Ordinary Lives and Grand Schemes

Everyday practice of religion is complex in its nature, ambivalent and at times contradictory. The task of an anthropology of religious practice is therefore precisely to see how people navigate and make sense of that complexity, and what the significance of religious beliefs and practices in a given setting can be. Rather than putting everyday practice and normative doctrine on different analytical planes, the authors argue that the articulation of religious doctrine is also an everyday practice and must be understood as such.

Everyday practice of religion is complex in its nature, ambivalent and at times contradictory. The task of an anthropology of religious practice is therefore precisely to see how people navigate and make sense of that complexity, and what the significance of religious beliefs and practices in a given setting can be. Rather than putting everyday practice and normative doctrine on different analytical planes, the authors argue that the articulation of religious doctrine is also an everyday practice and must be understood as such.

Introduction
Samuli Schielke and Liza Debevec

Chapter 1. Divination and Islam: Existential Perspectives in the Study of Ritual and Religious Praxis in Senegal and Gambia
Knut Graw

Chapter 2. Postponing Piety in Urban Burkina Faso: Discussing Ideas on When to Start Acting as a Pious Muslim
Liza Debevec

Chapter 3. Everyday Religion, Ambiguity and Homosocial Relationships in Manitoba, Canada from 1911 to 1949
Alison R. Marshall

Chapter 4. ‘Doing Things Properly’: Religious Aspects in Everyday Sociality in Apiao, Chiloé
Giovanna Bacchiddu

Chapter 5. The Ordinary within the Extraordinary: Sainthood Making and Everyday Religious Practice in Lesvos, Greece
Séverine Rey

Chapter 6. Say a Little Hallo to Padre Pio: Production and Consumption of Space in the Construction of the Sacred at the Shrine of Santa Maria delle Grazie
Evgenia Mesaritou

Chapter 7. Going to the Mulid: Street-smart Spirituality in Egypt
Jennifer Peterson

Chapter 8. Capitalist Ethics and the Spirit of Islamization in Egypt
Samuli Schielke

Afterword: Everyday Religion and the Contemporary World: The Un-Modern, or What Was Supposed to Have Disappeared but Did Not
Robert A. Orsi

Notes on Contributors
Bibliography
Index