Law And The Public Sphere In Africa

Download Law And The Public Sphere In Africa full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. Read online Law And The Public Sphere In Africa ebook anywhere anytime directly on your device. Fast Download speed and no annoying ads. We cannot guarantee that every ebooks is available!

Law and the Public Sphere in Africa

Author : Jean Godefroy Bidima
Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 0253011280
Total Pages : 241 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (53 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Law and the Public Sphere in Africa by : Jean Godefroy Bidima

Download or read book Law and the Public Sphere in Africa written by Jean Godefroy Bidima and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2013-12-11 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A pioneering collection of essays that casts “an invigorating light on law, politics, public language and social practice in modern Africa” (Africa). Jean Godefroy Bidima’s La Palabre examines the traditional African institution of palaver as a way to create dialogue and open exchange in an effort to resolve conflict and promote democracy. In the wake of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commissions and the gacaca courts in Rwanda, Bidima offers a compelling model of how to develop an African public space where dialogue can combat misunderstanding. This volume, which includes other essays on legal processes, cultural diversity, memory, and the internet in Africa, offers English-speaking readers the opportunity to become acquainted with a highly original and important postcolonial thinker. “Bidima has done a very important work here which deserves the critical attention of philosophers, political theorists, legal scholars as well the general public.” —Journal of Modern African Studies “Opens promising vistas for legal and political discourse. Its multidisciplinary orientation and the erudition of the author make for a text that has crossover appeal.” —Olúfémi Táíwò, Cornell University “Presents a valuable philosophical argument that will most certainly be of interest to those working on the topics of postconflict justice, peacebuilding, and democratization in Africa.” —African Conflict and Peacebuilding Review

Publics, Politics and Participation

Author : Seteney Shami
Publisher : A Columbia / SSRC Book (Privatization of Risk)
ISBN 13 : 9780979077258
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (772 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Publics, Politics and Participation by : Seteney Shami

Download or read book Publics, Politics and Participation written by Seteney Shami and published by A Columbia / SSRC Book (Privatization of Risk). This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though it is rarely explicitly articulated, many believe that there is no "public" in the Middle East. Scholarship on the Middle East and North Africa almost always engages with politics-a prominent focus of this region-yet the assumed absence of public spaces and fora has led many to think that debate, consensus, and concerted social action are antithetical to the cultural, religious, and national heritage of the region. It is a mistake to exclude the public dimension from the study of processes in this region. Recent studies have demonstrated not only the critical importance of the public in everyday practices of the MENA region, but they have also shown how the term and notion of the public sphere can be used productively to advance understandings of collective life. The first section of this volume offers alternative conceptions of the public sphere through rich and innovative theoretical analysis. Philosophical investigations focus on the role of collective action, the relationship between nationalism and democracy, and the notions of the public employed by socioreligious movements. The second section addresses a wide range of counter-hegemonic discourses and practices that enable the public sphere, such as memoirs, testimonies, strategies of surveillance, the Tehran bazaar, and the movements of migratory workers. The third section provides empirical accounts of the way in which mutual communication through technology has vitally expanded the notion of the public in the MENA region. In conclusion, conflict and resistance are shown to be generative forces in public discourse and debate and in the production of national publics.

Political Communication in Africa

Author : Ayo Olukotun
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 3319486314
Total Pages : 252 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (194 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Political Communication in Africa by : Ayo Olukotun

Download or read book Political Communication in Africa written by Ayo Olukotun and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-02-13 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a comprehensive account of the nature and development of political communication in Africa. In light of the growing number of African states now turning towards democratic rule, as well as the growing utilization of information technologies in Africa, the contributors examine topics such as: the role of social media in politics, strategic political communication, political philosophy and political communication, Habermas in Africa, gender and political communication, image dilemma in Africa, and issues in political communication research in Africa, and identify the frontiers for future research on political communication in Africa.

