The Nation Form in the Global Age: Ethnographic Perspectives

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Irfan Ahmad, Jie Kang
Springer Nature, Jan 29, 2022 - Social Science - 386 pages

This open access book argues that contrary to dominant approaches that view nationalism as unaffected by globalization or globalization undermining the nation-state, the contemporary world is actually marked by globalization of the nation form. Based on fieldwork in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East and drawing, among others, on Peter van der Veer’s comparative work on religion and nation, it discuss practices of nationalism vis-a-vis migration, rituals of sacrifice and prayer, music, media, e-commerce, Islamophobia, bare life, secularism, literature and atheism. The volume offers new understandings of nationalism in a broader perspective.


The text will appeal to students and researchers interested in nationalism outside of the West, especially those working in anthropology, sociology and history.



 

Contents

1 Introduction Imagining Alternatives to Globalization of the Nation Form
3
2 The Oeuvre of Peter van der Veer
45
Part II India
72
3 On the Impossibility of Atheism in Secular India
73
4 Hindu Nationalism and North Indian Music in the Global Age
99
5 Muslim Bare Life in Contemporary India
127
Part III China
153
6 Rising Becoming Overcoding On Chinese Nationalism in The Wandering Earth
155
9 Moral Labour the Nation and the State in Contemporary China
224
Part IV South Africa and the Middle East
246
10 Race Animal Bodies and Religion Sacrifice Sensory Politics and Public Space in South Africa
247
11 The Rivalry Between Secular and Religious Nationalisms On the Split in Iranian National Identity
273
Part V Asia inand Europe
301
12 Coming of Age in the Secular Republic of Fiction
302
13 Socialization of Language and Morality at Chinese Christian Church of Berlin
329
14 Afterword Reflections on Nationalism
349

7 Nationalism and Chinese Protestant Christianity From Antiimperialism to Islamophobia
175
8 Digital Imaginaries and the Chinese Nation State
203

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About the author (2022)

Irfan Ahmad is currently Professor of Anthropology at the department of Sociology at Ibn Haldun University, Istanbul, Turkey. Prior to this new appointment, Ahmad worked as Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Göttingen, Germany. A political anthropologist, he has taught and done research works at University of Amsterdam and Utrecht University in the Netherlands and Monash University (Melbourne) and Australian Catholic University (Melbourne) in Australia. He is the author, most recently, of Religion As Critique: Islamic Critical Thinking from Mecca to the Marketplace (2017) and editor of Anthropology and Ethnography are Not Equivalent: Reorienting Anthropology for the Future (2021).

Jie Kang is Research Fellow and Project Coordinator for ‘Cultural diversity in South-West China and South-East Asia' and 'Temples, rituals and the transformation of transnational network’ at MPI’s Department of Religious Diversity. She is the author of House Church Christianity in China: From Rural Preachers to City Pastors (2016).

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