Review

“Aesthetic Formations invites us into the most exciting research on religion and media today. More than a collection of essays, the book has the coherence of a campaign, with each chapter theoretically coordinated and animated by vivid ethnographic accounts, full of wonders. A model of collaborative research, this book is a landmark in cultural studies of religion, media, the senses, and the social dynamics of conflict and community.”--David Chidester, Professor of Religious Studies, University of Cape Town, and Author of Authentic Fakes: Religion and American Popular Culture

"This compelling volume argues that in order to understand the strong social connections that modern religions nurture, we need to attend to their aesthetic mediation in a variety of sensory forms and practices. The essays demonstrate the thesis in a concerted and accessible way that scholars and students of religion will welcome."--David Morgan, Professor of Religion, Duke University

“This is a groundbreaking new collection that invites us into the ‘intellectual space’ created by a lively and deeply original group of anthropologists whose work grapples with the experiential shape of religion in an increasingly mediated world. Their exciting new work offers us a welcome and at times dizzying journey through contemporary postcolonial religiosity – from Latin America to Africa to South Asia – to understand how the uptake of new media forms intensifies and reshapes the sensory worlds of religious practices and identities, from their fundamental location in the body, and its extensions into the world via television, radio, and film. This is important and essential reading for anyone interested in religion or media, and dispels any lingering illusion that one precludes the other.”--Faye Ginsburg, David B. Kriser Professor of Anthropology and Co-Director, Center for Religion and Media, New York University

Product Description

The central theme of this volume is the incorporation of newly accessible mass media into practices of religious mediation in a variety of settings, including Pentecostal-charismatic churches and Islamic movements, and the use of religious forms and images in the sphere of radio and cinema. Based on a long-term cooperation, the contributors examine the role of religion and media in the emergence and sustenance of new ‘aesthetic formations’ that appeal to the body and the senses, and generate new styles of binding and moods of belonging in our time.