Moving by the Spirit: Pentecostal Social Life on the Zambian Copperbelt

by Naomi Haynes

Overview

Drawing on two years of ethnographic research, Naomi Haynes explores Pentecostal Christianity in the kind of community where it often flourishes: a densely populated neighborhood in the heart of an extraction economy. On the Zambian Copperbelt, Pentecostal adherence embeds believers in relationships that help them to “move” and progress in life. These efforts give Copperbelt Pentecostalism its particular local character, shaping ritual practice, gender dynamics, and church economics. Focusing on the promises and problems that Pentecostalism presents, Moving by the Spirit highlights this religion’s role in making life possible in structurally adjusted Africa.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520294257
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	03/28/2017
Series:	The Anthropology of Christianity , #22
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Naomi Haynes is a Chancellor’s Fellow and Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. She is coeditor of the Current Anthropology special issue The Anthropology of Christianity: Unity, Diversity, New Directions and of the Social Analysis special issue Hierarchy, Values, and the Value of Hierarchy.  She is also co-curator of the Anthropology of Christianity Bibliographic Blog at www.anthrocybib.net.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Note on Bemba Orthography and Pseudonyms
Prologue: A Breakthrough for Mr. Zulu

Introduction: Pentecostalism as Promise, Pentecostalism as Problem

1. Boom and Bust, Revival and Renewal
2. Making Moving Happen
3. Becoming Pentecostal on the Copperbelt
4. Ritual and the (Un)making of the Pentecostal Relational World
5. Prosperity, Charisma, and the Problem of Gender
6. On the Potential and Problems of Pentecostal Exchange
7. Mending Mother’s Kitchen
8. The Circulation of Copperbelt Saints

Conclusion: Worlds That Flourish

Notes
References Cited
Index

Editorial Reviews

"It is a testament to the strengths of this book that it generates such questions, that it opens these and other avenues for further research. Breaking new ground in the study of religious life and social change, Moving by the Spirit should be read by all Africanists whose research and teaching engage such themes."

African Studies Review

"Haynes’s book is a page-turner and a table-turner – gracefully written and gently dissentient toward some existing ideas on contemporary African Pentecostalism. . . . Scholars of Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity and anthropologists of Christianity are in debt to Naomi Haynes for supplying her readers with such an empirically rich and theoretically nuanced portrait of contemporary Zambian neo-Pentecostals."

PentecoStudies

"Naomi Haynes provides a compelling ethnographic study of the centrality of Pentecostal Christianity in contemporary Zambia... Haynes’ attention to certain socially productive elements of Pentecostalism allows her to dig deep into her ethnographic material and to detail what animates the everyday, interpersonal relationships at the core of Pentecostal Christian communities on the Zambian Copperbelt."

AllegraLab