A Theory of African Constitutionalism

Author : Berihun Adugna Gebeye
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0192646141
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (926 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis A Theory of African Constitutionalism by : Berihun Adugna Gebeye

Download or read book A Theory of African Constitutionalism written by Berihun Adugna Gebeye and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-07-08 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Theory of African Constitutionalism asks and seeks to answer why we need a new theoretical framework for African constitutionalism and how this could offer us better theoretical and practical tools with which to understand, improve, and assess African constitutionalism on its own terms. By locating constitutional studies in Africa within the experiences, interactions, and contestations of power and governance beginning in precolonial times, the book presents the development and transformation of African constitutional systems across time and place, along with the attendant constitutional designs and practices ranging from the nature and operation of the African state to its vertical and horizontal government structures, to its constitutional rights regime. This title offers both a theoretically and comparatively rich, historically and contextually informed, and temporally and spatially extensive account of the nature, travails, and incremental successes of African constitutionalism with detailed case studies from Nigeria, Ethiopia, and South Africa. A Theory of African Constitutionalism provides scholars, policymakers, governments, and constitution builders in Africa and beyond with new insights for reimagining the purpose, substance, and scope of constitutions and constitutionalism.

Epistemologies of the South

Author : Boaventura de Sousa Santos
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317260341
Total Pages : 285 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (172 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Epistemologies of the South by : Boaventura de Sousa Santos

Download or read book Epistemologies of the South written by Boaventura de Sousa Santos and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-11-17 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the concept of 'cognitive injustice': the failure to recognise the different ways of knowing by which people across the globe run their lives and provide meaning to their existence. Boaventura de Sousa Santos shows why global social justice is not possible without global cognitive justice. Santos argues that Western domination has profoundly marginalised knowledge and wisdom that had been in existence in the global South. She contends that today it is imperative to recover and valorize the epistemological diversity of the world. Epistemologies of the South outlines a new kind of bottom-up cosmopolitanism, in which conviviality, solidarity and life triumph against the logic of market-ridden greed and individualism.

Model Law on Access to Information for Africa and other regional instruments: Soft law and human rights in Africa

Author : Ololade Shyllon
Publisher : Pretoria University Law Press
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 268 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Model Law on Access to Information for Africa and other regional instruments: Soft law and human rights in Africa by : Ololade Shyllon

Download or read book Model Law on Access to Information for Africa and other regional instruments: Soft law and human rights in Africa written by Ololade Shyllon and published by Pretoria University Law Press. This book was released on 2018-01-01 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Model Law on Access to Information for Africa and other regional instruments: Soft law and human rights in Africa Edited by Ololade Shyllon 2018 ISBN: 978-1-920538-87-3 Pages: 255 Print version: Available Electronic version: Free PDF available About the publication The adoption in 2013 of the Model Law on Access to Information for Africa by the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights is an important landmark in the increasing elaboration of human rights-related soft law standards in Africa. Although non-binding, the Model Law significantly influenced the access to information landscape on the continent. Since the adoption of the Model Law, the Commission adopted several General Comments. The AU similarly adopted Model Laws such as the African Union Model Law on Internally Displaced Persons in Addressing Internal Displacement in Africa. This collection of essays inquires into the role and impact of soft law standards within the African human rights system and the AU generally. It assesses the extent to which these standards induced compliance, and identifies factors that contribute to generating such compliance. This book is a collection of papers presented at a conference organised by the Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria, with the financial support of the government of Norway, through the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Pretoria. Following the conference, the papers were reviewed and reworked. Table of Contents Acknowledgments Preface Contributors Abbreviations and acronyms PART I: THE MODEL LAW AND ITS INFLUENCE ON ACCESS TO INFORMATION IN AFRICA Introduction Ololade Shyllon The impact of the Model Law on Access to Information for Africa Fola Adeleke Implementing a Model Law on Access to Information in Africa: Lessons from the Americas Marianna Belalba and Alan Sears The implementation of the constitutional right of access to information in Africa: Opportunities and challenges Ololade Shyllon PART II: COUNTRY STUDIES The Model Law on Access to Information for Africa and the struggle for the review and passage of the Ghanaian Right to Information Bill of 2013 Ugonna Ukaigwe The impact of the Model Law on Access to Information for Africa on Kenya’s Access to Information framework Anne Nderi The Sudanese Access to Information Act 2015: A step forward? Ali Abdelrahman Ali Compliance through decoration: Access to information in Zimbabwe Nhlanhla Ngwenya PART III: INFLUENCE OF SOFT LAW WITHIN THE AFRICAN HUMAN RIGHTS SYSTEM Soft law and legitimacy in the African Union: The case of the Pretoria Principles on Ending Mass Atrocities Pursuant to Article 4(h) of the AU Constitutive Act Busingye Kabumba The incorporation of the thematic resolutions of the African Commission into the domestic laws of African countries Japhet Biegon General Comment 1 of the African Commission of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights: A source of norms and standard setting on sexual and reproductive health and rights Ebenezer Durojaye The African Union Model Law on Internally Displaced Persons: A critique Romola Adeola Selected bibliography

