Summer School 2013 "Situating Media" - Participants
Carolin Maevis (Cologne)
Mobility, Media, and Morality. Translocal Extensions of an Islamic Revival Movement – Paris and Bamako
The use of mass media for the distribution of Sheikh Sharif Haidara’s teachings and sermons is one important aspect of the impressive success of this charismatic Muslim preacher. Starting in the 1980s in Mali, he has mobilized an ever-growing constituency of fellow believers around his call for a moral renewal based on Islamic values. Through migration and facilitated by new media technologies, his group of followers (“Ancar Dine”) is now dispersed over 24 different countries. The ongoing Ph.D. research project will focus on the institutionalized group “Ancar Dine France” and analyze the translocal ties among and activities of Sheikh Haidara’s followers in Paris. The ways in which his followers discuss his teachings during their weekly sessions (in Mali) and reflect on their relevance for their daily lives and practices of mutual support point to the deeply social and political implications of Sheikh Haidara’s teachings. Particular attention is given to the ways in which the distinct legal, social, economic and political conditions of the French national context and the French diaspora affect the ways in which Sheikh Haidara’s followers engage and align to his mass-mediated teachings and how new media applications like facebook and youtube interplay with older ones like cassettes.
Carolin Maevis is a lecturer and working on her Ph.D. at the Research and Teaching Network “Media, Culture, and Society” at the Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology in Cologne. She holds a Master of Social and Cultural Anthropology (2012, University of Cologne). Her academic research focuses on mobility, translocality, religion, media practices and media anthropology, with a regional focus on Europe and West Africa.
Recent Publication
2012: “Die Vermittlung von Unmittelbarkeit: Bilder und Erleben‚ ursprünglicher Natur von Safari TouristInnen am Naivashasee, Kenia,” in: Kölner Ethnologische Beiträge 40
(http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/4831/).