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gavin feller
To cite this article: gavin feller (2018): portable power, religious swag: mediating authority in
brazilian neo-pentecostalism, Material Religion, DOI: 10.1080/17432200.2018.1488506
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Gavin Feller is an Assistant Professor of Material Religion volume 0, issue 0, pp. 1–000
Media Studies at Southern Utah University. DOI: 10.1080/17432200.2018.1488506
His research focuses on media and religion.
gavinfeller@suu.edu
© 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
Introduction
I stepped off an inner city bus onto a busy Brazilian sidewalk
Gavin Feller
visited—was unexpected, given neo-Pentecostalism’s supposed
dismissal of materiality; for faithful followers, however, mate-
rial objects are the blood of daily devotion. Its incredibly rapid
growth, its knack for stirring public controversy, and its influence
on the increasing convergence of Brazilian politics, popular
media, and religion, have made the Universal Church the subject
of much scholarly attention in recent decades (Campos 1997;
Mariano 2004; Freston 1995; Chesnut 2011). The majority of
existing research has generally focused on the public influence
of the Universal Church’s political efforts, its polemical rheto-
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ric, and its robust media ownership from a critical perspective
(Campos 1997; Birman and Lehmann 1999; Mariano 2004). Con-
troversy and corruption are catnip for journalists and scholars,
and rightfully so—particularly when a religious organization
such as the Universal Church grows in popularity in spite of,
or perhaps because of, such drama. Sensational scandals and
media showmanship, however, divert attention from the daily
and mundane use of taken-for-granted material artifacts and
3 objects so central to lived religion and scholars’ understanding
of mediation more broadly.
Attention to materiality itself, however, is not the end of
analysis but the beginning. Critiquing the increasing ubiquity
of material religion studies and the potential loss of purpose
therein, Bruno Reinhardt (2016) argues, “definitions of material-
ity become intrinsically and performatively bound to questions
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Gavin Feller
1995).
After more than a decade of steady growth, the number of
Universal followers increased most drastically between 1990 and
2000, rising to 2 million in just 23 years according to national
census data1 (IBGE 2000; Mariano 2004). Much of this growth
has been attributed to Macedo’s purchase in 1989 of what is
now the second largest television network in the country, Rede
Record, one among many radio and television stations used by
the Universal Church as tools for attracting followers (Mariano
2004; Birman and Lehmann 1999). Regular charges of fraud and
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charlatanism have long accompanied Macedo and the Universal
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Church, though the most controversial episodes—namely the
‘kicking of the saint’ incident2 and a widely circulated video of
Macedo instructing pastors in deceptive monetary collection
practices—appear to be behind the organization for now, at
least until Brazil’s lethargic legal system catches up (Mariano
2004; Cuadros 2013). The Universal Church’s use of mass elec-
tronic media as their chief forms of proselytizing also equates
5 with a stronger political presence due to Brazil’s network media
ownership laws (Campos 1997). Indeed, research on the inter-
section of Brazilian religion, politics, and media is a healthy and
growing area of academic study in the country.
However, two specific dimensions of the Universal Church
have received much less scholarly attention: its appropriation of
Judaica and its persistent use of small objects; in other words,
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versal Church within what Magali Cunha (2007) calls the matriz
religiosa Brasileira (Brazilian religious matrix): the mingling of
Indigenous, African, and Portuguese religious influences par-
ticular to Brazil. Cunha argues, the borrowing and blending of
objects, rituals, and beliefs—a process she calls “dialogic” rather
than syncretic in order to grant respect to the faithful by avoid-
ing the negative connotations of the latter—practiced by the
Universal Church is characteristic of all Brazilian religions.
According to Birman and Lehmann (1999), the Universal
Church rabidly consumes ideas and practices from neigh-
boring faiths, which are dismissed and rejected in nearly the
same breath—a theological and material looting followed by a
discursive burning. For example, demons possessing the bodies
of Universal Church adherents are frequently diagnosed as
evil spirits from the Afro-Brazilian traditions of Umbanda and
Candomblé—curses from a lower, primitive religious order.
However, Universal Church priests frequently use language and
objects originating from within these very same faiths to remove
such unwanted ghosts (Birman and Lehmann 1999). Such
appropriation can in part be explained as a need for familiarity
with Afro-Brazilian beliefs and lexicon in order to exploit them
for healing and exorcism rites (Da Silva 2007). In other words,
demons must first be conjured in order to be defeated (Meyer
2015).
