Users of contemporary media technology in religious settings often oscillate between immediacy in spiritual interaction and the increasing complexity and visibility of media technology as human artifacts. Drawing on approaches to mediation from philosophy and media theory, I examine Mauritian Muslims’ uses of sound reproduction in performing a d…[Read more]

This essay discusses anthropological approaches to the study of media interacting with contexts of ethnic and religious diversity. The main argument is that not only issues of access to and exclusion from public spheres are relevant for an understanding of media and pluralism. Background assumptions and ideologies about media technologies and…[Read more]

In this article I suggest that the rapidly growing interest in the intersection of linguistic anthropology and media needs to be accompanied by a deeper investigation of the mediality of language. Discussing Mauritian Muslims’ uses of sound reproduction in religious events revolving around the recitation of devotional poetry, this paper explores h…[Read more]

This review addresses recent work on media practices in situations of religious diversity. I hereby distinguish three approaches in this literature: the media politics of diversity, religious diversity and the public sphere, and the diversity of religious mediations. Whereas the first focuses on the control of representations of religious…[Read more]

Introductory article to a section on changing media and religious renegotiations

In this contribution, I critically engage with the notion of the postsecular through the lens of religious mobilizations among Muslims in Mauritius and in Mumbai. Religious activism among Sunnis in Mauritius and Shi‘ites in Mumbai conforms to a trend of increasingly salient public religion in the world today that has led to widespread doubting o…[Read more]

In this article, I approach regimes of time as a medial question, examining the interplay of different temporalities in ritual and media practices among Hindus in Mauritius and Twelver Shi’ite Muslims in Mumbai. These interactions consist of fluctuations between modernist linear modes of time and suspensions of the distinctions of past, present, a…[Read more]

The chapter analyzes the intertwining of urban aspirations driving migration to the megacity with religious media practices. Against the backdrop of a global megacity, contemporary Twelver Shi‘ite religious activism in Mumbai provides evidence of the importance of global processes of religious mobilization. In the present-day world many people a…[Read more]

Drawing on ethnographic research on Muslim devotional practices in Mauritius, this chapter investigates material aspects of discourse circulation in religious settings, above all vocalization and transduction. I pay attention to the role Mauritian Muslims ascribe to sound reproduction technologies in safeguarding what they regard as the authentic…[Read more]

The great urban diversity of Mumbai has given rise to a range of religious mobilizations that are not only shaped by a history of communalism along religious lines but also driven by intra-religious rivalry and competition in their urban environment. Against the back- drop of a global megacity, contemporary Shi‘ite religious activism in Mumbai p…[Read more]

This article proposes a rethinking of religion and mediatization by differentiating between two intersections of religion and media, public religion and religious mediation. I argue that whenever religious change that can be usefully described as mediatization occurs it can best be captured as an effect resulting from the interaction of these two…[Read more]

In the United States, most middle-class listeners often have passive contact with bossa nova. In recent decades, this contact is often in the context of restaurants, bars, and increasingly in spaces more directly affiliated with commerce such as clothing stores, coffee shops, and bookstores. As common as bossa nova and other Brazilian musical…[Read more]

This chapter examines the role of independent labels in mobile music consumption and distribution in Brazil. It explains the division between independent and major labels and their relationship with digital consolidation services, and it discusses the role of iMúsica as one of the main mobile content aggregators for the major and independent…[Read more]

Ever since appearing in Disney’s Saludos Amigos (1942), Ary Barroso’s musical ode to the Brazilian motherland, “Brazil,” is among the most recognizable songs circulating in Western Culture about Brazil. This essay shows how the song became detached from its roots as a nationalist samba to represent in audiovisual media such divergent ideas as tro…[Read more]