Short Abstract

Pentecostal actors increasingly participate in the production and circulation of cultural forms that impact communities across the continent. This panel explores how Pentecostal cultural forms travel, become localised, and reshape creative practices across different geographical contexts.

Long Abstract

For the past twenty-five years scholars have examined the resurgence of Pentecostalism across the African continent, looking at its impact on politics, media, and identity. This panel resituates this body of work, by asking how Pentecostalism produces, circulates, and transforms culture beyond categories such as belief, doctrine, institutions, and religious practice. Like other cultural formations, Pentecostalism generates shared languages, values, symbols, aesthetics, material practices, and forms of everyday life. These are not simply extensions of religious doctrine; they are learned, performed, circulated, and transformed as Pentecostalism encounters different geographical, cultural, and social environments. The panel therefore asks: What conditions have enabled the emergence and global expansion of Pentecostal culture in, from, and through Africa? How is Pentecostal culture shaped by particular geographies, national cultures, indigenous traditions, migration, and transnational networks? Bringing together perspectives from religious studies, anthropology, media and film studies, cultural studies, geography, and related fields, the panel examines Pentecostalism as a producer of culture rather than simply a religious tradition represented through culture. We are particularly interested in Pentecostalism's growing engagement with the cultural and creative industries. Pentecostal actors increasingly participate in the production and circulation of film, music, television, theatre, literature, fashion, digital media, and visual culture that impact communities across the continent. In exploring these practices, we ask whether Pentecostalism simply appropriates existing cultural infrastructures, or does it generate distinctive creative infrastructures, aesthetics, networks, and economies? We invite papers that explore how Pentecostal cultural forms travel, become localised, and reshape creative practices across different geographical contexts.

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