in the contemporary world.Rejecting the notion that political theology is a closed field with an established canon, the authors show it to be an open-ended, lively conversation that welcomes new participants. They demonstrate how voices and approaches from decolonial theory, Black studies, feminist and queer theory, new materialism, and ethnography, both in the Global North and in the Global South, are transforming the field.This book addresses concerns about political theology’s ties to authoritarian and antidemocratic movements, demonstrating that an engaged political theology sheds critical light on volatile topics such as populism, racism, and ethnoreligious nationalism. At once accessible to students and groundbreaking for scholars, What Is Political Theology? provides a state-of-the-art global understanding.

Valentina Napolitano explores issues of migration, medicine, religion, and gender in this incisive analysis of everyday practices of urban living in Guadalajara, Mexico. Drawing on fieldwork over a ten-year period, Napolitano paints a rich and vibrant picture of daily life in a low-income neighborhood of Guadalajara. "Migration, Mujercitas, and Medicine Men" insightfully portrays the personal experiences of the neighborhood's residents while engaging with important questions about the nature of selfhood, subjectivity, and community identity as well as the tensions of modernity and its discontents in Mexican society.

Aimed at a wide audience of readers, the Anthropology of Catholicism is the first companion guide to this burgeoning field within the anthropology of Christianity. Bringing to light Catholicism's long but comparatively ignored presence within the discipline of anthropology, the book introduces readers to key studies in the field, as well as to current analyses on the present and possible futures of Catholicism globally. This reader provides both ethnographic material and theoretical reflections on Catholicism around the world, demonstrating how a revised anthropology of Catholicism can generate new insights and analytical frameworks that will impact anthropology as well as other disciplines.

Aimed at a wide audience of readers, The Anthropology of Catholicism is the first companion guide to this burgeoning field within the anthropology of Christianity. Bringing to light Catholicism's long but comparatively ignored presence within the discipline of anthropology, this book introduces readers to key studies in the field, as well as to current analyses on the present and possible futures of Catholicism globally. It provides both ethnographic material and theoretical reflections on Catholicism around the world, demonstrating how a revised anthropology of Catholicism can generate new insights and analytical frameworks that will impact anthropology as well as other disciplines.

Jordan currently hosts the second largest percentage of registered refugees in the world: three million out of its eleven million inhabitants. Its experience in hosting migrants and refugees precedes its independence in 1946, with the arrival of Circassians, Chechens, and Armenians from the late 19th century. Jordan thus constitutes a unique observatory for reception policies and long-term settlement of different migrant groups.Based on original empirical and archival material, this volume focuses on migrations caused by conflicts, wars, and crises underscoring their articulation with longstanding human mobility. It sheds light on the cumulative and processual dimensions of Jordan’s reception policies and migrants’ settlement strategies. It identifies the multiple actors involved in the management of migrants and, conversely, the latter’s contribution to the Jordanian social, economic, political, and urban fabric.The first part of the volume examines the policies adopted by the Jordanian authorities and international organizations to regulate access to basic services and to the labour market, and explores the economic and political factors underlying them. The second part analyzes the effects of Jordan’s policies on the territorial distribution and settlement of migrants. How have these policies, combined with the adaptation strategies of migrants contributed to shaping new urban spaces? The third part focuses on capacity of the migrants to activate, establish, (re)build, and intersect different kinds of solidarity networks within the context of protracted displacement.

Jordan currently hosts the second largest percentage of registered refugees in the world: three million out of its eleven million inhabitants. Its experience in hosting migrants and refugees precedes its independence in 1946, with the arrival of Circassians, Chechens, and Armenians from the late 19th century. Jordan thus constitutes a unique observatory for reception policies and long-term settlement of different migrant groups.Based on original empirical and archival material, this volume focuses on migrations caused by conflicts, wars, and crises underscoring their articulation with longstanding human mobility. It sheds light on the cumulative and processual dimensions of Jordan’s reception policies and migrants’ settlement strategies. It identifies the multiple actors involved in the management of migrants and, conversely, the latter’s contribution to the Jordanian social, economic, political, and urban fabric.The first part of the volume examines the policies adopted by the Jordanian authorities and international organizations to regulate access to basic services and to the labour market, and explores the economic and political factors underlying them. The second part analyzes the effects of Jordan’s policies on the territorial distribution and settlement of migrants. How have these policies, combined with the adaptation strategies of migrants contributed to shaping new urban spaces? The third part focuses on capacity of the migrants to activate, establish, (re)build, and intersect different kinds of solidarity networks within the context of protracted displacement.

Migrant Hearts and the Atlantic Return examines contemporary migration in the context of a Roman Catholic Church eager to both comprehend and act upon the movements of peoples. Combining extensive fieldwork with lay and religious Latin American migrants in Rome and analysis of the Catholic Church's historical desires and anxieties around conversion since the period of colonization, Napolitano sketches the dynamics of a return to a faith's putative center. Against a Eurocentric notion of Catholic identity, Napolitano shows how the Americas reorient Europe.Napolitano examines both popular and institutional Catholicism in the celebrations of the Virgin of Guadalupe and El Senor de los Milagros, papal encyclicals, the Latin American Catholic Mission, and the order of the Legionaries of Christ. Tracing the affective contours of documented and undocumented immigrants' experiences and the Church's multiple postures toward transnational migration, she shows how different ways of being Catholic inform constructions of gender, labor, and sexuality whose fault lines intersect across contemporary Europe.

Migrant Hearts and the Atlantic Return examines contemporary migration in the context of a Roman Catholic Church eager to both comprehend and act upon the movements of peoples. Combining extensive fieldwork with lay and religious Latin American migrants in Rome and analysis of the Catholic Church's historical desires and anxieties around conversion since the period of colonization, Napolitano sketches the dynamics of a return to a faith's putative center. Against a Eurocentric notion of Catholic identity, Napolitano shows how the Americas reorient Europe.Napolitano examines both popular and institutional Catholicism in the celebrations of the Virgin of Guadalupe and El Senor de los Milagros, papal encyclicals, the Latin American Catholic Mission, and the order of the Legionaries of Christ. Tracing the affective contours of documented and undocumented immigrants' experiences and the Church's multiple postures toward transnational migration, she shows how different ways of being Catholic inform constructions of gender, labor, and sexuality whose fault lines intersect across contemporary Europe.