Soil, Space and Place: Sacralizing New Nationalisms and Senses of Belonging
“Entangled Worlds: Sovereignty, Sanctities and Soil” aims to address issues relating to new populisms, sanctity and soil, the changing nature of theopolitical charisma, and the sacralization of new and old forms of sovereignty. The “Soil, Space and Place” Workshop is the second of four workshops, that will be held throughout 2018 – 2020.
Discussions from our Entangled Worlds Workshops and Lectures thus far have demonstrated the analytical difficulties of keeping religion and politics apart, especially if we wish to understand not only how religious discourses can provide important resources for constructive political engagement, but also how we might frame interventions that address new forms of populism and their theological and spatial forms of violence.
If we disrupt hegemonic understandings of sovereignty and notions of theopolitics that draw exclusively from Judeo-Christian traditions, we might be able to put in better focus what types of faith are disinterred in current forms of economic domination and disruption. Such domination and disruption may be “global” but they are also are “ensoiled.” In making this latter point, we ask whether exploring tensions between land and soil as categories can be productive? Can these two terms be distinguished in terms of how they relate not only to the theopolitical, but also to questions of governmentality, law, justice, forms of extraction, constructions of mythology, infrastructure, and dominion?
If examining sovereignty requires us to think through ways in which land and soil relate to the establishment and maintenance of authority, and if
expressions of both state sovereignty and charisma are often intrinsic to the management of difference, we also need to de-colonize Weber’s theory of charisma (for example through the complex history of Caliphates and the like). Our workshop provides us with an excellent opportunity to think together as we reconsider messianic and prophetic impulses—their aesthetic and borderland qualities and their domestication with and beyond the state, land, and soil.
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When: Thursday 19th of September (1:30pm-5:30pm), Friday 20th of January (9am-1:00pm)
Where: Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy; Boardroom – 315 Bloor St W
Speakers include (see poster attached):
Ali-Reza Bhojani (Anthropology, Oxford); Gilberto Rosas (Anthropology, Illinois U-C); Judith Brunton (Department for the Study of Religion, UofT); Katharyne Mitchell (Sociology; UC Santa Cruz); Konrad Pędziwiatr (European Studies, Cracow); Mayra Rivera (Religion and Latinx Studies, Harvard); Neena Mahadev (Anthropology, Yale-NUS College); Rebecca Bryant (Anthropology, Utrecht).
Commentators include: Filippo Osella (Anthropology, Sussex); Girish Daswani (Anthropology, UofT); Emily Gilbert (Geography, UofT); and other UofT Faculty.
Click Here For the Full Schedule of the Workshop
For further information, please email: entangledworlds.anthropology@utoronto.ca