Religious infrastructuring in Ghana: the aesthetics and politics of infrastructural augmentation in Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity and the Indigenous Religious Tradition
This contribution explores the ‘infrastructuring’ of religious sites and practices in Ghana’s Ashanti region, particularly in Pentecostal-Charismatic Christian (PCC) churches and Indigenous Religious Traditions (IRTs). By ‘infrastructuring’, I mean the purposeful complexification and augmentation of...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
2024
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| In: |
Religion, state & society
Year: 2024, Volume: 52, Issue: 2/3, Pages: 158–175 |
| Further subjects: | B
Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity
B religion in Ghana B Aesthetics B indigenous religion(s) B Infrastructuring |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | This contribution explores the ‘infrastructuring’ of religious sites and practices in Ghana’s Ashanti region, particularly in Pentecostal-Charismatic Christian (PCC) churches and Indigenous Religious Traditions (IRTs). By ‘infrastructuring’, I mean the purposeful complexification and augmentation of infrastructural arrangements encompassing both material (physical) and immaterial (organisational, communicative) dimensions. The first part explores a PCC case study, Prophet Boateng’s Power Chapel Worldwide (PCWW), investigating the aesthetic, economic, and political implications of infrastructuring Pentecostalism. The second part, which is a novel addition to the discourse, focuses on the emergence and expansion of heavily infrastructured IRT shrines and practices through the case of Kↄmfoↄ Oforiwaa’s shrine. I argue that the aesthetic operations performed by religiously configured buildings can help generate assemblages of people, aspirations, and meanings constituting more comprehensive economic and political processes. |
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| ISSN: | 1465-3974 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Religion, state & society
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1080/09637494.2024.2354599 |