The Universal Church’s dismissal of materiality, undermined
by its very dependence upon it, reflects the paradoxical nature
of anthropophagy and the Church’s adaptation to the Brazilian
religious milieu. “Even though Christian—and especially Prot-
estant—discourse employs an anti-idolatry and antiritualistic
rhetoric,” Meyer (2015) argues, “indigenous religious practices
are still regarded as powerful,” practices in which “human actions
and material objects are indispensable for getting in touch with
spirits” (232).
In recent work Cunha (2014) uses Peircian semiotics to
explain the appropriation of Old Testament signs and sym-
bols, which has become an increasingly important element of
Brazilian neo-Pentecostalism. Cunha argues that the Universal
Church and its religious marketplace rivals pull Old Testament
symbols—such as the Jewish temple, Israelite kings, ideas about
spiritual warfare and domination, musical instruments, and Jew-
ish festivals—from their context and re-signify them for practical
6 uses that resonate within Brazilian popular culture and mass
media. Although by no means the first to do so, the Universal
Church is certainly a recent leader in such re-appropriation,
evident in its adoption of the Ark of the Covenant, the Temple
of Solomon, and kings David and Solomon—all of which are
closely tied to Macedo’s longstanding focus on war and empire.
Old Testament symbols, Cunha maintains, are particularly useful
for demonstrating the success and power of those on God’s right
hand. These symbols—materialized in architecture, swag, and
merchandise—link to prosperity theology and the expansion of
the Universal Church empire on a global scale.3
As “faith artifacts,” tangible objects such as miniature Ark of
the Covenant replicas, anointed roses, and vials of oil imported
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of Afro-Brazilian religion. When it comes to ritual and enchant-
ment the neo-Pentecostal Universal Church arguably has more
in common with Catholicism and Afro-Brazilian religion than
it does with other Protestant religions (Sansi Roca 2007). Small
religious objects are particularly central to religious rituals in
the country’s two major religions of African origin—Umbanda
and Candomblé. In both traditions everyday materials such as
stones and pieces of iron act as tools for magical manipulation
of the mundane world (Sansi Roca 2005; Halloy 2013). More
importantly, religious objects are integral to “countless magical
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practices oriented to prosperity” in Brazil (Sansi Roca 2005, 323).
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How objects acquire religious agency is key to under-
standing their role in the Universal Church. In her study of the
Candomblé cult Xangô, Halloy argues that social practices with
things traditionally produce distinct ontological relationships
between individuals, objects, and gods. However, Candomblé
ritual activity creates ontological hybrids precisely because the
multi-sensory experience of ritual blurs the ontology of objects.
7 Likewise, Roger Sansi Roca (2005) ties the agency of Candomblé
objects to their presence in ritual events. Object agency, accord-
ing to Sansi Roca, does not come from a mind; it comes from
a body at a particular time in a particular space. Ritual objects,
like all media, extend sacred events and spaces through durable
traces.
Religious objects cannot be separated from embodied prac-
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Gavin Feller
(Peters 2015, 5), then religious objects can be seen as religious
ordering devices. In the case of the Universal Church, they are
the overlooked, in-between materials that help provide the
conditions of possibility for daily worship—the material micro-
structure of lived religion.
A focus on infrastructure highlights a fundamental tension
between mediation and immediacy in theories of media and
religion. Meyer (2011) coined the term “disappearing media” to
describe a phenomenon in religious settings when mediation
itself becomes sacred, the devices of mediation—which Meyer
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terms sensational forms—“vanish into the substance that they
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mediate” (32). De Witte (2012), for instance, argues that Pente-
costals orchestrate bodily techniques and media technologies
in order to facilitate personal spiritual experiences with God as
immediate and real. “That is,” she maintains, “technology has to
be naturalized, to appear unnoticed in a way, in order for the
divine to be identified as the true source of power” (82). Although
Protestants often treat media as human-made devices that
9 get in the way of an unmediated and therefore more intimate
relationship with God, Meyer (2011) insists this view is contradic-
tory—there is no “real” content beyond form, no divine message
without a medium. In its goal to enable ultimate immediacy with
the divine, Pentecostalism generates new forms of manifesting
religion as a material presence (Meyer 2015). Likewise, while the
process of mediation ideally erases the medium (Meyer 2011),
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Gavin Feller
material presence preserves and perpetuates hierarchies of
religious knowledge and practice through time and space, its
proliferation as an object that can be purchased produces a rich
polysemy in the hands of its various owners. The Quran, like
the religious objects used in the Universal Church, contains the
possibility for different sorts of power relations. Hence, the pri-
mary goal of this paper is to begin the conceptual work toward
understanding how particular power relations play out through
religious objects in lived religion, specifically in the case of Brazil-
ian neo-Pentecostalism.
