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"Bandak, Andreas"
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Of Refrains and Rhythms in Contemporary Damascus
Christians in the Middle East have traditionally clustered around cities. As minorities in a Muslim majority context, difference manifests itself in many ways. In recent decades, the sounds of the city, in the form of calls to prayer from minarets and church bells, have increased, while green and blue lighting likewise crafts a plural setting that is not only audible but visible to all. In this article, I explore Christian ways of inhabiting the city in Damascus, Syria. The orchestration of space is intensifying as the region appears to be becoming an ever more vulnerable place to live for a Christian minority. I argue that an anthropological engagement with Christianity may do well to listen to the particular refrains that are formed in and of the city. Such an engagement attests to the ways in which Christianity is lived in particular locations but also how Christianity is continuously made to matter.
Journal Article
Exemplary series and Christian typology: modelling on sainthood in Damascus
In this paper, I explore the way in which examples are used in sermons among the pious followers of Our Lady of Soufanieh in Damascus, Syria. In the sermons, a particular logic of seriation functions to present specific models and exemplars as prisms of lives to be imitated. The framing of these lives takes place through entextualizations, whereby the life of some is made into texts that others are told to emulate. The process of making life into text and text into life is explored in the production of examples at the weekly Saturday sermons in Soufanieh. While directly related to life as lived, such sermons also stand for a broader class of life as forma vitae, that is, lives to be followed. I thus explore the example as exemplum, a particular moral story used for edification and didactic purposes, one which situates the listener at the centre of the story by integrating the miraculous happenings in Soufanieh with the response of the individual. The sermons thus serve to examine exemplification and the modelling of sainthood in Damascus in the years preceding the current civil war.
Séries exemplaires et typologie chrétienne : prendre modèle sur la sainteté à Damas
Résumé
Dans le présent article, j'explore la manière dont les exemples sont utilisés dans les sermons parmi les fidèles de Notre‐Dame de Soufanieh à Damas, en Syrie. Dans ces sermons, une logique de sériation particulière est employée pour présenter des modèles et exemples spécifiques comme prismes des vies à imiter. Ces vies sont mises en valeur par des entextualisations, transformant la vie d'une personne en textes dont les autres sont appelés à s'inspirer. L'auteur retrace ce processus de transformation de la vie en texte et du texte en vie dans la production d'exemples lors des sermons hebdomadaires du samedi à Soufanieh. Tout en étant directement liés à la vie vécue, ces sermons symbolisent aussi une classe de vie, celle de la forma vitae, des vies à suivre. L'auteur explore donc l'exemple en tant qu'exemplum, histoire morale particulière utilisée pour l'édification et l'enseignement, histoire qui place l'auditeur en son centre en intégrant à la réponse de celui‐ci les événements miraculeux de Soufanieh. Les sermons servent ainsi à examiner la création d'exemples et de modèles de sainteté à Damas dans les années qui ont précédé la guerre civile en cours.
Journal Article
Politics of Worship in the Contemporary Middle East
Sainthood in Fragile States investigates how precariousness and ambiguity are embedded in saint worship. The book explores the intersections between religious and secular figures to show the role of sainthood and its contestation in the contemporary Middle East.
eBook
Of Refrains and Rhythms in Contemporary Damascus
Christians in the Middle East have traditionally clustered around cities. As minorities in a Muslim majority context, difference manifests itself in many ways. In recent decades, the sounds of the city, in the form of calls to prayer from minarets and church bells, have increased, while green and blue lighting likewise crafts a plural setting that is not only audible but visible to all. In this article, I explore Christian ways of inhabiting the city in Damascus, Syria. The orchestration of space is intensifying as the region appears to be becoming an ever more vulnerable place to live for a Christian minority. I argue that an anthropological engagement with Christianity may do well to listen to the particular refrains that are formed in and of the city. Such an engagement attests to the ways in which Christianity is lived in particular locations but also how Christianity is continuously made to matter.
Journal Article
Of refrains and rhythms in contemporary Damascus: urban space and Christian-Muslim coexistence
Christians in the Middle East have traditionally clustered around cities. As minorities in a Muslim majority context, difference manifests itself in many ways. In recent decades, the sounds of the city, in the form of calls to prayer from minarets and church bells, have increased, while green and blue lighting likewise crafts a plural setting that is not only audible but visible to all. In this article, I explore Christian ways of inhabiting the city in Damascus, Syria. The orchestration of space is intensifying as the region appears to be becoming an ever more vulnerable place to live for a Christian minority. I argue that an anthropological engagement with Christianity may do well to listen to the particular refrains that are formed in and of the city. Such an engagement attests to the ways in which Christianity is lived in particular locations but also how Christianity is continuously made to matter. Adapted from the source document. Reprinted by permission of the University of Chicago Press. © All rights reserved
Journal Article
Limits, Genealogies, and Openings
This article, which introduces a special collection of articles, is intended to invite scholarly reflection on the study of religion in the present day. We believe that a meaningful conversation about what happens when we engage religion for scholarly purposes forces us to consider the ways in which the very category 'religion shapes our research interests and scholarly communities. A focus on 'engagements' is furthermore useful as we seek an open conversation about what is lost and what can be found in the translations and transitions between analytical categories and empirical findings. We contend that much can be learned by exploring what, exactly, is engaging us--and how we engage--in the study of religion. It is therefore the aim of this article and those that follow to participate in joint interdisciplinary thinking about the means, ends, methods, and results of academic analyses that deal with religions and religiosity.
