Traveling Spirits Migrants, Markets and Mobilities [Hardcover]

Maintaining and forging religious networks across borders have long been part of migrants' activities. However, due to the wide availability of communication technologies and the reduced costs of transportation, transnational social practices, including religious activities, have witnessed an enormous intensification in the last few decades around the world.

Traveling Spiritsseeks to understand these processes by investigating how religion goes global. How do religious agents create and maintain transborder connections? In what way are religious practices being transformed, reinforced or newly invented when transported to different places around the world? How are power relations negotiated within transnational religious networks? How are processes of coming and going linked to religious practices and discourses?

The books contributors provide rich ethnographic case studies on mobile evangelists, moving spirit mediums, and traveling believers. They analyze the relationship between global, regional, national, local and individual religious processes by centering on economic activities, media representations, or politics of emplacement.

Grounded firmly in cross-cultural comparison, this book contributes significantly to the literature on globalization, migration and transnational religion.

Introduction  Gertrud H?welmeier and Kristine Krause  1. Traveling Spirits: Unconcealment and Undisplacement  Michael Lambek  2. Haunted by Spirits: Balancing Religious Commitment and Moral Obligations in Haitian Transnational Social Fields  Heike Drotbohm  3. Spirited Migrations: The Travels of Len Dong Spirits and Their Mediums  Karen Fjelstad  4. Ghanaian Pentecostal Prophets: Transnational Travel and (Im-)Mobility  Girish Daswani  5. Religious Melƒ0