In the 1980s, anthropology set aside a focus on societies defined as radically ‘other’ to the anthropologists' own. There was little consensus at the time, however, about who might replace the other as the primary object of anthropological attention. In important respects, I argue, its replacement has been the suffering subject. Tracing this change, I consider how it addressed key problems of the anthropology of the other, but I also suggest that some strengths of earlier work – particularly some of its unique critical capacities – were lost in the transition. The conclusion considers how recent trends in anthropology might coalesce in a further shift, this one toward an anthropology of the good capable of recovering some of the critical force of an earlier anthropology without taking on its weaknesses.

▪ Abstract  Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity (P/c), the form of Christianity in which believers receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit, is rapidly spreading and can be counted as one of the great success stories of the current era of cultural globalization. Literature on P/c presents a paradoxical picture of the cultural dynamics accompanying its spread. Many scholars argue that P/c is markedly successful in replicating itself in canonical form everywhere it spreads, whereas others stress its ability to adapt itself to the cultures into which it is introduced. Authors thus use P/c to support both theories that construe globalization as a process of Westernizing homogenization and those that understand it as a process of indigenizing differentiation. This review argues that approaches to P/c globalization need to recognize that P/c posesses cultural features that allow it, in most cases, to work in both ways at once. After considering definitional and historical issues and explanations for P/c's spread, the review examines how P/c culture at once preserves its distinctness from the cultures into which it comes into contact and engages those cultures on their own terms. Also discussed are the conceptions that allow P/c to establish locally run and supported institutions in a wide range of settings. A final section considers the nature of the culture P/c, in its homogenizing guise, introduces, examining that culture's relation to modernity and its effects on converts' ideas about gender, politics, and economics.

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