Religion and Society

In this article, I argue that the cultivation of piety in Tablighi Jamaat is premised on inevitable failings and shortcomings in the fulfillment and attainment of moral excellence. Insofar as ethical cultivation is necessarily oriented toward the need for excellence, Tablighi Jamaat posits the Prophet Muhammad as the moral exemplar who must be emulated rigorously as an ideal that can never be imitated perfectly. Given this situation, I critically evaluate two interrelated points in the anthropology of ethics: first, that the insistence of reformist movements on principles of self-consistency, commitment, and coherence does not account for the likelihood of moral failure; and second, that an emphasis in virtue ethics on unthinking habituation of certain practices and disposition displaces reflective reasoning. With a focus on the practice of piety in Tablighi Jamaat in Pakistan, I investigate how ethical cultivation is necessitated on the premise that the perfection of moral excellence is impossible, and that this impossibility is consequently open to both ordinary fallibility and a constant work on the self.

This article takes the founding moment and legacy of a hermit monastery and explores the ongoing tension between lionizing the charisma that leads to devotional innovation and the fact that charisma is irritating and disruptive to a monastery’s vow-bound social world. Founders do not make good monks; and theories of conversion and religious experience, while helpful, are not quite adequate to explain this. Instead, it seems that an accounting of the monastery’s shared relationship with the past and ongoing perpetuation of charismatic, disruptive practices is necessary to explain the perdurance of contradiction in a monastery.

This article introduces the Special Section, and with it both the concept and the project of “Pilgrimonics,”. The portmanteau “pilgrimonics” describes the global material flows and circuits of exchange that surround, are caused by, and enable contemporary transnational pilgrimage that do not always follow linear, rational, or econometric logics. Empirically and ethnographically, the project cast a pilgrimonic lens on five major faith groups in the UK city of Birmingham travelling to diverse sacred sites across the world: Catholic, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, Sikh as well as those of no religious affiliation. This Special Section presents the main findings of the project.

This article examines the economic entanglements of the Camino de Santiago, a network of nominally Catholic walking pilgrimages that start in various parts of Europe and end in the Galician city of Santiago de Compostela, which is home to the shrine of St. James the Great. It focuses on the Camino Francés, which starts in the French Pyrenees and tracks across northern Spain to Santiago. The article explores the paradoxes inherent in the Camino, which is a religious or spiritual activity offering escape from contemporary economic life but is nevertheless embedded in economy—in its promotion or publicity; in its infrastructure; and in the complex play of moral and monetary economy that governs both the transactions pilgrims make along the Camino and the evaluation of “authentic” and less authentic pilgrims.

Focusing on the Jewish pilgrimage festival of Sukkot, this article explores sukkonomics as material flows, captive markets, tangible thinking, and immersive experiences. More specifically, it examines how economic principles intertwine with religiously defined practice through the materiality of ritual objects and the desire of individuals and congregations to acquire these items in fulfillment of a religious obligation. The annually recurring Sukkot economy, which features natural ritualized objects alongside the creative adaptation of repurposed materials and commercial goods, is conceived as a captive market, revealing how economic principles, religious obligations, and celebratory joy interlace within a moral economy that seeks to merge the immanent with the transcendent. Significantly, echoing Deleuzian affective flows, post-Sukkot ritual items often enter new material-spiritual paths—through reuse, mitzvot, or disposal.

This article focuses on the Birmingham Catholic Archdiocese’s annual pilgrimage to the Marian sanctuary of Lourdes, in Southern France, and the agents that enable this pilgrimage to “flow.” Successful pilgrimage involves engagement or encounter with the limitless grace of Our Lady and the unlimited supply of spring water that has spiritual properties, and in which pilgrims bathe, wash, and which they drink. These practices, in turn, depend on the availability of more limited resources—of pilgrims’ time and money; of volunteers’ availability; of time and space within the sanctuary itself; and of pilgrimage infrastructure in the town of Lourdes. They also rely on the actions of key agents—both human and non-human—that broker this engagement. The article develops the Deleuzian concept of “assemblage”—or agencement—to describe the articulation of these various agents: from the water itself to volunteers, pilgrimage administrators, clergy, hoteliers, and travel agents.

