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]

A religious sect now defies the strongest political party in Turkey. There must be a reason for this alarming self-confidence. Is it rooted in history; that is, does the sect have a long heritage? Not really -it is a movement that started to take shape in the 1970s. What about economic clout? Well, sort of; but in a country where each transaction…[Read more]

regulations for the workers’ safety, the inspection responsibilities as well as the authority of the state in the workplace have been privatized. Therefore, a group of families who lost their relatives in workplace accidents started a movement (the Watch for Conscience and Justice) requesting the public to monitor accidents and related legal r…[Read more]

A paper published in the Vangelis Kechriotis special issue of Toplumsal Tarih (August 2016, no: 272). Edited by Ece Zerman.

“Tarihçi Kechriotis’in Tarihini Yazmak: Bir Başlangıç, Bir Deneme” (Writing the History of Kechriotis, the Historian: A Beginning, an Essay). Toplumsal Tarih 272 (August 2016): 54-56.

Tarihçi Vangelis Kechriot…[Read more]

Kentel, K. (2017). Charles King. Midnight at the Pera Palace: The Birth of Modern Istanbul. New York: W.W. Norton, 2014, xiv 476 pages. New Perspectives on Turkey, 57, 146-150. doi:10.1017/npt.2017.34

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]