Books by Johannes Fabian

In this volume, the author reflects on anthropological uses of the concept of popular culture. He retraces how his explorations of popular culture in the Shaba region of Zaire, now the Congo, showed that classical culture theory did not account for large aspects of contemporary African life.

Talk about Prayer is an experiment in writing ethnography, a commentary on a conversation with Mama Regine Tshitanda, the leader of a Charismatic prayer group (groupe de priere) in Lubumbashi (Katanga, Democratic Republic of the Congo) and members of her family in 1986. Fabian's research on expressions and practices of popular culture, including popular religion, was conducted during two visits to Katanga in 1985 and 1986. He discusses controversial issues in the study of the Global Charismatic Movement as seen at the time and gives a detailed account of the circumstances and events that led to the recorded meeting and how the ethnographic document on which this book is based was made. Central to the book is the authors understanding of anthropology of religion, in that research should be based on communicative ethnography, an approach that involves confrontation between researchers and interlocutors as well between their views of the world. Talk about Prayer is one such argument for keeping open the debate on a critical stance toward religion.

The Internet allows ethnographers to deposit the textual materials on which they base their writing in virtual archives. This work argues that virtual archives have the potential to shift the emphasis in ethnographic writing from the monograph to commentary. It provides a model of writing in the presence of a virtual archive.