New Media and Religious Transformations in Africa [Hardcover]

New Media and Religious Transformations in Africacasts a critical look at Africa's rapidly evolving religious media scene. Following political liberalization, media deregulation, and the proliferation of new media technologies, many African religious leaders and activists have appropriated such media to strengthen and expand their communities and gain public recognition. Media have also been used to marginalize and restrict the activities of other groups, which has sometimes led to tension, conflict, and even violence. Showing how media are rarely neutral vehicles of expression, the contributors to this multidisciplinary volume analyze the mutual imbrications of media and religion during times of rapid technological and social change in various places throughout Africa.

Rosalind I. J. Hackett is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She is editor ofDisplacing the State: Religion and Conflict in Neoliberal Africa. She is President of the International Association for the History of Religions.

Benjamin F. Soares is an anthropologist and Chair of the research staff at the Afrika-Studiecentrum in Leiden, The Netherlands. He is author ofIslam and the Prayer Economy: History and Authority in a Malian Town.

These empirical case studies, drawn from diverse indigenous, Islamic, Christian and neotraditional religions and multiple kinds of media technologies, are a must-read for academics and graduate students in the social sciences and humanities and for non-academic readers interested in changing social trends in Africa.

[This] volume is an engaging and innovative contribution to scholarly work on religion, media, and politics, and an effective critique of the concept of the public sphere as an a-religious or secular zone.

It is to be expected that in such a dynamic situation, with rapid changes taking place in media technologies and their applications globally, changes in relilÓ"