Journal Article
Introduction: the power of example
It is the contention of this introduction that examples are important prisms through which both reality and anthropological analysis are thought and, equally importantly, reconfigured. The aim of the introduction is to redress the theoretical disregard for exemplification by exploring the persuasive and evocative power – positive and negative – of ‘examples’ in social and academic life while also proposing exemplification as a distinct anthropological way of theorizing. Such theorizing points to a ‘lateral’ rethinking of the relation between the particular and the general. Our central argument is that examples highlight the precarious tension between the example as ‘example’ and the example as ‘exemplar’. All contributions to this special issue, in one way or another, explore this tension between the unruliness of examples and the stability‐enhancing power of exemplarity. The introduction further proposes that the example serves to confuse ontological divides, such as the one between theory and ethnography, and also draws attention to the fact that theory is as much suggestive as descriptive.
Introduction : le pouvoir de l’exemple
Résumé
L’introduction part de l’idée que les exemples sont des prismes importants pour penser aussi bien la réalité que l’analyse anthropologique et, ce qui est tout aussi important, pour les reconfigurer. Son objectif est de remédier au manque d’intérêt théorique pour l’exemple, en explorant le pouvoir persuasif et évocateur (aussi bien positif que négatif) des « exemples » dans la vie sociale et universitaire. L’introduction propose également de considérer l’administration d’exemples comme une méthode particulière à l’anthropologie d’élaboration de la théorie. Ce type d’élaboration théorique pointe vers un réexamen « latéral » de la relation entre le particulier et le général. L’argument central est que les exemples mettent en lumière la tension précaire entre l’exemple en tant qu’« exemple » et l’exemple en tant qu’« exemplaire ». Toutes les contributions à ce numéro spécial explorent, d’une manière ou d’une autre, cette tension entre la turbulence des exemples et le pouvoir stabilisateur de l’exemplarité. L’introduction avance en outre que l’exemple peut servir à brouiller les frontières ontologiques telles que celles qui existent entre théorie et ethnographie, et attire l’attention sur le fait que la théorie suggère autant qu’elle décrit.
Journal Article
The 'Orthodoxy' of Orthodoxy: On Moral Imperfection, Correctness, and Deferral in Religious Worlds
This article uses ethnographic studies of Orthodox Christianities as a way to investigate the concept of 'orthodoxy' as it applies to religious worlds. Orthodoxy, we argue, is to be found neither in opposition to popular religion nor solely in institutional churches, but in a set of encompassing relations among clergy and lay people that amounts to a religious world and a shared tradition. These relations are characterized by correctness and deferral--formal modes of relating to authority that are open-ended and non-definitive and so create room for certain kinds of pluralism, heterodoxy, and dissent within an overarching structure of faith and obedience. Attention to the aesthetics of orthodox practice shows how these relations are conditioned in multi-sensory, often non-linguistic ways. Consideration of the national and territorial aspects of Orthodoxy shows how these religious worlds of faith and deferral are also political worlds.
Journal Article
Transvaluing ISIS in Orthodox Christian–Majority Ethiopia
In anthropological works on collective violence, the term transvaluation refers to a process in which a particular conflict is reimagined on a higher scale, giving the conflict a general significance that can lead to wide-scale group violence. This article argues that by taking into account the varied iterations of transcendence and evaluation in transvaluative reframings, a reformulated concept of transvaluation can be used to understand the forces that influence collectivities to commit violence and to abstain from violence in a volatile situation. It provides an ethnographic account of collective reactions in northwest Ethiopia to a film released by ISIS in 2015 that documents the massacre of dozens of Ethiopian Orthodox Christian migrants in Libya. Using a reworked concept of transvaluation, it elucidates how actors framed the event within different imaginative scales and in reference to different values. These framings, I argue, have implications for whether collectivities anticipate that violent action will receive a positive or negative evaluation. While some Orthodox Christians privately equated ISIS with Ethiopian Muslims, which could have motivated collective scapegoating and violence, all the public transvaluations in this case worked to delink ISIS fromEthiopianMuslims and converged in casting a judgmental gaze on retributive violence. The article addresses how different transvaluations—religious, subversive, and nationalistic—compete and converge to make sense of destabilizing events and shape collective action in response to them.
Journal Article