Transnational Transcendence

This innovative collection examines the transnational movements, effects, and transformations of religion in the contemporary world, offering a fresh perspective on the interrelation between globalization and religion. Transnational Transcendence challenges some widely accepted ideas about this relationship—in particular, that globalization can be understood solely as an economic phenomenon and that its religious manifestations are secondary. The book points out that religion's role remains understudied and undertheorized as an element in debates about globalization, and it raises questions about how and why certain forms of religious practice and intersubjectivity succeed as they cross national and cultural boundaries. Framed by Thomas J. Csordas's introduction, this timely volume both urges further development of a theory of religion and globalization and constitutes an important step toward that theory.


This innovative collection examines the transnational movements, effects, and transformations of religion in the contemporary world, offering a fresh perspective on the interrelation between globalization and religion. Transnational Transcendence c

Thomas J. Csordas is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of Language, Charisma, and Creativity; The Sacred Self; and Body/Meaning/Healing, as well as editor of Embodiment and Experience.

List of Illustrations
Introduction: Modalities of Transnational Transcendence
Thomas J. Csordas

1. Missionization in the Postcolonial World: A View from Brazil and Elsewhere
Otávio Velho

2. Is the Trans- in Transnational the Trans- in Transcendent? On Alterity and the Sacred in the Age of Globalization
Joel Robbins

3. Global Religion and the Reenchantment of the World: The Case of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal
Thomas J. Csordas

4. Veiled Missionaries and Embattled Christians in Colonial Sudan
Janice Boddy

5. Beyond Integration and Recognition: Diasporic Constructions of Alevi Muslim Identity between Germany and Turkey
Esra Özyürek

6. The Burning: Finitude and the Political-Theological Imagination of Illegal Migration
Stefania Pandolfo

7. Trajectories, Frontiers, and Reparations in the Expansion of Santo Daime to Europe
Alberto Groisman

8. The Orisha Atlantic: Historicizing the Roots of a Global Religion
Peter F. Cohen

9. The Many Who Dance in Me: Afro-Atlantic Ontology and the Problem with ""Transnationalism""
J. Lorand Matory

10. Global Breathing: Religious Utopias in India and China
Peter van der Veer

11. The Return Path: Anthropology of a Western Yogi
Kathinka Froystad

12. The Global Reach of Gods and the Travels of Korean Shamans
Laurel Kendall

Contributors
Index