World Philosophies

Author : Ninian Smart
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317796888
Total Pages : 577 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (177 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis World Philosophies by : Ninian Smart

Download or read book World Philosophies written by Ninian Smart and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-12-19 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: World Philosophies presents in one volume a superb introduction to all the world’s major philosophical and religious traditions. Covering all corners of the globe, Ninian Smart’s work offers a comprehensive and global philosophical and religious picture. In this revised and expanded second edition, a team of distinguished scholars, assembled by the editor Oliver Leaman, have brought Ninian Smart’s masterpiece up to date for the twenty-first century. Chapters have been revised by experts in the field to include recent philosophical developments, and the book includes a new bibliographic guide to resources in world philosophies. A brand new introduction which celebrates the career and writings of Ninian Smart, and his contribution to the study of world religions, helps set the work in context.

Religion, Law and Security in Africa

Author : M Christian Green
Publisher : AFRICAN SUN MeDIA
ISBN 13 : 1928314422
Total Pages : 406 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (283 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Religion, Law and Security in Africa by : M Christian Green

Download or read book Religion, Law and Security in Africa written by M Christian Green and published by AFRICAN SUN MeDIA. This book was released on 2018-05-16 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Security is a key topic of our time. But how do we understand it? Do law and religion take different views of it? In this fifth volume in the Law and Religion in Africa series, radicalisation, terrorism, blasphemy, hate speech, religious freedom and just war theories rub shoulders with issues of witchcraft, female genital mutilation circumcision, child marriage, displaced communities and additional issues besides. This unique collection of topics is both challenging and inspiring, providing illumination in troubled times, and forming a sound foundation for future scholarship.

Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution

Author : Joan B. Landes
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780801494819
Total Pages : 294 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (948 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution by : Joan B. Landes

Download or read book Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution written by Joan B. Landes and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 1988 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this provocative interdisciplinary essay, Joan B. Landes examines the impact on women of the emergence of a new, bourgeois organization of public life in the eighteenth century. She focuses on France, contrasting the role and representation of women under the Old Regime with their status during and after the Revolution. Basing her work on a wide reading of current historical scholarship, Landes draws on the work of Habermas and his followers, as well as on recent theories of representation, to re-create public-sphere theory from a feminist point of view.Within the extremely personal and patriarchal political culture of Old Regime France, elite women wielded surprising influence and power, both in the court and in salons. Urban women of the artisanal class often worked side by side with men and participated in many public functions. But the Revolution, Landes asserts, relegated women to the home, and created a rigidly gendered, essentially male, bourgeois public sphere. The formal adoption of "universal" rights actually silenced public women by emphasizing bourgeois conceptions of domestic virtue.In the first part of this book, Landes links the change in women's roles to a shift in systems of cultural representation. Under the absolute monarchy of the Old Regime, political culture was represented by the personalized iconic imagery of the father/king. This imagery gave way in bourgeois thought to a more symbolic system of representation based on speech, writing, and the law. Landes traces this change through the art and writing of the period. Using the works of Rousseau and Montesquieu as examples of the passage to the bourgeois theory of the public sphere, she shows how such concepts as universal reason, law, and nature were rooted in an ideologically sanctioned order of gender difference and separate public and private spheres. In the second part of the book, Landes discusses the discourses on women's rights and on women in society authored by Condorcet, Wollstonecraft, Gouges, Tristan, and Comte within the context of these new definitions of the public sphere. Focusing on the period after the execution of the king, she asks who got to be included as "the People" when men and women demanded that liberal and republican principles be carried to their logical conclusion. She examines women's roles in the revolutionary process and relates the birth of modern feminism to the silencing of the politically influential women of the Old Regime court and salon and to women's expulsion from public participation during and after the Revolution.

