Kathryn Lofton’s new book on Oprah Winfrey sparkles with coruscating turns of phrase and often glittering analysis of American religion and consumer culture. “Oprah is an instance of American astonishment...
insta---batmanapollo
here & there ![]()
by Jake Alter
The Son of Sam’s evangelical following
...deplore his murderous past, have become friends, acquaintances and in some instances a kind of ad hoc set of assistants. This circle of admirers, to a great degree, is made...
Beyond critique ![]()
by Katerina Dalacoura
The secular in non-Western societies
The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and the wider Islamist movement of which it is an instance, are in many ways a secular phenomenon. If we define “secularity” not only as...
Beyond Religious Freedom ![]()
by Elizabeth Shakman Hurd
Beyond Religious Freedom—An introduction
...practices, and institutions that cannot be reduced to either of those two sides. And yet, so many contemporary governmental efforts depend on a particular instantiation of that binary to “solve”...
Antiblackness as religion: Black living, Black dying, and Covid-19
Bearing witness to testimonies of antiblackness
Essays ![]()
by Nicolas Guilhot
Secularism, realism, and international relations
...different from the interest-maximizing state upon which the traditional concepts and theories of international politics are premised (see for instance the recent comments of James Woolsey on that matter). And...
off the cuff ![]()
by Veena Das, Sumit Ganguly, William R. Pinch, Vijay Prashad, Arvind Rajagopal, Anupama Rao, Tariq Thachil and Arafaat A. Valiani
Mumbai revisited
...human rights groups, and especially lawyers, who ensured that even in the reinstated POTA, confessions obtained in police custody are not usable as evidence. The second error that is implicit...
Islam and the Secular State ![]()
by Joel S. Migdal
Disentangling Islam and the post-colonial state
...moved, she notes, from an instance-based, judge-centered and uncodified legal system, which set out to legislate all areas of Muslim life, to become a codified, state-centered, family and personal law—a...