Cet essai en langue anglaise a pour objet les producteurs d'images dans l'Éthiopie chrétienne orthodoxe contemporaine. Ce travail s'inscrit à la croisée de l'anthropologie de la religion, de l'image et de la morale, tout en analysant aussi les pratiques magico-thérapeutiques traditionnelles.
Introduction : prohibition and a ritual regime -- A history of mediation -- Fasting, bodies, and the calendar -- Proliferations of mediators -- Blood, silver, and coffee -- Spirits in the marketplace -- Concrete, bones, and feasts -- Echoes of the host -- The media landscape -- The knowledge of the world -- Conclusion
An exploration of how contemporary Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity preserves and protects sacred ideas and relationships “Ethiopia stretches her hand upon God,” the narrative of Sheba and Solomon, the material presence of the Ark of the Covenant in Axum. For Ethiopian Orthodox Christians, these classic understandings of the covenant are prized narratives. For historical and scriptural scholarship, a central focus is to explain the characteristics of Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity as retaining key “Old Testament” qualities to demonstrate a wide chasm with post-Enlightenment, secular societies. By widening the lens of analysis to include a body of knowledge best accessed through Orthodox Christian devotional culture, The Covenant’s Veil offers an interpretation that challenges the reader to adopt a novel understanding of these well-established ideas. The multiple, complex ways that the covenant idea appears as ideas, idioms, customs, symbols, and articulations in the lifeworld of Ethiopian Orthodox are the starting point for The Covenant’s Veil. Ethiopia’s story of the covenant is a domain of nested reference points that inspires celebrants, through their devotional activities, to expand and elaborate upon a network of meanings. Covenant refractions within Ethiopian Orthodox devotional culture not only demonstrate the established pattern of magnifying spiritual importance through symbolic similes and analogic pairings, but perform a vital function for keeping traditional knowledge alive and current. Detailed ethnographic material arranges devotional activities such as mahaber rituals of communing and processions of tabots on feast days. It describes habits of making vows, presenting oneself at church, and telling stories of saints and their covenants. Thinking about the covenant concept as refracting—the bending motion of points encountering a common surface—is a way to conceive how these reference points reveal a connective thread, what is theorized as an Ethiopian Orthodox method of elaboration. Identifying when and where elaboration of tradition is happening provides an opportunity to demonstrate how Orthodox Christianity is integral to the lives and actions of its faithful. By reframing covenant as expanding beyond Ethiopian religious and political exceptionalism, The Covenant’s Veil provides us with a timely reappraisal of this concept in light of increased social fragmentation and the urgency for negotiating harmony in a country with many forms of diversity.
A Companion to the Anthropology of Religion presents a collection of original, ethnographically-informed essays that explore the variety of beliefs, practices, and religious experiences in the contemporary world and asks how to think about religion as a subject of anthropological inquiry. Presents a collection of original, ethnographically-informed essays exploring the wide variety of beliefs, practices, and religious experiences in the contemporary world Explores a broad range of topics including the ‘perspectivism’ debate, the rise of religious nationalism, reflections on religion and new media, religion and politics, and ideas of self and gender in relation to religious belief Includes examples drawn from different religious traditions and from several regions of the world Features newly-commissioned articles reflecting the most up-to-date research and critical thinking in the field, written by an international team of leading scholars Adds immeasurably to our understanding of the complex relationships between religion, culture, society, and the individual in today’s world
The Orthodox Tewahedo Christian doctrine in Ethiopian practice has different possibilities: (a) within church compounds the protection of nature (respect of creation), (b) outside the submission of nature, as the Bible demands – both are Christian behaviors! Church is not pro-nature. The Church itself has set up a partition into sacred and profane, with different rule for both spheres; both systems of rules exist parallel. The followers respect the plants and animals in the church compound as end by themselves than a means to their economic objectives; they respect them not for their economic value rather for their perceived duty; respect to God as Church is the house of God. The people do not consider the plants and animals in the Church as simply normal animals rather they are believed to have a metaphysical divine power. Hence, it is impossible to put the follower's ethical perspective in exclusive manner rather it is both anthropocentristic and deep ecological which can be determined by the nature of the space occupied by the recourses.
Orthodox Christian theology is often presented as the direct inheritor of the doctrine and tradition of the early Church. But continuity with the past is only part of the truth; it would be false to conclude that the eastern section of the Christian Church is in any way static. Orthodoxy, building on its patristic foundations, has blossomed in the modern period. This volume focuses on the way Orthodox theological tradition is understood and lived today. It explores the Orthodox understanding of what theology is: an expression of the Church's life of prayer, both corporate and personal, from which it can never be separated. Besides discussing aspects of doctrine, the book portrays the main figures, themes and developments that have shaped Orthodox thought. There is particular focus on the Russian and Greek traditions, as well as the dynamic but less well-known Antiochian tradition and the Orthodox presence in the West.
Drawing on international and multidisciplinary expertise, this pioneering edited collection analyzing Islam in contemporary Ethiopia challenges the popular notion of a 'Christian Ethiopia' imagined as the century-old, never colonized Abyssinia, isolated in the highlands and dominated by Orthodox Christianity.
Religiosity is one aspect without which Ethiopian society cannot be fully understood. This book aims to map out the terrain of the discourse in religion-social change nexus in Ethiopian using the notion of covenant as an interpretive tool.
This book uniquely explores the impact of indigenous ideology and thought on everyday life in Northeast Africa. Furthermore, in highlighting the diversity in pre-Christian, pre-Islamic regional beliefs and practices that extend beyond the simplistic political arguments of the current dominant narratives, the study shows that for millennia complex indigenous institutions have bound people together beyond the labels of Christianity and Islam; they have sustained peace through cultural exchange and tolerance (if not always complete acceptance). Through recent archaeological and ethnographic research, the concepts, landscapes, materials and rituals believed to be associated with the indigenous and shared culture of the Sky-God belief are examined. The author makes sense, for the first time, of the relationship between the notion of sacred fertility and a number of regional archaeological features and on-going ancient practices including FGM, spirit possessions, and other physically invasive practices and the ritual hunt. The book explores one of the most important pilgrimage centres in Somaliland and Somalia, the sacred landscape of Saint Aw-Barkhadle, founded ca. 12th century AD. It is believed to be the burial place of the rulers of the first Muslim Ifat and Awdal dynasties in this region, and potentially the lost first capital of Awdal kingdom before Harar. This ritual centre is seen as a ‘microcosm’ of the ancient Horn of Africa with its exceptional multi-religious heritage, through which the author lays out a locally appropriate archaeological interpretational framework, the "Ritual Set," also applied here to the Ethiopian sites of Tiya, Sheikh Hussein Bale, Aksum and Lalibela, setting these places against a wider historical background of indigenous Sky-God belief. This archaeological study of sacred landscapes, stelae traditions, ancient Christian and medieval Muslim centres of Northeast Africa is the first to put forward a theoretical and analytical framework for the interpretation of the shared regional heritage and the indigenous archaeology of the region. It will be invaluable to archaeologists, anthropologists, historians and policymakers interested in Africa and beyond.
The book deals with historical, social, economic, political, and international causes, contexts, and consequences of inequalities and conflicts in Africa. In particular, the book is to puts conflicts and turbulences in Ethiopia in a broader, African comparative perspective. It also identifies and analyzes multiple causes of conflicts which cannot be studied only as a result of one variable. Inequalities and conflicts have a whole set of causes stemming from historically inherited, as well as global, international, socio-economic, political and other contexts which cannot be analyzed separately. This book is vital for anyone who is interested in the study of African history, comparative politics, and conflict in Africa.
