Religious infrastructuring in Ghana: the aesthetics and politics of infrastructural augmentation in Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity and the Indigenous Religious Tradition

This contribution explores the ‘infrastructuring’ of religious sites and practices in Ghana’s Ashanti region, particularly in Pentecostal-Charismatic Christian (PCC) churches and Indigenous Religious Traditions (IRTs). By ‘infrastructuring’, I mean the purposeful complexification and augmentation of...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Nrenzah, Genevieve (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Routledge 2024
In: Religion, state & society
Year: 2024, Volume: 52, Issue: 2/3, Pages: 158–175
Further subjects:B Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity
B religion in Ghana
B Aesthetics
B indigenous religion(s)
B Infrastructuring
Online Access: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Description
Summary:This contribution explores the ‘infrastructuring’ of religious sites and practices in Ghana’s Ashanti region, particularly in Pentecostal-Charismatic Christian (PCC) churches and Indigenous Religious Traditions (IRTs). By ‘infrastructuring’, I mean the purposeful complexification and augmentation of infrastructural arrangements encompassing both material (physical) and immaterial (organisational, communicative) dimensions. The first part explores a PCC case study, Prophet Boateng’s Power Chapel Worldwide (PCWW), investigating the aesthetic, economic, and political implications of infrastructuring Pentecostalism. The second part, which is a novel addition to the discourse, focuses on the emergence and expansion of heavily infrastructured IRT shrines and practices through the case of Kↄmfoↄ Oforiwaa’s shrine. I argue that the aesthetic operations performed by religiously configured buildings can help generate assemblages of people, aspirations, and meanings constituting more comprehensive economic and political processes.
ISSN:1465-3974
Contains:Enthalten in: Religion, state & society
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1080/09637494.2024.2354599