Ethical infrastructure: Halal and the ecology of askesis in Muslim Russia

This article explores the ecology of late-modern askesis through the concept of ‘ethical infrastructure’: the array of goods, locales, technologies, procedures, and sundry pieces of equipment upon which the possibility of ethicists’ striving is premised. By looking at the ethnographic case of halal living among Muslim pietists in post-Soviet Tatarstan (Russia), I advance a framework that highlights the ‘profane’, often unassuming or religiously unmarked, yet essential material scaffolding constituting the ‘material conditions of possibility’ for pious life in the lifeworld of late modernity. Halalness is conceptualised not as an inherent quality of a clearly defined set of things, but as a (sometimes complicated) relationship between humans, ethical intentionality, and infrastructurally organised habitats. Pointing beyond the case of halal, this article syncretises theories of self-cultivation, material religion, ethical consumption, and infrastructure to address current lacunas and explore fresh theoretical and methodological ground. This ‘ethical infrastructure’ framework enables us to conceptualise the embeddedness of contemporary ethicists in complex environments and the process by which processes of inner self-fashioning change and are changed by material worlds.

Introduction

By combining the study of early modern everyday religion and the study of material culture, new light is shed on daily religious beliefs, practices, and identities. This chapter examines what the material record discloses about everyday religion in the light of new theoretical developments in material culture studies and studies of material religion in anthropology and sociology. It sets out how detailed, qualitative analysis of inventories and objects provides access to the inner devotional lives of Prague burghers. The analysis is embedded in a broader discourse of religion and material culture across the early modern world. It situates the study in a wider context by comparing and contrasting seventeenth-century Prague to milieus elsewhere in Europe.

Rosaries and Statues: Mediating Divine Intervention in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea

In the Autonomous Region of Bougainville (ARoB) in Papua New Guinea, the changes of Vatican II led to significant Church reform, creating “Liklik Kristen Komuniti” (small Christian communities) that gave more responsibility to the laity. Moreover, as elsewhere in the world, Charismatic Catholicism was introduced and embraced. At the same time, private devotions, and in particular devotions to Mary, became immensely popular and powerful in Bougainville. This is partly due to the Bougainville crisis (1988–1998), which caused immense suffering, but also triggered a surge in popular devotions as people looked for spiritual guidance to deal with the hardships of the crisis. This paper shows how in the context of social and economic upheaval, charismatic popular devotions became increasingly influential with rosaries and statues becoming important mediums in facilitating healing and socio-political renewal. This shows the strength of popular devotions and the importance of material religion in particular. It also elucidates how popular devotions in Bougainville are part of global Catholic developments, as well as transnational practices that place Mary in the center of devotional practices.

“They have no taste in Morocco.” Home furnishing, belonging, and notions of religious (im)perfection among white Dutch and Flemish converts in Morocco

This article focuses on furnishing practices in the domestic space of the homes of white Flemish and Dutch Muslim female converts to Islam who made hijra (Islamic migration) to Morocco. Fed up with European Islamophobia and longing for a place that supports and strengthens their faith, they decided to emigrate to a Muslim country. However, remarkably, once settled in Morocco, many experience discontent with regard to a perceived “lack of true Islam” in the country. To gain insight into the positions and experiences of these women, I look at how they create a sense of belonging through furnishing practices in the domestic space of their new homes. I am interested in how various senses of belonging are expressed and come together in relation to their construction of religious belonging and place, and are renegotiated through domestic decoration practices. Building on literature on home, transnational migration, conversion, and material religion, I demonstrate that mechanisms of distinction and notions of religious (im)perfection intersect in the organization of the domestic space. Based on ethnographic accounts, I argue that my interlocutors bring a “culturalized” West-European Islam to Morocco, with tastes and sensibilities that jostle uneasily against local Moroccan religious practices but also allows them to repair some of the privileges they lost upon their conversion in their homeland. Lastly, this article shows that it is through the engagement with mundane material forms, but also with absence and empty spaces, that Islam becomes present in their domestic spaces, enhancing the cultivation of their ethical selves.

Matter Nature “Matters” Ultimately: A Material Ecological Reflection on Psalm 65

Modern insights in philosophy, anthropology, psychology, communication studies, religion studies and art history (to name but a few), exemplify the so-called material turn in the study of religion, of how matter “matters,” even ultimately. Contributions in the recently founded journal, Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief, highlight these insights. Humans animate material “things” (e.g., land, nature, temples, shrines) with meaning, and they in turn become “agents” to mediate the meaningful world they stand for. Humans and matter become co-constitutive in this dynamic. Our senses and sensibilities play a crucial role in this “world making” endeavour, when interacting with the material world around us. Ecological hermeneutics concurs, regarding Earth as a “subject” in her own right. This study found that an ancient poem, Psalm 65, resonates with these modern insights. The psalm expresses a skilful interconnectedness in its composition, but moreover, it interconnects temple(-goers; vv. 2–5), the orderly cosmos (vv. 6–9) and the fertile land (vv. 10–14) in unified and thankful song towards their creator and sustainer. The sensual experience of the “goodness” in the temple in Zion, the awe-inspiring cosmos, and the “goodness” of the fertile land, realises this “world of bliss.”