Hair donation at pilgrimage sites, such as the Tirumala Venkateswara Temple in India, is a profound act of spiritual devotion symbolizing purification and humility. Devotees offer their hair as a gesture of gratitude or to fulfill vows, believing it helps shed ego and sin. Beyond its religious significance, this practice has substantial economic implications. The temple collects over 500 tons of human hair annually, which is cleaned, sorted, and sold through online auctions to international markets, including wig manufacturers. This commercialization of a sacred ritual raises ethical questions about the balance between spiritual devotion and commercial enterprise, highlighting the complex interplay between religion, culture, and the global economy.

Endorsed by the Quran and the Hadith, charitable donations are one of the five pillars of Islam and one of Islam’s core values and moral guidance. Zakat is obligatory giving, with which affluent Muslims are obliged to pay 2.5 percent of their wealth to charity at the end of the financial year, calculated after they pay all expenses to look after their families. Islam also encourages Muslims to give Sadaqah, a nonobligatory donation, paid any time of the year. This article examines these gift-giving practices by Birmingham-based Muslims in the “Holyland” cities of Mecca and Madina, as well as in Birmingham and the UK more generally. The article brings diasporic dimensions to humanitarian gift-giving to the destitute at a time when the Saudi Arabian economy is moving away from oil to pilgrimage/touristic infrastructure, privileging richer Muslims. The article illustrates the modes of fiscal interchange that cross local, national, and international frontiers.

The article considers donor marble inscriptions in the Golden Temple complex—otherwise known as Harmandir or Darbar Sahib—a major pilgrimage site in North India especially for Sikh devotees. With the oldest inscriptions from the 1930s, I chart a history of donations through marble (im)materiality, concentrating on contributions marked on walls, floors, steps, and columns. Simultaneously, I explore why people make donations: these are transactional at heart but with multiplier effects that go beyond simple exchange, as they are encapsulated in a notion of “infinitude” and an expectation of some form of recognized return—recognized in the eyes of the donor(s), the community, and the divine. The article ends with a discussion on the latter-day decline of marble markings as the sacred site assumes a “purer” significance at a time of increasing neoliberalization and commercialization.

VAN DEN BOGERT, Kathrine. Street Football, Gender and Muslim Youth in the Netherlands: Girls Who Kick Back. Bloomsbury Studies in Religion, Gender, and Sexuality, 197 pp., notes, bibliography, index. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023 (paperback 2024), £28.99 (electronic version available open access). ISBN 9781350205086.

YOUNG, Francis. Silence of the Gods: The Untold History of Europe’s Last Pagan Peoples, 432 + xx pp., halftones, notes, bibliography, index. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025. Hardback, $32.95. ISBN 9781009586573.

GONÇALVES BRITO, Luz. Ecological Epistemologies and Spiritualities in Brazilian Ecovillages, 140 pp., 19 b/w illustrations, bibliography, index, London and New York: Routledge, 2023. Hardback, €49.59, Paperback, €19.19. ISBN 9781032458212.

SINGLER, Beth, and Fraser WATTS, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Religion and Artificial Intelligence, i-i pp., bibliography, index, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024. Hardback, €87.53. Paperback, €28.00. ISBN: 9781009031721.

HOMOLA, Stéphanie. The Art of Fate Calculation: Practicing Divination in Taipei, Beijing, and Kaifeng, 374 pp., 42 ills., bibliography, index. New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2023. $145. ISBN 9781800738126.

AYAD, Mariam F., ed. Coptic Culture and Community: Daily Lives, Changing Times. Cairo, Egypt, and New York: American University in Cairo Press. 328 pp., bibliography, index, 2024. Hardback, £60.00. ISBN 9781649031822.

AYUB, Muhammad, Khurram KHAN, and Muhammad ISMAIL. Islamic Economic and Financial Waqf: Instruments of Socio-Economic Welfare, 234 pp. with 18 b/w illustrations, bibliography, index, London: Routledge, 2025. Hardback, €115.50. ISBN: 9781032762050.

SCHAFLECHNER, Jürgen, dir., In the Next Year - Becoming Jewish in Pakistan. 10 mins. In English and Urdu, subtitles, 2022. Available through Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/876705894.

PARMIGIANI, Giovanna. The Spider Dance: Tradition, Time, and Healing in Southern Italy, xv, 280 pp., Sheffield and Bristol: Equinox, 2024. Paperback, $34. ISBN 9781800505131.

Response to Yael Dansac