Department seminar: Mathijs Pelkmans
The Department of Social Anthropology is happy to announce the upcoming seminar with Dr. Mathijs Pelkmans, Senior Lecturer, Department of Social Anthropology, London School of Economics and Political Science. The title of the lecture is "Frontier Dynamics: Topological Reflections on Evangelical and Tablighi Missions in Central Asia".
Main content
Seminar paper
Missionaries have flocked to the Kyrgyz Republic in the past two decades. Evangelical-Pentecostal and Tablighi missions have been particularly active on what they conceive of as a fertile post-atheist frontier. This paper looks for differences and commonalities in how these missions project their vision onto the frontier, and how the frontier affects them.
Developing a topological analytic approach to the frontier, the paper assembles materials for the formulation of a tentative theory of religious expansion and intensification. The argument centres on the potency of instability, a feature that is particularly pronounced on the post-atheist frontier in Central Asia.
About the lecturer
Dr. Mathijs Pelkmans is Associate Professor at The Department of Social Anthropology at The London School of Economics and Political Science and a specialist of the Caucasus and Central Asia.