Graduated Publics

Mediating Trance in the Age of Technical Reproduction

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2225342
AutoresMartin Zillinger (autor correspondente)
Ano2017
Volume58
FascículoS15
PáginasS41-S55
Data de publicação2017-02-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoCurrent Anthropology (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0011-3204 • E-ISSN: 1537-5382
EditoraUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/689740
OpenAlexW2579465267
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas12
Referências citadas35

The notion of a "public sphere" has been widely discussed in the anthropology of Islam and, as elsewhere, criticized for its normative assumptions. Focusing on how actors redefine the scope of their actions in (media) networks of Moroccan trance brotherhoods, in this paper I explore how adepts and skeptics of trance relate to and compete with each other in generating, negotiating, and shunning publicity for their practices and "issues of concern." In order to take media practices that aim to "make things public" as a point of departure, attention is drawn to "ritual boundary objects" that help to mediate between different viewpoints and enable ritual cooperation across sites. Without such boundary objects, the use of new media and the collapse of carefully distinguished spheres of action are likely to lead to scandals and the violent drawing of boundaries. I argue for a concept of "graduated publics" that makes it possible to rethink Eurocentric imaginaries of unified public or counterpublic spheres and challenges their binary conceptions of public and private realms. The focus on situated mediation practices makes it possible to zoom in on the modalities and materialities of circulation and uptake that expand or delimit publicity for different "issues" in different locales

Aesthetics · Epistemology · Media studies · Mediation · Political science · Politics · Public sphere · Publicity · Secrecy · Situated · Social science · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Law · Water Governance and Infrastructure