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This book presents a socio-historical analysis of the Somali Muslim diaspora in Johannesburg and its impact on urban development in the context of Somali migrations in the Southern African Indian Ocean region from the end of the 19th Century to today. The author draws on a combination of archival and ethnographic research to examine the interlocking processes of migration, urban place-making, economic entrepreneurship and transnational mobility through the lens of religious practice and against the background of historical interactions between the Somali diaspora and the British and Ottoman Empires. Comparison with other Muslim diasporas in the region, primarily Indians, adds further depth t...
This book presents a socio-historical analysis of the Somali Muslim diaspora in Johannesburg and its impact on urban development in the context of Somali migrations in the Southern African Indian Ocean region from the end of the 19th Century to today. The author draws on a combination of archival and ethnographic research to examine the interlocking processes of migration, urban place-making, economic entrepreneurship and transnational mobility through the lens of religious practice and against the background of historical interactions between the Somali diaspora and the British and Ottoman Empires. Comparison with other Muslim diasporas in the region, primarily Indians, adds further depth t...
This book examines the role of religious actors in the field of climate change and especially in the international mobilization and negotiations to address the issue. It analyzes the mode of action and their discourses on multilateral platforms such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The international Climate Change Framework Convention is primarily a process that can best be understood by analyzing the various steps taken by the international community, and specifically by different religious groupings, here, in the project manuscript, mainly Christians but also Muslims and Buddhists, in raising environmental consciousness through their programs. The interfaith dimension also plays a major role and needs to be studied in terms of the international realm of international liberal theories based on reciprocity, interdependence and cooperation but also within the framework of Sustainable Development Goals.
Based on ethnographic explorations in cities across the globe, Topographies of Faith offers a unique and compelling analysis of contemporary religious dynamics in metropolitan centers. While most scholarship on religion still sidelines questions of spatiality and scale, this book creatively draws on perspectives from urban studies to study the spatiality of religion in modern cities. It shows how globalization, transnational migration and urban expansion in big cities engender new religious forms and practices and their spatial underpinnings. Space affects urban religious diversity, religious innovations, decline or vitality. But it also shapes the relationships between religion and social equalities. Spanning distances between New York, Delhi and Johannesburg, the book also engages with issues of secularity and religious vitality in genuinely new ways. Contributors include: Irene Becci, Synnøve Bendixsen, Marian Burchardt, José Casanova, Murat Es, Ajay Gandhi, Weishang Huang, Godwin Onuoha, Samadia Sadouni, Peter van der Veer, and Leilah Vevaina.
The contributions of this volume discuss the broad field of transformation processes in Muslim societies from different perspectives with various disciplinary approaches. Apart from methodological questions the authors investigate religious and social developments in Africa and the Near and Middle East while focusing e.g. on the production of meaning, negotiation of religious values and spaces, gendered agency, and debates of identity.
The chapters in this book reflect on the practice of using narratives to understand individual and social reality. They all reveal dimensions of the same concrete reality: contemporary society of Central South Africa. Except for two, all the chapters originated from research in the program The Narrative Study of Lives, situated in the Department of Sociology at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein, South Africa. Each chapter opens a window on an aspect of everyday life in Central South Africa. Each window displays the capacity of the narrative as a methodological tool in qualitative research to open up better understandings of everyday experience. The chapters also reflect on the epistemological journey towards unwrapping and breaking open of meaning. Narratives are one of many tools available to sociologists in their quest to understand and interpret meaning. But, when it comes to deep understanding, narratives are particularly effective in opening up more intricate levels of meaning associated with emotions, feelings, and subjective experiences.
An unprecedented study of how Christianity reshaped Black South Africans’ ideas about gender, sexuality, marriage, and family during the first half of the twentieth century. This book demonstrates that the primary affective force in the construction of modern Black intimate life in early twentieth-century South Africa was not the commonly cited influx of migrant workers but rather the spread of Christianity. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, African converts developed a new conception of intimate life, one that shaped ideas about sexuality, gender roles, and morality. Although the reshaping of Black intimacy occurred first among educated Africans who aspired to midd...
In Islam, philanthropy is a spectrum of activity, and these activities differ in their purpose and in the principles on which they operate. To fully understand philanthropy, it is vital to examine not only its purpose but its motive and outcomes. This book identifies three types of philanthropy within this spectrum: Philanthropy as relief (zakat), which seeks to alleviate human suffering; philanthropy as an improvement (waqf), which seeks to maximize individual human potential and is energized by a principle that seeks to progress individuals and their society; and philanthropy as reform (sadaqah), which seeks to solve social problems. Philanthropy as civic engagement seeks to build better c...
The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to African Religions brings together a team of international scholars to create a single-volume resource on the religious beliefs and practices of the peoples in Africa. Offers broad coverage of issues relating to African religions, considering experiences in indigenous, Christian, and Islamic traditions across the continent Contributors are from a variety of fields, ensuring the volume offers multidisciplinary perspectives Explores methodological approaches to religion from anthropological, philosophical, and historical perspectives Provides insights into the historical developments in African religions, as well as contemporary issues such as the development of African-initiated churches, neo traditional religions, and Pentecostalism Discusses important topics at the intersection of culture and religion in Africa, including the arts, health, politics, globalization, gender relations, and the economy
In this engaging study, Matthew J. Kuiper tells the fascinating story of how Islam became a world religion and cultural phenomenon of immense scale, astonishing diversity and global impact. His starting point is the dramatic upsurge in da‘wa: ‘inviting’ to Islam, or Islamic missionary activism.