Jörg Haustein
Biographic Data
| ID | 165087 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jörg Haustein |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jörg |
| FAMILY NAME | Haustein |
| SIGNATURE | HAUSTEIN J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cambridge |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5792-5205 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 58 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Weaponising suspicion
The destruction of two mosques and many businesses in Mota in December 2019 was met with widespread shock in Ethiopia, but came on the basis of a longer local build-up of tensions. Mota’s small but economically visible Muslim minority had been accused of harbouring ‘extremism’ by inflammatory Christian preachers – in part fuelled by divisions within the Islamic community leveraging the same accusation against some of their own. Reported Muslim at…
Reframing religious conflict in Gondar
Ethiopia’s celebrated religious diversity is characterized by both instances of coexistence and conflict. In Gondar, a historically significant city in northern Ethiopia, inter-religious relations between Muslims and Orthodox Christians are shaped by visible identity markers, such as dietary restrictions and control over religious practices and spaces, and public narratives emphasizing peaceful coexistence. Peaceful co-existence narratives, howev…
Introduction
PM Abiy Ahmed’s politics, his institutional reforms, as well as the civil war and ongoing insurgencies erupting during his tenure have placed significant strains on Ethiopia’s religious communities, even as many initially welcomed his sermonising rhetoric. This article begins with a longer history of religion and politics in Ethiopia, in order to contextualise Abiy’s rise to power and the role of religious rhetoric in his governing platform. It t…
Elle Hardy. 2021. Beyond Belief
Pentecostalism and Gender
I am very grateful to Judith Bachmann and Anna Kirchner for agreeing to edit this special issue, “Pentecostalism and Gender,” in order to make our stimulating Heidelberg conference discussions available to a wider audience. Special thanks go out to the three keynote presenters and their respondents, who have readily agreed to revise and publish their contributions here. The keynotes, responses, and rejoinders printed here superbly capture and con…
Familiar Questions and New Directions
This review essay examines recent scholarship on African Pentecostalism, focusing on two edited volumes and three monographs published by African scholars since 2023. In discussing these works, the essay traces three interconnected challenges: scholarly positionality and collaboration, definitional debates, and methodological innovation. For each challenge, the essay shows how the scholarship under review presents both the problem and productive …
Introduction
Phantoms of Muslim Sedition
Slavery and Religion
Studying Colonial Islam
Contested Philology
Islam in German East Africa, 1885–1918
Religion, Populism, and the Politics of the Sustainable Development Goals
This article examines the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) framework as a political project in tension with its universal and multilateral aspirations to serve as a counterbalance to narrow populist visions increasingly dominating global politics. Building upon Laclau and Mouffe’s theory of populism and their notion of ‘radical democracy’, we conceptualise the SDGs as a struggle for hegemony and in competition with other styles of politics, ov…
Global Religious History as a Rhizome
A Global History of Religion aims to trace connections, controversies, and contingencies in the emergence of “religion” as a global category. Its main intention is to de-center European epistemologies of religion by drawing out a more intricate global and plural genealogy. This is a very complex endeavour, however, especially when one leaves the realm of academic debate and considers the quotidian understandings of “religion” emerging in colonial…
Development as a form of religious engineering? Religion and secularity in development discourse
The burgeoning literature on religion and development tends to frame development as a project of post-WWII secular modernism and hence postulates a new ‘discovery of religions’ in development discourse. This perception is based on a two-fold forgetfulness of history. On the one hand, the colonial genealogy of development in the ‘civilising mission’ came with a decisive Christian input. On the other hand, the notion of secular modernism conceals t…
Writing African Christian biographies
Dana L. Robert’s edited volume offers an excellent introduction to the achievements and challenges in writing African Christians’ history over and against the various failings of the missionary arc
Religion, politics and an apocryphal admonition
