Dr. Patrick A. Desplat
PROJECT
Prayer in the City. Religious Plurality, the (Un)Making of Religious Boundaries and Urban Everyday Life in Mahajanga/MadagascarMy project focuses on urban spaces so contexts for the making and unmaking of the religious. It analyses the interplay between the (un)making of religious boundaries and urban everyday life in Indian Ocean port city of Mahajanga in northwest Madagascar. Inspired by recent debates in anthropology on morality, piety, and everyday life (Debevec 2008, Fadil & Fernando 2015, Jouili 2015, Schielke 2015), the complexities and inherent ambiguities of everyday life serve as a starting point to investigate religious boundary work between Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, as well as Malagasy concepts of ancestor veneration, spirit possession, and “magic”. The project follows the research questions of how cities’ historical, cultural, and spatial conditions shape religious plurality and the interaction of religious communities and how these communities themselves affect social urban life. As such, it engages in complex socio-political questions about the nature of religious freedom, about the limits of toleration, and about the role of religion in urban (secular) societies.
ACADEMIC EDUCATION
| 2002–2009 | Ph.D. studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz |
| 1993–2001 | MA studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz |
SCIENTIFIC DEGREES
| 2009 | Ph.D. in Social and Cultural Anthropology Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, Germany |
| 2001 | Magister Artium (M.A.) in Social and Cultural Anthropology Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, Germany |
PROFESSIONAL CAREER AFTER COMPLETING DEGREE
| 2016–present | Post-Doc Researcher, Forum for interdisciplinary religious Studies (FiReF-FIRSt) Georg August University Göttingen, Germany |
| 2012–2015 | Senior researcher, DFG Project, Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology University of Cologne, Germany |
| 2011–2012 | Assistant professor (substitute), Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology University of Cologne, Germany |
| 2010–2011 | Research assistant, Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology University of Cologne, Germany |
| 2008–2009 | Research fellow, Center of Modern Oriental Studies Berlin Graduate School of Muslim Societies and Cultures, Free University of Berlin |
| 2003–2008 | Research fellow, Collaborative Research Centre 295, (SFB 295) Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, Germany |
| 2001–2002 | Research assistant, Institute of Social Anthropology and African Studies Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, Germany |
FELLOWSHIPS, AWARDS AND HONORS (SELECTED)
| 2013 | Associated professor, Institute of Languages and Civilizations, University of Mahajanga, Madagascar |
| 2010 | Senior fellowship, Topoi (The Formation and Transformation of Space and Knowledge in Ancient Civilizations), Free University Berlin |
| 2002 | Postgraduate scholarship, Federal State Rheinland-Pfalz, Mainz, Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, Germany |
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Books and articles in journalsDesplat, Patrick. 2018. “Closed circles of mistrust: Envy, aspirations and urban sociality in coastal Madagascar.” Africa: Special Issue “Urban Kinship”. Africa 88 (S1) 2018: S117–S139.
Desplat, Patrick. 2016. “‘Heard about the Good-Deed-Sayers?’ Islam and everyday conversations on religious difference in Harar, Ethiopia.” Journal of Islamic Studies 35(1): 11–42.
Desplat, Patrick. 2013. “Against Wahabism? Islamic reform, ambivalence and sentiments of loss in Harar.” In: Desplat, Patrick and Østebø, Terje (eds.). Muslim Ethiopia: Transforming Identities and New Representations. Palgrave Macmillan: New York. 163–184.
Desplat, Patrick and Østebø, Terje. 2013. “Introduction: Muslims in Ethiopia. The christian legacy, identity politics and Islamic reformism.” In: Desplat, Patrick und Østebø, Terje (eds.). Muslim Ethiopia: Transforming Identities and New Representations. Palgrave Macmillan: New York. 1-46.
Desplat, Patrick and Ostebo, Terje. 2013. Muslim Ethiopia: Transforming Identities and New Representations. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Desplat, Patrick and Schulz, Dorothea. 2012. Prayer in the City: The Making of Muslim Places and Urban Life. Bielefeld: Transcript.
Desplat, Patrick. 2012. “Introduction: Representations of space, place-making and urban life in Muslim societies.” In: Desplat, Patrick and Schulz, Dorothea (eds.). Prayer in the City: The Making of Muslim Places and Urban Life. Transcript: Bielefeld. 7–34.
Desplat, Patrick. 2012. “Beyond the politics of ‘Othering’: Shifting representations of Christian-Muslim-relationships in Ethiopia.” Orient: German Journal for Politics, Economics and Culture of the Middle East (Special Issue “Islam in Africa” 1): 6–11.
Desplat, Patrick. 2010. Heilige Stadt – Stadt der Heiligen: Manifestationen, Ambivalenzen und Kontroversen des islamischen Heiligen in Harar/Äthiopien. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe.
Desplat, Patrick. 2008. “The making of a Harari city in Ethiopia: Constructing and contesting saintly places.” In: Stauth, Georg and Schielke, Samuli (eds.). Dimensions of Locality: The Making and Remaking of Islamic Saints and their Places (Yearbook of the Sociology of Islam 8). Bielefeld: Transcript. 149–168.
Desplat, Patrick. 2005. “The articulation of religious identities and their boundaries in Ethiopia: Labeling difference and processes of contextualisation in Islam.” In: Journal of Religion in Africa 35(4): 482–505.
Desplat, Patrick. 2005. “Äthiopien: Diaspora am Horn von Afrika? Inamo 41: 4–8.
Desplat, Patrick. 2003. Islamische Gelehrte zwischen Text und Praxis: Wandlungsprozesse im Islam am Beispiel von Kenia/ Ostafrika. Arbeitspapier des Instituts für Ethnologie und Afrikastudien der Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz Nr. 16.
Desplat, Patrick. 2002. “Muslime in Äthiopien: Die Heiligenverehrung in Harar in Auseinandersetzung mit islamischen Reformströmungen.” Afrika Spektrum 2002(2): 141-157.
Other publications
Desplat, Patrick. 2018. “Madagascar.“ In: Fleet, Kate et al. (eds.). The Encyclopedia of Islam 3. Brill: Leiden (forthcoming).
Desplat, Patrick. 2018. “Jimma.“ In: Fleet, Kate et al. (eds.). The Encyclopedia of Islam 3. Brill: Leiden. 138–139.
Desplat, Patrick. 2016. “Harar.“ In: Fleet, Kate et al. (eds.). The Encyclopedia of Islam 3. Brill: Leiden. 77–80.
Desplat, Patrick. 2016. “Husayn, Shayk.“ In: Fleet, Kate et al. (eds.). The Encyclopedia of Islam 3. Brill: Leiden. 102–105.
Desplat, Patrick. 2014. “Dire Dawa.” In: Fleet, Kate et al. (eds.). The Encyclopedia of Islam 3. Brill: Leiden. 94–95.
Desplat, Patrick. 2016. “al-Hararī, ‘Abdallāh b. al- Muḥammad b. Yūsuf.“ In: Fleet, Kate et al. (eds.). The Encyclopedia of Islam 3. Brill: Leiden. 133–134.
Desplat, Patrick. 2016. “East Africa”. In: Martin, Richard (ed.): Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World (2nd edition). Macmillan Reference USA: New York. 311–318.