ACI Africa

In its broad conception the Authority, Community, and Identity (ACI) research project was about Africa’s complex modernities. Modernity is not one thing (see, for example, Eisentadt’s multiple modernities thesis). African individuals and communities find themselves at the intersection of multiple modern, global, local, traditional, secular and religious forces. In Africa, the legacies of colonialism and post-colonial liberation contend with the processes and mechanisms of international development, all the while challenging and being challenged by religious flows of people, practice, and belief. The ACI research project sought to shed light on the complex ways in which individuals and communities in Africa negotiate the challenges and opportunities at that intersection. More specifically, through the ACI project researchers investigated how various religious (Christian, Muslim, traditional) and secular forces collaborate, compete, contend and at times implicate each other in configuring, re-configuring and/or  shaping new models of authority, community, and identity, both within and across traditions, and within the context of nation-state modalities.

The driving assumption of the research project was that these notions of “authority”, “community” and “identity” (both in their shifts and continuities) not only provide a good lens into the complex ways of negotiating the modern condition in Africa (with both its opportunities and challenges), they provide an apt and dynamic platform for exploring the relationships between secular and religious forces in modern Africa. By focusing on these three nodes of inquiry, the project investigated questions of belonging, tradition, and change all within the particular flux of specific African contexts.

In addition to a shared sense of the complex ways in which contending modernities shape contemporary Africa, the ACI team shared a commitment to the particular, the local, by grounding the research in specific contexts. While the project took up perennial issues of land, identity, family, and leadership, it did so in ways that honored the particularities of place by utilizing methods that help attend to the everyday lives of Africans. Through the diverse interests and identities of the ACI Africa research team, this attention to particularity was placed in a comparative context that allowed the team to engage the global-local dynamics of modernity in Africa.

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Publications:

"Pastoral Power, Clerical State" by Ebenezer Obadare. Book cover.The African Charismatic Revolution: Pentecostal Authority and Rule in Nigeria and Ghana

Ebenezer Obadare

  • Monograph: Obadare, Ebenezer, and Jacob K Olupona. 2022. Pastoral Power, Clerical State : Pentecostalism, Gender, and Sexuality in Nigeria. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press.
  • Monograph: Obadare, Ebenezer. 2018. Pentecostal Republic: Religion and the Struggle for State Power in Nigeria. London: Zed Books.
  • Journal Article: Obadare, Ebenezer. 2018. “The Charismatic Porn-Star: Social Citizenship and the West-African Pentecostal Erotic.” Citizenship Studies 22 (6): 603–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2018.1494904.
  • Blog Post: Obadare, Ebenezer. 2017. “The Pastor as Sexual Object.” Contending Modernities. https://contendingmodernities.nd.edu/field-notes/pastor-sexual-object/
  • Blog Post: Obadare, Ebenezer. 2018. “On the Theologico-Theatrical: Explaining the Convergence of Pentecostalism and Popular Culture in Nigeria.” Contending Modernities. https://contendingmodernities.nd.edu/field-notes/theologico-theatrical/

 

Catholic, Islamic, and Secular Perspectives on Sexuality, Marriage, and Family: Case Studies in Contemporary Ivory Coast

Ludovic Lado

 

Gender, Authority and Community:  Religious Women Constructing Modernity in Cameroon

Cecilia Lynch

 

Land and Authority in Postcolonial Africa: A Case Study of Wimbum Society

Elias Bongmba

"Who Are My People" by Emmanuel Katongole

 

Who are My People: Community, Land, Religion and Belonging in Post-Colonial Africa

Emmanuel Katongole