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Religious objects do not merely re-present religious experi-
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ence and religious power—they continually constitute it in the
lives of those who hold, touch, and care for them.
Portable Media
I now return to the worship service at the Catredal da Fé I began
with, to offer the descriptive detail necessary to understand
more concretely the institutional authorization of portable
11 media and followers’ uses of them beyond the walls of the
church.
There I was, eagerly watching—notepad in hand—as the
frantic shuffling slowly settled and the meeting formally began.
The collective energy was as palpable as the crowd at a small
town university sporting event. Seizing the energy like a veteran
emcee the pastor called upon the group to hold their oil in the
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Gavin Feller
women, distinguished from the majority of followers by their
clothing and expensive mobile phones: Luciana, a successful
middle-aged entrepreneur, and Tatiana, the young wife of a suc-
cessful Universal Church pastor. They were educated, articulate,
and friendly—eager to testify to an outsider of the blessings of
the Universal Church. Both attributed their success to finding the
Church. And yet, both emphatically emphasized that it was not
the pastors casting out demons that I witnessed, but the people
themselves through their faith, with the pastor’s help. The
Church, I was told, teaches you how to build and “channel your
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faith.” Rather than glamorize their leaders or speak of the power
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held within particular materials, the empowered individual was
their focus. Certainly entrepreneurialism is a manifestation of the
Universal Church’s use of global neoliberal discourse.
Despite the entrepreneurial rhetoric of Universal Church pas-
tors, and the empowerment Luciana and Tatiana experienced,
the power of the individual must be curbed to necessitate
collective worship. “Why can’t I watch the services from home,
13 alone? Why do I need to physically attend?” I asked the women.
Tatiana answered by analogizing watching a music concert on
television versus attending the concert in person. The palpable
“energy” of the collective cannot be replicated, she insisted.
When asked about the need for so many material things, Tatiana
explained, “the people need to take part to believe. They need
something visual to believe. They need to touch something in
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Contractual Media
It is by no means uncommon to receive a flyer advertising an
upcoming religious service while visiting or even passing by
a church in Brazil, regardless of the particular denomination.
The regularity and high volume of such flyers and many other
materials should, however, not be overlooked in the study of
authority and lived religion. At a given Universal Church service,
followers collect as many as eight to ten objects, ranging from
small vials of holy oil to plastic bags of blessed water to printed
promos for future meetings. A meeting is simply not complete
without such swag. The term swag has many cultural meanings,
each of which has some relevance for understanding the role
of contractual media in the construction of Universal Church
institutional authority. Swag, variously defined, can mean free
stuff for promotional purposes, stolen stuff, a confident attitude
or street credibility, or a large number or variety. I use the term
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intentionally to illustrate the potential value and meanings
assigned to religious objects given away at Universal Church
worship services. To reiterate, portable media are objects owned
by parishioners previous to worship meetings, which are ritually
blessed for personal uses and taken home from services as such.
Contractual media, on the other hand, are objects given by the
Universal Church to meeting attendees. I understand swag as a
type of what I am calling contractual media, leaving the latter as
a broader category in which other material forms of mediation
might reside.
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Typically, parishioners receive swag at regular intervals
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during worship, most often as a kind of material receipt for a
monetary offering, but also as a souvenir of sorts for meeting
attendance. Universal Church meetings consist of short sermons,
lasting five to ten minutes, broken up by offerings and prayers.
Upbeat recorded music, often dangerously loud, cues and then
accompanies the offering. The pastor, microphone in hand, sings
along to the music intermittently, mixing calls to the audience
15 to come and give with a passionate vocal performance. Parishio-
ners regularly give dizimo (tithe)—one tenth of their income—
but are also relentlessly encouraged to give an offerta (offering)
as a demonstration of faith (see Chesnut 2011). Pastors chal-
lenge their congregants’ faith by continually raising the stakes,
“this person gave ____, who can give ______?”
After placing coins and bills into church-produced paper
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Gavin Feller
from the Latin meminisse, is more than a gentle reminder; it
is an imperative to remember, a warning. In the tradition of
memento mori, objects—most notably the human skull—act as
vivid reminders of the impending death that awaits all humans.
