Markets of protection: religious rivalry, insecurity, and illegality in Cape Town’s urban fringes

IF 0.3 0 RELIGION
Marian Burchardt
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Abstract

This article explores the multiple links between Pentecostalism and the production of security in Cape Town’s isiXhosa-speaking townships and traces the ways in which Pentecostal churches have become embroiled with Cape Town’s criminal economies, illegality and violence. In these marginalised urban spaces, which are also territories of relegation, Pentecostal pastors compete with other spiritual specialists who lay claims to spiritual protection just like the state’s law-enforcement agencies over the meanings of crime and violence and legitimate ways to counter them. This competition thrives on the fact that physical harm and the associated states of victimhood are seen as resulting not only from criminal assaults but also from the congeries of spiritual forces that enable them. Simultaneously, there is mounting competition within the religious field and increasingly strenuous assertions of religious sovereignty vis-à-vis the secular state. I argue that all of these developments have contributed to Pentecostalism’s links with illegality. Importantly, capacities to wield spiritual power are as central for understanding the dynamics of the market of spiritual protection against risks as are accusations that those wielding them do so with malign intent. The ambivalent perceptions of Pentecostalism with regard to crime and protection against harm therefore echo those of witchcraft.
保护市场:开普敦城市边缘的宗教竞争、不安全和非法行为
本文探讨了五旬节派信仰与开普敦伊科萨语城镇安全生产之间的多重联系,并追溯了五旬节派教会如何卷入开普敦的犯罪经济、非法和暴力活动。在这些被边缘化的城市空间里,五旬节派牧师与其他精神专家竞争,这些精神专家就像国家执法机构一样,声称自己有精神保护,就犯罪和暴力的含义以及合法的应对方式展开竞争。这种竞争是基于这样一个事实,即身体伤害和相关的受害者状态不仅被视为犯罪袭击的结果,而且还被视为使其成为可能的精神力量的集合。与此同时,宗教领域内的竞争日益激烈,宗教主权相对于-à-vis世俗国家的主张也越来越强烈。我认为,所有这些发展都促成了五旬节派与非法的联系。重要的是,运用精神力量的能力是理解精神保护防范风险市场动态的核心,就像指责那些运用精神力量的人怀有恶意一样。因此,五旬节派对犯罪和保护免受伤害的矛盾看法与巫术的看法相呼应。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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CiteScore
0.30
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8
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