Media, Geopolitics, and Power

Author : Herman Wasserman
Publisher : University of Illinois Press
ISBN 13 : 0252050282
Total Pages : 319 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (52 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Media, Geopolitics, and Power by : Herman Wasserman

Download or read book Media, Geopolitics, and Power written by Herman Wasserman and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2018-03-01 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The end of apartheid brought South Africa into the global media environment. Outside companies invested in the nation's newspapers while South African conglomerates pursued lucrative tech ventures and communication markets around the world. Many observers viewed the rapid development of South African media as a roadmap from authoritarianism to global modernity. Herman Wasserman analyzes the debates surrounding South Africa's new media presence against the backdrop of rapidly changing geopolitics. His exploration reveals how South African disputes regarding access to, and representation in, the media reflect the domination and inequality in the global communication sphere. Optimists see post-apartheid media as providing a vital space that encourages exchanges of opinion in a young democracy. Critics argue the public sphere mirrors South Africa's past divisions and privileges the viewpoints of the elite. Wasserman delves into the ways these simplistic narratives obscure the country's internal tensions, conflicts, and paradoxes even as he charts the diverse nature of South African entry into the global arena.

Habermas’s Public Sphere

Author : Michael Hofmann
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1611479894
Total Pages : 287 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (114 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Habermas’s Public Sphere by : Michael Hofmann

Download or read book Habermas’s Public Sphere written by Michael Hofmann and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2017-05-24 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Habermas’s Public Sphere: A Critique analyzes the evolution of Juergen Habermas’s social and political theory from the 1950s to the present by focusing on the explicit and on the tacit changes in his thinking about The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, his global academic bestseller, which has been translated into 30 languages. Integrating “public sphere,” “discourse,” and “reason,” the three categories at the center of his lifelong work as a scholar and as a public intellectual, Habermas’s classic public sphere concept has deeply influenced an unusually high number of disciplines in the social sciences and in the humanities. In the process, its complex methodology, whose sources are not always identified, can be perplexing and therefore lead to misunderstandings. While Habermas’s “Further Reflections on the Public Sphere” (1992) contain several far-reaching clarifications, they still do not identify a number of the most important sources for his methodology, above all Herbert Marcuse and Ernst Bloch. Hence, a key purpose of this study is to thoroughly analyze the Marxist critique of ideology that Habermas uses in dialectical fashion for his theory reconstruction of Immanuel Kant’s liberal ideal of a rational-critical public as the organizational principle of the constitutional state and as the method of Enlightenment. Such dialectical thinking allows him to appropriate the structure of Reinhart Koselleck’s Critique and Crisis and of Carl Schmitt’s writings on the modern state while simultaneously upending their conservative critique of Liberalism and of the Enlightenment. However, this strategy restricts the application of his concept to his stylizations of the French Revolution and of his British “model case.” This critique reinvigorates Habermas’s seminal distinction between the purely political polis of antiquity, which excludes the private economy from the res publica, and the modern public sphere with its rational-critical discourse about commodity exchange and social labor in the political economy. At the same time, it identifies the crises of seventeenth-century England and the Dutch Republic as the origins of the new channels of public communication used to constantly evaluate the role of state power as political facilitator and regulator of an increasingly complex, dynamic, and crisis-prone market economy.

Exclusion from Public Space

Author : Daniel Moeckli
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1107154650
Total Pages : 579 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (71 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Exclusion from Public Space by : Daniel Moeckli

Download or read book Exclusion from Public Space written by Daniel Moeckli and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-07-14 with total page 579 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the implications of banning people from public space for the rule of law, fundamental rights, and democracy.

Disrupting Africa

Author : Olufunmilayo B. Arewa
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1009064223
Total Pages : 665 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (9 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Disrupting Africa by : Olufunmilayo B. Arewa

Download or read book Disrupting Africa written by Olufunmilayo B. Arewa and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-07-29 with total page 665 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the digital era, many African countries sit at the crossroads of a potential future that will be shaped by digital-era technologies with existing laws and institutions constructed under conditions of colonial and post-colonial authoritarian rule. In Disrupting Africa, Olufunmilayo B. Arewa examines this intersection and shows how it encompasses existing and new zones of contestation based on ethnicity, religion, region, age, and other sources of division. Arewa highlights specific collisions between the old and the new, including in the 2020 #EndSARS protests in Nigeria, which involved young people engaging with varied digital era technologies who provoked a violent response from rulers threatened by the prospect of political change. In this groundbreaking work, Arewa demonstrates how lawmaking and legal processes during and after colonialism continue to frame contexts in which digital technologies are created, implemented, regulated, and used in Africa today.

