The Globalization of African Divination Systems – Theoretical Perspectives from the Study of Religion
Prof. Dr. Klaus Hock
University of Rostock, Department for the History of Religions
Research stay: October 2016 - September 2017
The Globalization of African Divination Systems – Theoretical Perspectives from the Study of Religion
The project aims at reconstructing the interaction and mutual entanglement between African divination systems and practices, on the one hand, and Christianity and Islam including their own prognostic systems and practices, on the other. This will be done by taking into consideration the transcultural dynamics by which African or Africanized divination was (and is) empowered to emerge as a distinctive, albeit fused and fuzzy, global/local phenomenon. Thereby, it is hoped to provide elements for the formation of a theory of religion that relates prognostic systems to religion(s) in a way that – beyond the assessment of existing linkages – allows not only for a detailed account of the interrelation of different cultures of knowledge, but also for a more specified determination and interior differentiation of the properties and the profiles of religious systems of knowledge. By doing so, a focus will be on the oppositional or rather complementary impact of calculation and intuition / computation and charisma on divination systems.
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