This article analyses a Muslim missive, which was circulated in German East Africa in 1908. Erroneously dubbed the "Mecca letter", it called believers to repentance and sparked a religious revival, which alarmed the German administration. Their primarily political interpretation of the letter was retained in subsequent scholarship, which has overlooked two important textual resources for a better understanding of the missive: the presence of simi…
Religion and the Sustainable Development Goals
Religion is a major cultural, social, political, and economic factor in many official development assistance (ODA) recipient countries. After decades of being ignored by global development processes, greater portions of development aid are now channeled via faith-based organizations, and religion is increasingly recognized as a human resource rather than just an obstacle to development. This essay explores the role that faith actors are playing i…
Provincializing Representation
Strategic tangles
When Germany occupied Tanganyika in 1889, the mobilising rhetoric was built around ending slavery, which in turn was framed religiously, as a “Muslim” institution to be ended by “Christian civilisation.” However, while the German colonisers subsequently suppressed slave-raiding and the large-scale slave trade, they never abolished slavery itself or the private sale of slaves. Moreover, the political utility of framing slavery as an “Islamic” prac…
Historical Epistemology and Pentecostal Origins
This article revisits the issue of historiography in Pentecostal studies, seeking to connect this debate to recent theories of history coming from postcolonial and poststructuralist thought. I argue that the historian of Pentecostalism should seek not only to reconstruct past events, but, more than that, to offer a historical analysis of Pentecostal historiography. By drawing on four related theoretical insights into history and applying them to …
Political Spiritualities
Ruth Marshall's study of Pentecostalism in Nigeria is part of a growing body of literature about the significant rise of West African Pentecostalism, and yet it is a unique contribution to the field, for Marshall offers nothing less than a reconceptualization of religion and politics. Arguing that religion is best understood as an irreducible practice, she shows that functionalist assumptions, modernist teleologies, the secularist dichotomy betwe…
Christianity, Politics and Public Life in Kenya
EPRDF's revolutionary democracy and religious plurality
In 1991 the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) introduced policies aimed at recognizing the country’s long-standing religious diversity, providing a public arena for religious groups, and maintaining a sharp division between religion and the state. This further roded the traditionally dominant position of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, strengthened Protestant Christian and Muslim communities, and created a more flux and com…
Embodying the Spirit(s)
The article explores Pentecostal embodiment practices and concepts with regard to Holy Spirit baptism and demon possession. The studied material is connected to a specific and highly controversial debate in Ethiopian Pentecostalism, which revolves around the possibility of demon possession in born-again and Spirit-filled Christians. This debate runs through much of Ethiopian Pentecostal history and ultimately is concerned with whether or how Chri…
Embodying the Spirit(s)
The article explores Pentecostal embodiment practices and concepts with regard to Holy Spirit baptism and demon possession. The studied material is connected to a specific and highly controversial debate in Ethiopian Pentecostalism, which revolves around the possibility of demon possession in born-again and Spirit-filled Christians. This debate runs through much of Ethiopian Pentecostal history and ultimately is concerned with whether or how Chri…
EPRDF's revolutionary democracy and religious plurality
In 1991 the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) introduced policies aimed at recognizing the country’s long-standing religious diversity, providing a public arena for religious groups, and maintaining a sharp division between religion and the state. This further roded the traditionally dominant position of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, strengthened Protestant Christian and Muslim communities, and created a more flux and com…
Religion and the Sustainable Development Goals
Religion is a major cultural, social, political, and economic factor in many official development assistance (ODA) recipient countries. After decades of being ignored by global development processes, greater portions of development aid are now channeled via faith-based organizations, and religion is increasingly recognized as a human resource rather than just an obstacle to development. This essay explores the role that faith actors are playing i…
Development as a form of religious engineering? Religion and secularity in development discourse