Digesting the Public Sphere

Author : Sarah Marusek
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351264508
Total Pages : 241 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (512 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Digesting the Public Sphere by : Sarah Marusek

Download or read book Digesting the Public Sphere written by Sarah Marusek and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-12-07 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the routine spectrum of our lives, we inhabit the public sphere. Whether in the street, the shopping center, or on the bus, we engage with the empowered, the disempowered, the omitted, and the powerful. Within the public sphere, the notion of public involves a complexity of approaches to aspects of everyday practices of power, performance, and place. Through these approaches, that which is public can be visualized, experienced, and contested in the construction, ceremony, and design of buildings, institutions, and daily activities. In a variety of ways, the conceptualization and contextualization of the public contributes to identity formations, narratives of community, and manifestations of the political that materially and discursively transpire within the public sphere in the perceptions of inequality, metaphors for knowledge, and critiques of consciousness. For this volume focused on interpretive methods and methodologies that address the concept of public, we present a lively engagement with methodological insight into the political digestion of the public sphere. We delve into models of and approaches to conducting research, the analysis of findings, and the reaffirmation of enhanced techniques of related inquiry in public spaces. We seek to explore the following questions: What is the public? How do we visualize/understand/experience the public? What are the ways in which these insights connect to articulations of citizenship and democracy? How is the public implicated in the political? The chapters originally published as a special issue in Space and Polity.

African Media and the Digital Public Sphere

Author : O. Mudhai
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 0230621759
Total Pages : 269 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (36 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis African Media and the Digital Public Sphere by : O. Mudhai

Download or read book African Media and the Digital Public Sphere written by O. Mudhai and published by Springer. This book was released on 2009-05-25 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the claims that new information and communication technologies (ICTs) are catalysts of democratic change in Africa. It takes optimist, pragmatist-realist and pessimist stances on various political actors and institutions, from government units and political parties to civil society organizations and minority groups.

The Public Sphere From Outside the West

Author : Divya Dwivedi
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1472571924
Total Pages : 394 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (725 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Public Sphere From Outside the West by : Divya Dwivedi

Download or read book The Public Sphere From Outside the West written by Divya Dwivedi and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-09-24 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Public Sphere from Outside the West brings together established and emerging new voices from philosophy, literature, anthropology, history, migration studies and information technology to address the present reality of the public sphere. In the age where everyone is in the public and everything is visible, this volume creates a delay in which the internet of things, mass surveillance and social media are asked “What is/not the Public?” The essays bring to attention the formation of geo-politically and historically distinct public spheres from South Africa, India, America and Europe. Such formations are found not only in the postcolonial histories of print, photography, cinema and caricature but also those underway in the digital era, such as the Arab Spring, Occupy movements and Anonymous. Through critical engagement with philosophers such as Kant, Heidegger, Benjamin, Habermas and Arendt , the determining concepts of the Public Sphere-privacy, secrecy, reason, the people-are shown to be undergoing epistemological and practical ruptures. Demonstrating the necessity of these considerations to understand the world public that is rapidly transforming this concept in radical ways through technologies today, this is the first collection on the subject to feature an impressive range of international thinkers. Global and timely in outlook, it breaks new ground and changes our way of looking at politics in the 21st century.

Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

Author : Birgit Meyer
Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780253111722
Total Pages : 342 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (117 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere by : Birgit Meyer

Download or read book Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere written by Birgit Meyer and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2005-12-01 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "... one of those rare edited volumes that advances social thought as it provides substantive religious and media ethnography that is good to think with." -- Dale Eickelman, Dartmouth College Increasingly, Pentecostal, Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, and indigenous movements all over the world make use of a great variety of modern mass media, both print and electronic. Through religious booklets, radio broadcasts, cassette tapes, television talk-shows, soap operas, and documentary film these movements address multiple publics and offer alternative forms of belonging, often in competition with the postcolonial nation-state. How have new practices of religious mediation transformed the public sphere? How has the adoption of new media impinged on religious experiences and notions of religious authority? Has neo-liberalism engendered a blurring of the boundaries between religion and entertainment? The vivid essays in this interdisciplinary volume combine rich empirical detail with theoretical reflection, offering new perspectives on a variety of media, genres, and religions.