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HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

This article weaves together major lines of inquiry in the anthropology of Christianity and Islam to consider how to approach and think about transcendence within anthropology at large. It does so by exploring one particular kind of Muslim ontology and…

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

This article examines Qurʾānic recitation as a modality of divine presence among Bā ʿAlawī Sufis in Tarīm (Yemen) and Jakarta (Indonesia). It engages with Sufi ontologies that have shaped Bā ʿAlawīs’ understanding of Qurʾānic recitation as capable of e…

Because of the difficulty anthropology continues to face in relinquishing its secular vestiges, field encounters with not-immediately-perceptible reality, the realm of God, the invisible, and the otherworldly have usually been removed or deemed insigni…

This article examines dream practices among a Sufi community in present-day Afghanistan. The main argument revolves around the question of how preparing for, expecting, and communally negotiating the veracity of dreams stands in a process of individual…

Drawing on fieldwork among older Kyrgyz people who become old in the absence of their relatives, this paper explores the afterlife as a horizon of possibility which intersects with the everyday in ways that collapse distinctions between the transcenden…

Here we introduce a special section that spans this and the next issue of Hau. The articles in the section focus on home and home-making and all that this entails for Muslims who have left their homes or cannot be fully at home in their home places. Ac…

Drawing on fieldwork in a Bashkir Sufi circle in Russia, this article explores my interlocutors’ mode of experiencing the world and transcendence. By letting myself be seen in the field, I let them shape the terms of our encounter as a way of glimpsing…

Engaging with contemporary literature on migration and home-making, in this article I examine Salafi concepts of home and its relationship to the idea of nation-state. I discuss how Salafism, a transnational Islamic proselytizing movement, strives to c…

The Egyptian communities in Milan are among the oldest and largest migrant communities in Italy, their history dating back to the 1970s. Following in-depth ethnographic research, this article explores their members’ representations and understandings o…

This article examines the networks of charity developed by Muslims to discuss community-making in Portugal. Giving allows donors to create affective and moral spaces of communal life with recipients of aid that move beyond the ethical and pious dimensi…

How do people make themselves at home in situations of movement, dispersal, and marginalization? Migration scholars have destabilized the idea that a home is bound to a dwelling, and developed more processual ways of conceptualizing home. In this artic…

This article explores the polyvocal and inherently contested arena of Palestinianness as a moral place of belonging, for which I suggest the term “home” as an anthropological category denoting affective places of belonging for a given social group. Thi…

In this afterword, I consider the important contributions this special section makes to the study of the relations between immanence, transcendence, and mediation in the study of Islam and religion more generally, and the dialogue it opens up with the …

Artists in eastern Africa use songs, poems, fiction, cartoons, and other artistic forms to explore their lived experiences and future possibilities. Through their art they can envision alternatives to their current experiences, contest social and polit…

This paper examines the cartoons of Marco Tibasima, which portray the education system of Tanzania as dysfunctional and heading towards a bleak future. Through cartoons published in Habari Leo, NGO booklets, and on his blog, Tibasima provides a diagnos…

In February 2017, a poem titled “Muddici” (‘Plaintiff’) by Hargeysa-based poet Weedhsame went viral on social media. The poem accused members of Somaliland’s government of corruption and quickly elicited a series of supporting and opposing responses. T…

The autobiography of Nicco ye Mbajo (1950–2021) provides insight into the life of an artist and his experiences as a cultural producer in Tanzania from independence to recent times. Belonging to the first generation of modern cultural producers, Mbajo …

Through the example of migrants staying at the Kakuma Refugee Camp in north-western Kenya, I show what art consumption and production means for people living in marginalised and restricted places in East Africa. With its 30 years of existence Kakuma re…