The stranger at the feast : prohibition and mediation in an Ethiopian Orthodox Christian community / Tom Boylston.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction : prohibition and a ritual regime -- A history of mediation -- Fasting, bodies, and the calendar -- Proliferations of mediators -- Blood, silver, and coffee -- Spirits in the marketplace -- Concrete, bones, and feasts -- Echoes of the host -- The media landscape -- The knowledge of the world -- Conclusion.

"The Stranger at the Feast is the first full-length ethnographic study of Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity. Based on two years of field study on the Zege peninsula on Lake Tana between 2008 and 2014, the book follows the material relationships by which Ethiopian Orthodox Christians relate to God, each other, and the material environment. It shows how religious life in Zege is based around a ritual ecology of prohibition and mediation in which fasting and avoidance practices are necessary in order to make the material world fit for religious life. The book traces how religious feeding and fasting practices have been the idiom through which Christians in Zege have understood the turbulent political changes of recent decades"--Provided by publisher.