Description
Book Synopsis Co-authored by three anthropologists with long–term expertise studying Pentecostalism in Vanuatu, Angola, and Papua New Guinea/the Trobriand Islands respectively, Going to Pentecost offers a comparative study of Pentecostalism in Africa and Melanesia, focusing on key issues as economy, urban sociality, and healing. More than an ordinary comparative book, it recognizes the changing nature of religion in the contemporary world – in particular the emergence of “non-territorial” religion (which is no longer specific to places or cultures) – and represents an experimental approach to the study of global religious movements in general and Pentecostalism in particular.
Trade Review “… a valuable addition to the literature on Pentecostalism. It is an experiment in comparative anthropology which employs an intriguing and innovative method and theory… This book is likely to stimulate salutary re-thinking about what passes as ‘established’ assumptions about the nature, history, and theory of Pentecostal research in the social sciences.” • Contemporary Religion
“… a rich comparative study of sites in Africa and Melanesia in the thrall and thick of ‘Pentecost.’… [It] succeeds as a comparative and collective ethnography of three sites of modern ‘Pentecost,’ encouraging readers to see ‘Pentecostalism’ as not merely a new religious movement but rather a multiplicity of new religious movements, for they are many, emerging from and embedded within distinct historical and cultural contexts…It will also provide sociologists of religion who study new religious movements ethnographically with much food for thought and many opportunities for scholarly introspection.” • Sociology of Religion
“Going to Pentecost raises important questions that intersect with theoretical issues in religion, globalization, and research about everyday life, that extend beyond the anthropology of Christianity and therefore, important for the broader more multidisciplinary study of Pentecostalism.” • Anthropos
“This volume should be commended for its methodological device that allows for further investigation in the study of transnational religions. Theories develop directly from comparative field research… this book’s creative agenda should be both explored and further developed, and I would recommend it primarily to scholars in the fields of anthropology, Pentecostal studies, missiology, and world Christianity.” • Pneuma. The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies
“Well-written, accessible, and groundbreaking… this book offers to rejuvenate the anthropology of Pentecostalism.” • Jon Bialecki, University of Edinburgh
“Ethnographically well-grounded, conceptually innovative, and experimental in its comparative approach. Although there have been many collaborative publications on global Pentecostalism, few are so well integrated and are able to develop arguments through a truly comparative ethnography.” • Kim Knibbe, University of Groningen
Table of Contents List of Figures
Acknowledgements
PART I: INTRODUCTIONS
Introduction: Going to ‘Pentecost’: Outline of an Experiment
Interlude: Locations in 'Pentecost'
Reading Guide
PART II: PRESENTATIONS FROM 'PENTECOST'
Chapter 1. Borders in ‘Pentecost’: Creating Protected Spaces
Chapter 2. Reconfiguring Life and Death: A New Moral Economy in ‘Pentecost’
Chapter 3. Anti-relativist Nostalgias and The Absolutist Road
PART III: THEORIES FROM 'PENTECOST'
Chapter 4. Borders and Abjections: Approaching Individualism in ‘Pentecost’
Chapter 5. Engaging with Theories of Neoliberalism and Prosperity
Chapter 6. Ruptures and Encompassments: Towards an Absolute Truth
PART IV: COMMENTS
Chapter 7. Comparison Re-placed
Matei Candea
Chapter 8. Pentecostalism and Forms of Individualism
Joel Robbins
Chapter 9. Life at The End of Time: A Note on Comparison, 'Pentecost' and the Trobriands
Bjørn Enge Bertelsen
Chapter 10. Wealth versus Money in Pentecost: Why Is Money Good?
Knut Rio
Chapter 11. ‘Pentecost’ in The World
Birgit Meyer
Index
