Page 14 - Aesthetic Formations Media, religion, and the Sense

Preface xiii

shape. Directing this program, it was my key concern to maintain a bal-
ance between the virtue of anthropological knowledge production as
grounded in unique intersubjective research settings and the value of work-
ing together on a common theme. The PIONIER grant made it possible
for me to gather a number of imaginative, enthusiastic researchers who
were passionate fieldworkers in their respective research locations, and
shared an urge to grasp the role of media in shifting the place and role of
religion. We used this unique opportunity to develop a new intellectual
space for conceptualizing key issues that arose from our research, as well as
interrogating our research in the light of new, exciting questions. Practically,
we organized a weekly seminar, which took place throughout the six years
of the program’s duration, and which attracted a number of additional
researchers and guests. In our seminar, which took place on Monday morn-
ings in my office, we gathered around a rather too small table and dis-
cussed relevant literature in the fields of anthropology and media, religious
studies, media studies and visual culture, and postcolonial studies, as well
as each other’s work in progress.
As the theme of religion and media appeared to be a hot topic at the
time of our program taking shape, we also engaged in intense conversa-
tions with upcoming initiatives such as the establishment of the Center for
Religion and Media directed by Faye Ginsburg and Angela Zito at New
York University, the research project Indonesian Mediations directed by
Ben Arps and Patricia Spyer under the auspices of the Royal Dutch
Academy of Sciences at Leiden University, the International Study
Commission on Media, Religion and Culture chaired by Stewart Hoover,
Peter Horsfield, Jolyon Mitchell, and David Morgan, the Deus in Machina
project directed by Jeremy Stolow at Concordia University, and the NWO-
sponsored research program The Future of the Religious Past, Religious
Forms and Elements in the 21st Century directed by Hent de Vries. In the
course of the duration of our program, we organized a number of interna-
tional workshops and conferences in which we involved participants affil-
iated with the above-mentioned initiatives, as well as individual scholars
working in the emergent field of religion and media. I am particularly
happy that we were able to invite Charles Hirschkind, Meg MacLagan,

and Jeremy Stolow to participate in our conversations as visiting fellows,
which made it possible for them to join us in Amsterdam and enrich our
discussions for about three months.
The research program on which this volume is based was a truly collec-
tive endeavor that allowed us to address new questions and develop new
concepts and terms in an intellectually enticing, constructive, and conviv-
ial sphere. I would like to thank all the authors for their deep, ongoing
commitment to the project, and our international partners and visiting