Anthropology of Religion - Detailseite

Bitte beachten: Prüfungen werden nur im 1. Prüfungszeitraum abgenommen.

This seminar is a broad introduction to the anthropology of religion with a sustained focus on coloniality and power. Although it may seem self-evident, scholars have long struggled with the question of what religion is. Starting from this question – and how different anthropologists have answered it across the discipline’s historical development – we will examine a range of examples to explore where and how anthropologists “see” religion. We will read and discuss critical texts to interrogate how defining religion can function as an exercise of colonial power, underpinning projects related to secularism, gender, sexuality and race.

One of the main objectives of the course is to ethnographically approach religion in students’ everyday lives. Despite the discourse of Europe as a secular space and the decline of religion, religion continues to shape lived realities in Europe and Germany – from the church tax to the differential treatment of religious minorities. Students will bring in examples from news articles, series, exhibitions, films, podcasts, or their own experiences to relate each week’s readings to contemporary ethnographic encounters.

Together, we will critically unpack concepts such as belief, ritual, interiority, and spirituality—examining what they reveal, and what they obscure, about religious life.

Asad, Talal. 1993. Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. JHU Press.

Beliso-De Jesús, Aisha M. 2015. Electric Santería: Racial and Sexual Assemblages of Transnational Religion. New York: Columbia University Press.

Bender, Courtney. 2010. The New Metaphysicals: Spirituality and the American Religious Imagination. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

Covington-Ward, Yolanda, and Jeanette Selma Jouili. 2021. Embodying Black Religions in Africa and Its Diasporas. Religious Cultures of African and African Diaspora People. Durham (N.C.): Duke University press.

Durkheim, Emile. 1995. Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Translated by Karen E. Fields. New York: Free Press.

Engelke, Matthew. 2002. “The Problem of Belief: Evans–Pritchard and Victor Turner on ‘the Inner Life.’” Anthropology Today 18 (6): 3–8. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8322.00146.

Geertz, Clifford. 1973. “Religion as a Cultural System.” In The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books.

Hurston, Zora. 1931. “Hoodoo in America.” The Journal of American Folklore 44 (174): 317. https://doi.org/10.2307/535394.

Kasmani, Omar. 2022. Queer Companions: Religion, Public Intimacy, and Saintly Affects in Pakistan. Durham: Duke University Press.

Luhrmann, T. M. 2012. “A Hyperreal God and Modern Belief: Toward an Anthropological Theory of Mind.” Current Anthropology 53 (4): 371–95. https://doi.org/10.1086/666529.

Mahmood, Saba. 2001. “Feminist Theory, Embodiment, and the Docile Agent: Some Reflections on the Egyptian Islamic Revival.” Cultural Anthropology 16 (2): 202–36. https://doi.org/10.1525/can.2001.16.2.202.

Masuzawa, Tomoko. 2005. The Invention of World Religions, or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Oliphant, Elayne. 2020. The Privilege of Being Banal: Art, Secularism, and Catholicism in Paris. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Özyürek, Esra. 2023. Subcontractors of Guilt: Holocaust Memory and Muslim Belonging in Postwar Germany. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Quack, Johannes. 2011. Disenchanting India: Organized Rationalism and Criticism of Religion in India. New York: Oxford University Press.

Rau, Vanessa. 2025. Becoming Jewish in Berlin: Ethnography of an Urban Scene. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag.

Settler, Federico G. 2018. “Race and Materiality in African Religious Contexts.” Journal for the Study of Religion 31 (2): 36–56.

Turner, Victor. 1967. The Forest of Symbols. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.