Contractual media likewise face backward and forward. At once,
they encapsulate and memorialize the past—as assurances con-
tinually, physically piling up—even as they extend an uncertain
future requiring continual action on the part of the faithful. They
are, we might say, memento reditio: reminders to return.
Because the Universal Church has formalized an already
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established cultural connection to religious objects with a spe-
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cific tie to giving and receiving money, the word contractual—
with all of its legal and corporate connotations—is quite fitting.
Brightly colored silicone wristbands with the words “pacto com
Deus” (pact with God) were given to adherents near the close
of some meetings I attended at the Templo de Salomão in São
Paulo. The sachets for tithes and offerings given away at the
Temple often had similar contractual messages derived from
17 scriptural passages. The phrase “aliança com Deus” (alliance
with God), which I heard pastors repeat regularly, was printed
on one sachet above an image of two gold rings connected to
one another—a play on the word alliance, aliança means both
wedding ring and covenant in Brazilian Portuguese. Another
example, the Ark of the Covenant, according to Kramer (2002),
symbolizes an individual’s sacrifice to God and the formation of
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Gavin Feller
While research on material religion has granted power to
the user of religious objects (McDannell 1995; Houtman and
Meyer 2011; Morgan 1999), my analysis complicates questions
of power and authority by distinguishing between different
types of religious objects and different types of power in lived
religion.
The materiality of media matters, not only because of their
biases toward time and space, but also because these biases
have important implications for religious tradition and author-
ity (Innis 1951). According to Innis, because of their durability,
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materials such as stone and clay have a time-bias, while papyrus
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and paper, in their light weight and mobility, are space-biased.
Writing on stone and clay, for instance, more effectively pre-
serves hierarchical authority over long periods of time because
of the life of the medium—such media are better suited for the
continuity of religious traditions. The Universal Church’s recent
construction of its $300 million replica of King Solomon’s ancient
temple—equipped with state of the art audio-visual technology
19 and imbued with Jewish symbols and artifacts—adds historical
authenticity to the Church by tangibly linking it to ancient Israel
while also serving as visual testament to the institution’s success
and power. The Universal Church translates the ecclesiastical and
spiritual authority of the Bible as a canonical text to contempo-
rary architecture and exhibitionism. Its showmanship is hard to
miss. Its architectural grandeur and physical durability ensure an
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Gavin Feller
To compete in the so-called religious marketplace—in this
case a larger Pentecostal-Charismatic movement that has signifi-
cantly increased the ubiquity of Evangelical Christianity in Brazil
in recent decades—churches must not only attract parishio-
ners to regular worship services but also ensure their frequent
return. The active distribution of swag in exchange for tithes
and offerings should therefore be seen as part of an institutional
strategy to maintain a steady flow of followers who contribute to
the Church’s collective energy and visibility as well as its financial
stability. With church hopping among Pentecostal-Charismatic
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meetinghouses a common and expected phenomenon, the
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church one attends on a given day perhaps matters less than the
one receiving regular tithes and offerings.
Small, ephemeral handouts and cheap distributed religious
goods create implicit power relations that keep followers tied
to the institutional church in a reciprocal exchange predicated
upon expected prosperity as evidence of faithful attendance and
personal sacrifice. In this case, the physical exchange of material
21 goods in religious spaces constitutes a perpetuation rather than
a disruption of institutional religious authority. As overlooked
infrastructure, contractual object media establish and maintain
conditions for otherwise mundane materials to mediate power
on a daily basis.
Through attention toward portable and contract object
media, as part of what I am calling material microstructure,
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institutional control.
Conclusion
As the study of material religion continues to grow, analysis of
religious objects and their role in the construction of religious
authority will become increasingly important. The concomitant
rise of the theory of religion as media demands a more robust
application of media theory. This ethnographic study of Univer-
sal Church object media in Brazil is one example of how scholar-
ship moving forward can address the intersection of materiality,
authority, and media in religious contexts.
By distinguishing between portable media and contractual
media, I offer a new approach to understanding the infrastruc-
tural role various materials play in the mediation of religious
authority. In the case of the Universal Church different objects
facilitate different power relationships within a larger system of
material exchange tied broadly to Christian prosperity theol-
ogy, but also unique to the Brazilian religious matrix. To some
extent, many of the objects I have discussed can be found in all
Brazilian religion.9 The regular dissemination of small objects in
ritual exchange for tithes and offerings, however, is of particular
significance in the Universal Church precisely because of the
unique combination of the church’s appropriation of Old Testa-
ment symbols and language (contracts with the divine under-
gird the global empire), its use of prosperity theology (righteous
sacrifices are rewarded with tangible, material manifestations),
and its adoption of neoliberal discourse (success is an individual
endeavor). The material microstructure of the Universal Church
at once upholds and undermines the very power relations
embedded within these intersecting forces.
