“Contested Charisma”.: Reflections on the Appearance and Disappearance of Female Visionary Power in a South African Independent Church

„Angefochtenes Charisma“. Überlegungen zum entstehen und Verschwinden der Macht von Seherinnen in einer südafrikanischen unabhängigen Kirche Wie andere afrikanische unabhängige Kirchen in Südafrika wird die Nazareth Baptist Church meist als eine von Männern dominierte Institution wahrgenommen, obwohl im rituellen Bereich Frauen gelegentlich eine Rolle zugeteilt wird. In der Vergangenheit haben jedoch einzelne Frauen einen erheblichen Einfluss als Prophetinnen oder „Engel“ gehabt, die behaupteten, Visionen vom verstorbenen Gründer der Kirche erhalten zu haben. Diese in Vergessenheit geratene Frauen ergriffen nicht nur Partei in den Machtkämpfen der männlichen Hierarchie der Kirche, sondern förderten bestimmte religiöse Ideen, vor allem die Forderung nach ritueller Reinheit

Essays in Applied Microeconomics

One major goal of modern societies is to establish a cooperative and cohesive community. Though most people can agree on this goal, it is less clear how it can be achieved. To be able to make informed political changes towards its realization, it is necessary to understand not only the individual components of society in depth, the individual human being, but also how they live together and interact. Though these topics are at the heart of economics and social sciences more generally, there still remain many unanswered questions due to the complexity of individual and social behavior. For example, at a societal level, why do we observe a divide of society into distinct ideological camps and what can we do about it? Would it help to bring people together to talk? Would such a measure reduce stereotypes or could it even increase polarization? Likewise, questions of fairness and morality are similarly crucial to understand as they shape social behavior and give important insights when thinking about setting social rules. What determines moral behavior? To what extent is it driven by moral stances, and to what extent by intrinsic mechanisms and biases? However, it is also crucial to explore preferences and beliefs at the individual level. Only when we understand how beliefs and preferences are formed at the very basic level, we learn more about the way individuals ultimately behave. To give an example, why do we see so many different perceptions of how just the world is, even though everyone lives in the same world? This thesis revolves around these broad questions. It seeks to contribute to the knowledge of how societies work and their members think and behave. Being at the heart of social sciences, it combines knowledge and tools not only from economics, but also related sciences like political science, psychology, sociology, and philosophy. The thesis comprises three chapters in total, each dealing with a different aspect of the above mentioned questions. Chapter 1 focuses on political preferences, beliefs and intergroup aversion asking whether conversations between like-minded individuals exacerbate political polarization and conversations between contrary-minded individuals reduce it. Chapter 2 examines how individuals morally evaluate others. Chapter 3 studies self-serving attributions in the formation of beliefs

Charting African Prosperity Gospel economies

This article maps the vital debate on Prosperity Gospel in Africa and its relevance for socioeconomic change. Prosperity Gospel centres mainly on speech acts surrounding faith, wealth and victory, combined with ritual enactments around secondary evidences of divine blessings. Claiming this-worldly success and material well-being as signs of grace it has captured public spheres and has created African religio-scapes of prosperity. The survey on the socioeconomics of African prosperity-oriented Pentecostalism firstly traces the historic genealogy of Prosperity Gospel as transposable message. It appears as a generic formula in paradigmatic reinventions of Pentecostalism in post-second and/or cold war America and in its globalisation in postcolonial Africa. The double resignification of Pentecostal theology - a rereading of ‘mammon’ alongside a new ethic of being in the world - relates to the question of socioeconomic agency. Academic discourse connects Prosperity Gospel social capital with interpretations of its ritual texture thriving around rituals of tithings and offerings. Prosperity Gospel economies are profiled as forms of sacral consumption or sacrificial economy, or else as Pentecostal kleptocracy. Contrarily Prosperity Gospel is portrayed as a variant and porter of African social change. The contextualisation of Prosperity Gospel highlights diverse social agency in different milieus. Rural and peri-urban theologies of survival differ from urban progressive and metropolitan business management Prosperity Gospel. The findings defy generalised views on Prosperity Gospel socioeconomics. African Prosperity Gospel indicates a transformative potential in immediate social relationships, whereas claims of impacting structural parameters of society remain, with a few exceptions, part of Pentecostal imagination.This article forms part of the special collection on ‘Engaging development: Contributions to a critical theological and religious debate’ in HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies Volume 72, Issue 4, 2016.http://www.hts.org.zaam2017Science of Religion and Missiolog