This edited volume deploys digital ethnography in varied contexts to explore the cultural roles of mobile apps that focus on religious practice and communities, as well as those used for religious purposes (whether or not they were originally developed for that purpose). Combining analyses of local contexts with insights and methods from the global subfield of digital anthropology, the contributors here recognize the complex ways that in-app and on-ground worlds interact in a wide range of communities and traditions. While some of the case studies emphasize the cultural significance of use in local contexts and relationships to pre-existing knowledge networks and/or non-digital relationships of power, others explore the globalizing and democratizing influences of mobile apps as communication technologies. From Catholic confession apps to Jewish Kaddish assistance apps and Muslim halal food apps, readers will see how religious-themed mobile apps create complex sites for potential new forms of religious expression, worship, discussion, and practices.
Autorentext
Jacqueline H. Fewkes is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the Wilkes Honors College of Florida Atlantic University, USA. Dr. Fewkes is also the author of the books Locating Maldivian Women's Mosques in Global Discourses (2019), and Trade and Contemporary Society along the Silk Road: An Ethno-history of Ladakh (2008).
Inhalt
Chapter 1: Piety in the Pocket: An Introduction1.1 Histories/Contexts
1.2 Blurring Boundaries: Ubiquitous Mobile Apps
1.3 Anthropological Perspectives
1.4 Book Organization
Part I: Community, Contexts, and Practice
Chapter 2: Sufi Remembrance Practices in the Meditation Marketplace of a Mobile App
2.1 Introduction
2.2 A Mobile Meditation Marketplace
2.3 A Meditation Labyrinth: Labeling, Categorizing, and Experimental Encounters
2.4 From Ongrount to In-App, From Dhikr to 'meditation'
2.5 Concluding Reflections
Chapter 3: An Ambivalent Jewishness: Half Shabbos, the Shabbos App, and Modern Orthodoxy
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Contemporary Jewish Movements
3.3 The Sabbath and the "half-Sabbath"
3.4 Modern Orthodoxy and Technology
3.5 A Necessarily Abbreviated Case Study - the Shabbos App
Chapter 4: From Self-Learning Pathshala to Pilgrimage App: Studying the Expanding World of Jain Religious Apps
4.1 Introduction: Jains and digital media
4.2 Sense and method in studying religious apps
4.3 Challenge one: sampling for an app corpus
4.4 Challenge two: structuring the corpus
4.5 Why app? Jain apps in context
4.6 Themes in app development motivation
4.7 Ethnography as reality check
4.8 Ethnography to contextualize Jainn app use
4.9 Concluding thoughts: Towards and anthropology of mobile applications
4.10 Concluding thoughts: On religious apps
4.11 Recommendations
Chapter 5: Latinx Muslims "Like" One Another: An Ethnographic Exploration of Social Media and the Formation of Latinx Muslim Community
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Background, definitions, previous literature, and methodology
5.3 LMFG cosmopolitan identity construction themes
5.4 Everyday piety
5.5 Digital visual culture
5.6 The Latinax Muslim mythos
5.7 The global umma
5.8 Politics
5.9 Conclusion
Part II: Authority, Subjectivity, and Networks of Knowledge
Chapter 6: "Siri is Alligator Halal?": Mobile Apps, Food Practices and Religious Authority in American Muslim Communities
6.1 Methods, or what does a digital ethnographer do?
6.2 Muslims and food practices
6.3 Authority and community in the Muslim American digital context
6.4 Scan Halal, a food finder app case study
6.5 Zabihah, a food site finder app case study
6.6 ConclusionsAnd, is alligator halal?
Chapter 7: iPrayer: catholic Payer Apps and Twenty-first Centry Catholic Subjectivities
7.1 Confession app: lay Catholic authority
7.2 Breads app: rote creativity
7.3 Pray app: Sacred pragmatism
7.4 Conclusion
Chapter 8: Mobile Apps and Religious Processes among Pentecostal Charismatic Christians in Zimbabwe
8.1 The digital and being human: beyond the binary
8.2 OMG's religious-themed mobile applications
8.3 Online religious communities
8.4 Religious communities, identities and personhood
8.5 In-app charisma, authority and surveillance
8.7 Rituals
8.8 Conclusion
Part III: Space, Mobility, and Immateriality
Chapter 9: Medieval "Miracle of Equilibrium" or Contemporary Shrine of "Rock-Hard Faith"?: The Role of Digital media in Guiding Visitors' Experiences of Rocamadour, France
9.1 Introduction
9.2 Landscape and Rocamadour's panorama
9.2 The contested image of Rocamadour
9.4 A portable panorama: Rocamadour in smartphone apps
9.5 Sacralizing the secular
9.6 An online oratory
9.7 Repercussions and conclusions
Chapter 10: Bringing Creation to a Museum near You
10.1 The creation museum model
10.2 Creationism...