The Universal Church’s harsh rhetoric, monetary corrup-
tion, media management, and its new Temple of Solomon all
illustrate the powerful influence the institution exercises in Brazil
and beyond. This much is obvious. What is subtler, and therefore
perhaps more powerful, is the material microstructure under-
girding the international enterprise.
Perhaps Universal Church followers, many of which are
traditionally low on the socioeconomic ladder, subconsciously
see the piling up of bric-á-brac collected from worship services
and given in exchange for monetary offerings and tithes—as an
increase in material possessions, as a symbolic foreshadowing of
22 the financial accumulation awaiting them. What is swag now will
ultimately be health, wealth, and spiritual salvation. To be clear,
I am not saying that the popularity of swag can be attributed
solely to the poverty of Universal Church parishioners. The prac-
tice is certainly tied to the banalization of sacred power within
a global neoliberal ideology of expansion, empire, and entre-
preneurialism. I am instead arguing that the steady material
accumulation of small objects given away at meetings subtlety
reinforces a theology of prosperity—literally taking something
home from each meeting continually reminds followers that
when they give they will always receive. Even giving of one’s
time and energy to be at the worship meeting ensures that they
will not go home empty-handed. Thus, objects mediate a spiri-
tual and physical reciprocity, and unnoticed power relationships.
Gavin Feller
notes and references
1
According to the 2010 census, the fundamental media that organize (not
number of Universal Church followers just traverse) time, space, and power
declined by nearly 230,000 between such as clocks, calendars, and catalogs
2000 and 2010 (IBGE 2010). (Peters 2015).
2 6
The publicly televised kicking of The International Grace of God Church
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Brazil’s patron saint, Nossa Senhora was founded by Romildo Ribeiro Soares
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Aparecida, was an attempt both to (R.R. Soares) in 1980 after Soares and
demonstrate the lifelessness and insig- Edir Macedo went their separate ways.
nificance of the material statue and to 7
The Universal Church’s media empire
attack the country’s dominant Catholic
includes Rede TV along with 30 radio
tradition.
stations, two publishing houses, and
3
Religious merchandise utilizing Old several recording studios (Reis 2006).
Testament and even Hebrew symbols 8
After all, only a big king can afford to
is a growing industry in Brazil (Cunha
waste.
2014).
23 4
9
For instance, Padre Marcelo Rossi, an
Reflecting on the first decade of
extremely popular Brazilian priest with-
Material Religion, editors noted that
in the Catholic Charismatic movement,
only four articles from scholars in
used to encourage his media audience
media studies had been published. As
to place a glass of water near their
a point of comparison, anthropology
home radio or television to receive the
and religious studies dominated the list
Holy Spirit’s curative powers (De Abreu
with 49 and 31 articles from each field
2005; Campos 1999).
respectively (Meyer et al. 2015).
Material Religion
Gavin Feller
Mauss, Marcel. (1954) 1990. The Gift: The Peters, John Durham. 2015. The
Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Marvelous Clouds: Toward a Philosophy
Societies. Reprint, Abingdon, Oxon: of Elemental Media. Chicago, IL:
Routledge. University of Chicago Press.
McDannell, Colleen. 1995. Material Sansi Roca, Roger. 2005. “The Hidden
Christianity: Religion and Popular Life of Stones: Historicity, Materiality
Culture in America. New Haven, CT: Yale and the Value of Candomblé Objects in
University Press. Bahia.” Journal of Material Culture, 10 (2):
139–156.
McLuhan, Marshall. 1964.
Understanding Media: The Extensions of Sansi Roca, Roger. 2007. “‘Dinheiro
Man. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Vivo’.” Critique of Anthropology, 27 (3):
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319–339.
Meyer, Birgit. 2011. “Mediation and
Immediacy: Sensational Forms, Stolow, Jeremy. 2005. “Religion and/as
Semiotic Ideologies and the Question Media.” Theory, Culture & Society, 22 (4):
of Medium.” Social Anthropology, 19 (1): 119–145.
23–39.
Williams, Raymond. 1974. Television:
Meyer, Birgit. 2015. Sensational Movies: Technology and Cultural Form. London,
Video, Vision, and Christianity in Ghana. UK: Collins.
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