Description
Book SynopsisA vivid, artfully crafted, and deeply hopeful account of one community's struggle to rediscover and reinvent itself after a century of genocidal loss, dispossession, and displacement
To the extent that Middle Eastern Christians register in Euro-American political imaginaries, they are usually invoked to justify Western military intervention into countries like Iraq or Syria, or as an exemption to anti-Islamic immigration policies because of an assumption that their Christianity makes them easily assimilable in the so-called Judeo-Christian West.
Using the tools of multisensory ethnography, Sonic Icons uncovers how these views work against the very communities they are meant to benefit. Through long term fieldwork in the Netherlands among Syriac Orthodox Christiansalso known as Assyrians, Aramaeans, and SyriacsBakker Kellogg reveals how they intertwine religious practice with political activism to save Syriac Christianity from the twin threats of political vio
