Anthropological Perspectives on the Religious Uses of Mobile Apps

ISBN-13: 9783030263751 / Angielski / Twarda / 2019 / 248 str.

Jacqueline H. Fewkes

Spis treści

Chapter 1: Piety in the Pocket: An Introduction

1.1 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 Conclusions—And, 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, museums, and the quest for cultural reproduction

10.3 In the museum

10.4 On the Creation Trail

10.5 Auditing the museum

10.6 Conclusion

Chapter 11: The JW Library App, Jehovah's Witness Technological Change, and Ethical Object-Formation

11.1 Introduction

11.2 "Living a spiritual life," ethical subject-formation, and extending the ethical object

11.3 Watch Tower artifacts and ethical object-formation

11.4 Changing views towards ICTs: From an "educationally valuable but sexually deviant cesspool" to using ww.jw.org/ in Christ's way

11.5 A brief overview of the JW LIbrary mobile App

11.6 The Daily Text: JW Library as a technology of ethical subject-formation

11.7 Spiritual haptics: JW Library as a technology of ethical object-formation

11.8 conclusion: The medium is the morality

O autorze

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).

Blurb

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.