2011
A01=Angie Heo
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
arab
arab spring
Author_Angie Heo
authoritarian rule
automatic-update
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HD
Category=JHM
Category=QRM
Category=QRP
christians
collateral damage
COP=United States
copts
Delivery_Pre-order
divine intercession
egypt
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
holiness broker bonds
isis
islamophobia
Language_English
martyrs
material media
minoritarian regulation
miracles
modern nation state
muslims
mysteries
nationhood
PA=Temporarily unavailable
persecution rhetoric
politics
popular saints
Price_€50 to €100
PS=Active
revolutionary sacrifice
sacred territory
social relations
softlaunch
traces of antiquity
tradition
Product details
- ISBN 9780520297975
- Weight: 544g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 20 Nov 2018
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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Since the Arab Spring in 2011 and ISIS’s rise in 2014, Egypt’s Copts have attracted attention worldwide as the collateral damage of revolution and as victims of sectarian strife. Countering the din of persecution rhetoric and Islamophobia, The Political Lives of Saints journeys into the quieter corners of divine intercession to consider what martyrs, miracles, and mysteries have to do with the routine challenges faced by Christians and Muslims living together under the modern nation-state.
Drawing on years of extensive fieldwork, Angie Heo argues for understanding popular saints as material media that organize social relations between Christians and Muslims in Egypt toward varying political ends. With an ethnographer’s eye for traces of antiquity, she deciphers how long-cherished imaginaries of holiness broker bonds of revolutionary sacrifice, reconfigure national sites of sacred territory, and pose sectarian threats to security and order. A study of tradition and nationhood at their limits, The Political Lives of Saints shows that Coptic Orthodoxy is a core domain of minoritarian regulation and authoritarian rule, powerfully reversing the recurrent thesis of its impending extinction in the Arab Muslim world.
Drawing on years of extensive fieldwork, Angie Heo argues for understanding popular saints as material media that organize social relations between Christians and Muslims in Egypt toward varying political ends. With an ethnographer’s eye for traces of antiquity, she deciphers how long-cherished imaginaries of holiness broker bonds of revolutionary sacrifice, reconfigure national sites of sacred territory, and pose sectarian threats to security and order. A study of tradition and nationhood at their limits, The Political Lives of Saints shows that Coptic Orthodoxy is a core domain of minoritarian regulation and authoritarian rule, powerfully reversing the recurrent thesis of its impending extinction in the Arab Muslim world.
Angie Heo is Assistant Professor of the Anthropology and Sociology of Religion at the University of Chicago.
