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- Convenors:
-
Benjamin Kirby
(University of Bayreuth)
Ini Dele-Adedeji (University of York)
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- Stream:
- Religion
- Location:
- Chrystal McMillan, Seminar Room 4
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 12 June, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This panel investigates entanglements of economic informality and urban religion in different African cities, spotlighting in particular the political stakes of these intersections.
Long Abstract:
The rapid expansion of African cities in recent years has coincided with a steep rise of informal commercial activity, due in no small part to neoliberal economic restructuring programmes. As the social and cultural landscapes of these cities have been profoundly reordered in recent decades, it is notable that their religious lives have become increasingly dynamic: Lagos, Kinshasa, Dar es Salaam, Cairo, and many other diverse cities across the African continent have experienced new dynamics of religious innovation which are shaping urban publics, built environments, and street cultures.
This panel focuses on the intersection of informality and religion in African cities, spotlighting how Christian, Muslim, and other religious practices of devotion and affiliation number among the ordinary strategies that urban majorities employ to secure livelihood and protection amidst conditions of uncertainty. Put differently, the panel explores what new insights emerge when religious practices are taken seriously as everyday practices that assist people in navigating highly complex and shifting urban environments and modes of sociality. What are the political stakes of these intersections between economic informality and urban religion across different religious traditions and urban settings? What theoretical and methodological challenges do they introduce? To what extent do connections between religious subjectivities and modes of commercial activity constitute a continuation or rupture with longstanding patterns of urbanisation across the African continent, particularly with regard to the interface of "formality" and "informality"? This panel encourages contributions that offer empirically-grounded and comparative perspectives on such entanglements across the African continent.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 12 June, 2019, -Paper short abstract:
This paper highlights how, through various 'acts of Malamta', the former Almajirai of Northern Nigeria are able to take advantage of the 'prayer economy' to situate themselves in the urban spaces within which they exist, and to navigate and even thrive amongst its economic precarity.
Paper long abstract:
The Almajiranci system of Qur'anic education in Northern Nigeria, which has become topical in recent times, sees young boys (almajirai) often sent far away from home to live with, and study the Qur'an with a teacher (Malam); which leaves many of them sometimes ending up at the mercy of the streets. It is this condition that makes many Nigerians regard the system as a harmful and retrograde system of education and socialisation, and therefore incompatible with the creation of the modern Nigerian citizenry. The existence of the terrorist organisation 'Boko Haram' has not helped either, as many former Almajirai are assumed to be members of the organisation.
This paper shows how former Almajirai - graduates of these Qur'anic schools, who are now Malamai themselves, utilise several 'acts of Malamta' to present themselves as 'prayer merchants'; thereby not only finding a way of securing their relevance and existence in these spaces, but also serving the spiritual needs of many within the society, who (can) hold both simultaneously noble and degrading stereotypes of them and the education they have undergone.
This relationship unveils an undercurrent of hypocrisy, which reveals a lot about the current mainstream (mis)representations of both almajirai and the Almajiranci system by the postcolonial Nigerian society.
Paper short abstract:
This paper presents Pig feet (trotter) as a marker of interreligious boundary at the Madina Market in Accra
Paper long abstract:
Food is an important element in Madina Zongo, people eat together; and sometimes visit the same market space to either buy food ingredients or already prepared food. This paper highlights how people negotiate their ways through so-called contaminated ingredients/food item and how some ingredients provoke some embodied sensational feelings. I particularly focus on pig feet (trotter) as a marker of interreligious boundary. Pig feet (trotter) predominantly imported to Ghana from Europe is evidently displayed in most markets in the city. My focus here is to present the market space beyond a locus of competition but to explore the roles and sensitivities of its occupants and the people who visit it and how they negotiate their entangled circumstances. Christians, Muslims and to a lesser extent Traditional African practitioners in Madina market share a common space in which they bargain their religious identities and sensitivities. In other words, the presence of ingredients like the pig feet (trotter) plays a key role in the inclusion and exclusion process that results in the "dietary boundaries" which are influenced by religious identities. I use Mary Douglas's work "purity and danger" as a guide as I interact and observe how pig feet (trotter) serves as a medium in boundary-maintaining mechanism among members of the market space and the people who visit the market to buy other ingredients
Paper short abstract:
This paper focuses on the encounters between women of different religious, ethnic and social background in everyday beauty practices. The presentation takes beauty salons in Madina, a multi-religious and multi-ethnic suburb of Accra as an entry point.
Paper long abstract:
In contemporary Ghanaian society beauty is considered from different perspectives-moral, physical, spiritual and sexual-that are intricately linked. Women in Ghana try to enhance their physical beauty in several ways and this has implications for the other dimensions. In so doing, they take into account not only longstanding traditional beauty practices, but also negotiate Christian and Muslim beauty regimes. Interestingly, the beauty practices of Muslim and Christian women partly differ and partly overlap. This paper focuses on the encounters between women of different religious, ethnic and social background in everyday beauty practices. The presentation takes beauty salons in Madina, a multi-religious and multi-ethnic suburb of Accra, as the main entry point into studying beauty practices amongst Christian and Muslim women. The main aim is to examine how physical beauty practices of both Christian and Muslim women bring them together or set them apart in a religiously pluralistic community, and to what extent borrowing and appropriation of beauty practices of the 'other' yield connections or tensions. It also investigates how women are able to negotiate or sometimes compromise their religious identities in order to gain physical beauty. In this regard, Kwame Appiah's concept of "cosmopolitan contamination" which discusses cross cultural influences will provide useful insights for our discussions.