Dreams, Imagination and other Slippery Stuff[1] Though the title seems vaguely reminiscent of a Fleetwood Mac song, Amira Mittermaier’s Dreams That Matter: Egyptian Landscapes of the Imagination is ...Read More
Hi Folks, The election is still too close to call and I am not even drinking yet, so I thought I would take a moment and respond to these two thoughtful precis (precises?) before I really go for it. ...Read More
Leela Prasad’s book, Poetics of Conduct, explores what happens when certain people tell particular stories in particular situations, namely how oral storytelling shapes a moral culture. Prasad’s e...Read More
Cara Curtis Ethnography of Religious Experience Precis: Critiques of the Idea of “Experience” This week’s authors deliver something we have perhaps all been waiting for: a view fro...Read More
In Sensational Movies: Video, Vision, and Christianity in Ghana, Birgit Meyer chronicles the liberalization and commercialization of the Ghanaian film industry from the mid-1990s to the early-2000s. ...Read More
Rachel Wrenn October 19, 2016 LUHRMANN AND JENKINS: SUMMARY AND COMMENTS T.M. Luhrmann conducted an extended study of two Vineyard evangelical Christian churches over the course of several year...Read More
Rachel Wrenn September 28, 2016 Precis: Johnson-Hanks, Seeman et. al., Seeman INTRODUCTION: My brother the airline pilot tells a story of learning how to fly a plane. When he would go up in the...Read More
Cara Curtis 19 September 2016 Precis: Unni Wikan; Kleinman & Kleinman What (All) Is At Stake?: Trying to Account for Experience in Ethnographic Work The authors we read for this week set...Read More
By Emmy Corey Godfrey Lienhardt’s Divinity and Experience: The Religion of the Dinka There is a moment in Divinity and Experience where Lienhardt asks the Padiangbar clan (a Dinka subtribe) a...Read More
In Godfrey Lienhardt’s incisive study of the African Dinka, Divinity and Experience, he defines Dinka religion not as a set of external beliefs and rituals but as “a relationship between men and u...Read More