". . . 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.

Examines the public presence of religion in the information age worldwide.

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.

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 *



Book Information
ISBN 9780253217974
Author Birgit Meyer
Format Paperback
Page Count 336
Imprint Indiana University Press
Publisher Indiana University Press