The Stranger at the Feast: Prohibition and Mediation in an Ethiopian Orthodox Christian CommunityAt publication date, a free ebook version of this title will be available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. The Stranger at the Feast is a pathbreaking ethnographic study of one of the world’s oldest and least-understood religious traditions. Based on long-term ethnographic research on the Zege peninsula in northern Ethiopia, the author tells the story of how people have understood large-scale religious change by following local transformations in hospitality, ritual prohibition, and feeding practices. Ethiopia has undergone radical upheaval in the transition from the imperial era of Haile Selassie to the modern secular state, but the secularization of the state has been met with the widespread revival of popular religious practice. For Orthodox Christians in Zege, everything that matters about religion comes back to how one eats and fasts with others. Boylston shows how practices of feeding and avoidance have remained central even as their meaning and purpose has dramatically changed: from a means of marking class distinctions within Orthodox society, to a marker of the difference between Orthodox Christians and other religions within the contemporary Ethiopian state. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
A History of Mediation | 22 |
Fasting Bodies and the Calendar | 37 |
Proliferations of Mediators | 56 |
The Material Histories of Sanctity and Slavery | 72 |
The Buda Crisis | 86 |
Concrete Bones and Feasts | 103 |
Echoes of the Host | 119 |
The Media Landscape | 131 |
The Knowledge of the World | 144 |
Conclusion | 154 |
| 159 | |
| 173 | |
| 175 | |
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The Stranger at the Feast: Prohibition and Mediation in an Ethiopian ... Tom Boylston Limited preview - 2018 |
Common terms and phrases
Abdussamad Abebe Abune Paulos Addis Ababa Amhara Amharic asked associated Bahir Bahir Dar become Beta Israel Betre Maryam Binayew blessing body buda chapter Christ Christians in Zege church students coffee concrete graves deacons debtera Derg described divine Easter Emperor environment especially Ethiopian Orthodox Christians Eucharist Facebook fasting feast Fetha Negest forest friends funeral Haregwa hierarchy holy water hospitality host human icons iddir important injera khat knowledge Lake Tana land líqered liturgy living Mary material meat mediation Mehal Zege Mergéta Worqé Mesqel mislené monasteries monastic monks moral mosque Muslim Orthodox Church Pankhurst peninsula performance person ploughing political practice prayers priests produced prohibitions protection Protestantism relations relationship religious ritual Roger Cowley sacred sacrifice saints shared slave descendants social spirit status story T’imqet tabot Tefera tezkar things Tihut tion told tour guides trade tradition Weyto women young Zara Yaqob Zege Zege’s zikir