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- Convenors:
-
Kathleen Openshaw
(Western Sydney University)
Cristina Rocha (Western Sydney University)
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- Chair:
-
Kathleen Openshaw
(Western Sydney University)
- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 1 December, -
Time zone: Australia/Sydney
Short Abstract:
This panel focuses on the entanglements between religion, materiality and (im)mobility, and calls contributors to more closely consider this nexus, both from an ethnographic and/or theoretical perspective, as it is lived-locally and negotiated globally.
Long Abstract:
In recent years scholars have moved beyond a Westerncentric framework of false binaries that understands religion as immaterial - as private belief in an invisible, omnipresent and transcendent God. Rather, they have sought to understand how religious mediation makes real the presence of immaterial entities in the world through material forms (Houtman and Meyer 2012, p. 6). Certainly, religiosity is manifested in complex and often contradictory relationships involving the material and immaterial, animate and inanimate, human and non-human actors, earthly and supernatural realms and local and global relationships. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, when populations are mostly immobile, this panel focuses on the entanglements between religion, materiality, digital media and (im)mobility. It calls contributors to consider these connections, both from an ethnographic and/or theoretical perspective, as they are lived locally and negotiated globally.
We hope to address some of these questions:
o How can religious materiality help us understand locally-lived experiences?
o How are Gods and spirits made tangible through the material culture, bodily sensations, texts, media, buildings and other infrastructures?
o How are transnational religions mediated across time and space?
o How does religious mobility fare in a COVID-19 world of lockdowns and closed borders?
o How can Indigenous knowledge help us understand the relationship between human religiosity, more-than-human engagements and (im)mobility?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 1 December, 2021, -Gisele Ishimwe (Western Sydney University)
Paper short abstract:
Integrating into mainstream Australian society is challenging for many African Australian youth. However, their participation and leadership roles guided by the anointing of the Holy Spirit in multicultural Pentecostal churches enables them a sense of belonging that ultimately eases integration.
Paper long abstract:
Media and political discourses have expressed concerns for African Australian youth’s ability to integrate into Australian society. For their part, young Africans feel that they are rejected by mainstream society. This paper focuses on the experiences of African-Australian youth who attend Pentecostal churches and hold positions of leadership in their congregation in Perth, Western Australia. It draws on auto-ethnography and interviews with African youth leaders who attend various Pentecostal churches. I argue that while young people may feel a sense of rejection from mainstream Australian society through numerous experiences of discrimination, their church communities provide a sense of belonging that eases their integration. Their participation and leadership roles within their churches provide them with upward mobility. This is due to the ongoing normative reinforcement through moral directives and an increase in networking -- some members of the church become like family, others present a diverse pool of role models that help raise young people’s aspirations. Through the anointing (supernatural selection and blessing) of the Holy spirit, and encouragement from their congregation leaders, they experience a unique sense of belonging from their multicultural congregation.
Cristina Rocha (Western Sydney University) Kathleen Openshaw (Western Sydney University)
Paper short abstract:
Here we focus on African PhD students in Melbourne, and how their relationship with the homeland and being stuck in Australia is mediated by Christianity. We argue that as they find themselves in a gap between hope and uncertainty, Christianity provides them with a sense of mobility.
Paper long abstract:
The closing of Australian borders in March 2020 due to the covid-19 pandemic was catastrophic for many international students, migrants and refugees. Families were separated; jobs in hospitality and other industries disappeared overnight; communities of support went online or evaporated. The long wait for the borders to open and the associated uncertainties continue to this day. In this paper, we focus on the lives of African PhD students in Melbourne. We are interested in how their relationship with the homeland and family, on the one hand, and being stuck in Australia, on the other, are mediated by their Christianity. Here we draw on interviews with these students over zoom during a particularly long period of lockdown in Melbourne. We argue that, as they find themselves in a gap between hope for the future as international students and uncertainty due to being stuck far from family, Christianity provides them with a sense of mobility. The affordances of digital media and the ubiquitousness of the Holy Spirit mean that these students are transnationally immobile. By watching online services on social media with their families who are based in the homeland they are able to experience the Holy Spirit together in real-time.