Transnational Religious Spaces: Religious Organizations and Interactions in Africa, East Asia, and beyond

Abstract

This volume investigates transnational religious spaces in a comparative manner by juxtaposing East Asian case examples and by examining specific cases where the transnational space in question encompassed both East Asia and Africa. The latter perspective takes centre stage in two contributions that examine the development of Japanese new religions in Africa (Senegal and the Democratic Republic of Congo). The remaining then chapters each focus on one of the two macro-regions and examine transnational flows of religious ideas, actors, and organizations out of, into, or within the given continental space. The case studies are framed by Thomas Tweed’s systematic reflections on categories for the study of transnationalism; his chapter on “Flows and Dams: Rethinking Categories of the Study of Transnationalism” critically weighs the metaphorical language we use to think, speak, and write about transnational religious spaces.

Biographical Note

Philip Clart (Leipzig University)

Philip Clart is Professor of Culture and History of China at the University of Leipzig. He received his PhD in Asian Studies from the University of British Columbia, Canada, in 1997; prior to his occupation at the University of Leipzig, he taught at the University of British Columbia (1996-1998) and at the University of Missouri-Columbia (USA, 1998-2008). He is editor of the Journal of Chinese Religions and co-editor (with Elisabeth Kaske) of the series “Leipziger Sinologische Studien”. His research focuses on folk religion and new religious movements in Taiwan, religious change and religious politics in China, and literature and religions of the late imperial period (10th-19th centuries). His monographs include “Han Xiangzi: The Alchemical Adventures of a Daoist Immortal” (University of Washington Press, 2007) and “The Religions of China” (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009). Moreover, he has (co-)edited eight other books and source collections

Adam Jones (Leipzig University)

Adam Jones is a historian and studied German and modern history at Oxford University, then worked as a teacher in Sierra Leone. He received his PhD from the Centre of West African Studies at the University of Birmingham. He habilitated at the Institute for Historical Ethnology at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main and has been Professor of African History and Culture at the University of Leipzig since 1995. He was awarded emeritus status in October 2016. His work has included sources on (West-) African history and the history of German African studies. Moreover, he is editor of the journal “History in Africa”.