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]

Review of Peter Sloterdijk’s ‘Globes’ for the Sydney Review of Books.

The trajectories of the commercial imperative and of cultural production are at best orthogonal. Publishers who care about literature as an end in itself are tacking into the wind, attempting to nurture aesthetic value using methods designed to generate monetary value. This informal pact is threatened by economic rationalisation, under pressure…[Read more]

A series of blog posts written for the Southerly blog while travelling from Germany to Romania down the Danube in 2014.

Series introduction to New Trad literary journal, dedicated to new poems that make use of archaic forms.