The burgeoning literature on religion and development tends to frame development as a project of post-WWII secular modernism and hence postulates a new ‘discovery of religions’ in development discourse. This perception is based on a two-fold forgetfulness of history. On the one hand, the colonial genealogy of development in the ‘civilising mission’ came with a decisive Christian input. On the other hand, the notion of secular modernism conceals t…
Strategic tangles
When Germany occupied Tanganyika in 1889, the mobilising rhetoric was built around ending slavery, which in turn was framed religiously, as a “Muslim” institution to be ended by “Christian civilisation.” However, while the German colonisers subsequently suppressed slave-raiding and the large-scale slave trade, they never abolished slavery itself or the private sale of slaves. Moreover, the political utility of framing slavery as an “Islamic” prac…
Religion, Populism, and the Politics of the Sustainable Development Goals
This article examines the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) framework as a political project in tension with its universal and multilateral aspirations to serve as a counterbalance to narrow populist visions increasingly dominating global politics. Building upon Laclau and Mouffe’s theory of populism and their notion of ‘radical democracy’, we conceptualise the SDGs as a struggle for hegemony and in competition with other styles of politics, ov…
Islam in German East Africa, 1885–1918
Global Religious History as a Rhizome
A Global History of Religion aims to trace connections, controversies, and contingencies in the emergence of “religion” as a global category. Its main intention is to de-center European epistemologies of religion by drawing out a more intricate global and plural genealogy. This is a very complex endeavour, however, especially when one leaves the realm of academic debate and considers the quotidian understandings of “religion” emerging in colonial…
Christianity, Politics and Public Life in Kenya
EPRDF's revolutionary democracy and religious plurality
In 1991 the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) introduced policies aimed at recognizing the country’s long-standing religious diversity, providing a public arena for religious groups, and maintaining a sharp division between religion and the state. This further roded the traditionally dominant position of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, strengthened Protestant Christian and Muslim communities, and created a more flux and com…
Embodying the Spirit(s)
The article explores Pentecostal embodiment practices and concepts with regard to Holy Spirit baptism and demon possession. The studied material is connected to a specific and highly controversial debate in Ethiopian Pentecostalism, which revolves around the possibility of demon possession in born-again and Spirit-filled Christians. This debate runs through much of Ethiopian Pentecostal history and ultimately is concerned with whether or how Chri…
Historical Epistemology and Pentecostal Origins
This article revisits the issue of historiography in Pentecostal studies, seeking to connect this debate to recent theories of history coming from postcolonial and poststructuralist thought. I argue that the historian of Pentecostalism should seek not only to reconstruct past events, but, more than that, to offer a historical analysis of Pentecostal historiography. By drawing on four related theoretical insights into history and applying them to …
Political Spiritualities
Ruth Marshall's study of Pentecostalism in Nigeria is part of a growing body of literature about the significant rise of West African Pentecostalism, and yet it is a unique contribution to the field, for Marshall offers nothing less than a reconceptualization of religion and politics. Arguing that religion is best understood as an irreducible practice, she shows that functionalist assumptions, modernist teleologies, the secularist dichotomy betwe…
Strategic tangles
When Germany occupied Tanganyika in 1889, the mobilising rhetoric was built around ending slavery, which in turn was framed religiously, as a “Muslim” institution to be ended by “Christian civilisation.” However, while the German colonisers subsequently suppressed slave-raiding and the large-scale slave trade, they never abolished slavery itself or the private sale of slaves. Moreover, the political utility of framing slavery as an “Islamic” prac…
Provincializing Representation
Religion and the Sustainable Development Goals
Religion is a major cultural, social, political, and economic factor in many official development assistance (ODA) recipient countries. After decades of being ignored by global development processes, greater portions of development aid are now channeled via faith-based organizations, and religion is increasingly recognized as a human resource rather than just an obstacle to development. This essay explores the role that faith actors are playing i…
Writing African Christian biographies
Dana L. Robert’s edited volume offers an excellent introduction to the achievements and challenges in writing African Christians’ history over and against the various failings of the missionary arc
