An anthropology of images in contemporary christian orthodox Ethiopia

This book is at the crossroads of the anthropology of religion, imagery and morality. It explores a major ambivalence in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church - the images they revere and the people who create them.

Specifically, it addresses Orthodox image traditions and the moral identity of its « image-producers ». Its central thesis is that image-producers are socially problematic. They create objects that not only mediate relationships and exercise social power or agency, but also have the capacity to incite a moral discourse. Images in this context can have a spiritual impact that entangles their producers in a web of relationships with the visible, invisible, the material and immaterial : they necessitate an examination of the social agency that defines and obscures them. This book particularly looks at how certain Orthodox image-producers also function on the margins of the Church and treat, using talismanic images, « socially reprehensible » emotional disturbances.