Ordinary Lives and Grand Schemes

This volume is very well put-together. The editors have done a good job to rein in the various authors to a single collective argument...It's an important volume on an important issue. * Jon Mitchell, University of Sussex The topic of everyday religion is becoming an increasingly attractive in the social sciences of religion, as an alternative to more orthodox and canonical accounts of religious phenomena...This volume sets out to debate the concept of 'everyday religion' in a very explicit and straightforward manner...The final result is a convincing volume with diverse and challenging case studies that open different paths for the discussion of the main theme. * Ruy Blanes, Institute of Social Sciences at the University of Lisbon 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. Samuli Schielke is a research fellow at the Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin. His research interests include Islam, festive culture, subjectivity and morality, and migration and aspiration in Egypt. Liza Debevec is a research fellow at the Scientific Research Centre of the Slovene Academy of Sciences and Arts. Her research focuses on the anthropology of everyday life practices in urban Burkina Faso.