Religion, politics and an apocryphal admonition
This article analyses a Muslim missive, which was circulated in German East Africa in 1908. Erroneously dubbed the "Mecca letter", it called believers to repentance and sparked a religious revival, which alarmed the German administration. Their primarily political interpretation of the letter was retained in subsequent scholarship, which has overlooked two important textual resources for a better understanding of the missive: the presence of simi…
Religion, Populism, and the Politics of the Sustainable Development Goals
This article examines the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) framework as a political project in tension with its universal and multilateral aspirations to serve as a counterbalance to narrow populist visions increasingly dominating global politics. Building upon Laclau and Mouffe’s theory of populism and their notion of ‘radical democracy’, we conceptualise the SDGs as a struggle for hegemony and in competition with other styles of politics, ov…
Global Religious History as a Rhizome
A Global History of Religion aims to trace connections, controversies, and contingencies in the emergence of “religion” as a global category. Its main intention is to de-center European epistemologies of religion by drawing out a more intricate global and plural genealogy. This is a very complex endeavour, however, especially when one leaves the realm of academic debate and considers the quotidian understandings of “religion” emerging in colonial…
Development as a form of religious engineering? Religion and secularity in development discourse
The burgeoning literature on religion and development tends to frame development as a project of post-WWII secular modernism and hence postulates a new ‘discovery of religions’ in development discourse. This perception is based on a two-fold forgetfulness of history. On the one hand, the colonial genealogy of development in the ‘civilising mission’ came with a decisive Christian input. On the other hand, the notion of secular modernism conceals t…
Introduction
Phantoms of Muslim Sedition
Slavery and Religion
Studying Colonial Islam
Contested Philology
Islam in German East Africa, 1885–1918
Pentecostalism and Gender
I am very grateful to Judith Bachmann and Anna Kirchner for agreeing to edit this special issue, “Pentecostalism and Gender,” in order to make our stimulating Heidelberg conference discussions available to a wider audience. Special thanks go out to the three keynote presenters and their respondents, who have readily agreed to revise and publish their contributions here. The keynotes, responses, and rejoinders printed here superbly capture and con…
Familiar Questions and New Directions
This review essay examines recent scholarship on African Pentecostalism, focusing on two edited volumes and three monographs published by African scholars since 2023. In discussing these works, the essay traces three interconnected challenges: scholarly positionality and collaboration, definitional debates, and methodological innovation. For each challenge, the essay shows how the scholarship under review presents both the problem and productive …
Weaponising suspicion
The destruction of two mosques and many businesses in Mota in December 2019 was met with widespread shock in Ethiopia, but came on the basis of a longer local build-up of tensions. Mota’s small but economically visible Muslim minority had been accused of harbouring ‘extremism’ by inflammatory Christian preachers – in part fuelled by divisions within the Islamic community leveraging the same accusation against some of their own. Reported Muslim at…
Reframing religious conflict in Gondar
Ethiopia’s celebrated religious diversity is characterized by both instances of coexistence and conflict. In Gondar, a historically significant city in northern Ethiopia, inter-religious relations between Muslims and Orthodox Christians are shaped by visible identity markers, such as dietary restrictions and control over religious practices and spaces, and public narratives emphasizing peaceful coexistence. Peaceful co-existence narratives, howev…
Introduction
PM Abiy Ahmed’s politics, his institutional reforms, as well as the civil war and ongoing insurgencies erupting during his tenure have placed significant strains on Ethiopia’s religious communities, even as many initially welcomed his sermonising rhetoric. This article begins with a longer history of religion and politics in Ethiopia, in order to contextualise Abiy’s rise to power and the role of religious rhetoric in his governing platform. It t…
Elle Hardy. 2021. Beyond Belief
Political science (14 works) · Law (13 works) · Sociology (13 works) · History (12 works) · Politics (12 works) · African history and culture analysis (11 works) · Philosophy (11 works) · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories (10 works) · Islam (10 works) · Colonialism (9 works)