In Chapter 5, I discuss how people’s divergent Islamic conceptions, practices, and imaginaries can become incommensurable with one another. I describe and discuss the different Islamic divination and healing practices encountered in the zongos and trace their surrounding discourses and debates. These ‘bōkā’ practices are diverse and contested, if not rejected outright by their critics. Proposing the concept of the imaginary, I argue that these practices should be considered in their respective contexts and in view of people’s understandings of how things (should) hang together. I therefore present two ‘bōkā’ practitioners and relate the discourses they hold on their practices, seeking to convey how they ground these in the Islamic discursive tradition and make sense of them. I also discuss people’s varied conceptions and practices of ṣadaqa. I then present the critiques of ‘bōkā’ by different actors and highlight how they ground these within and lay claim to the same discursive tradition of Islam. As I argue, the people of the zongo engage with and take part in a shared discursive tradition as they (re)make and live their religion. Yet, the ways in which they participate in this religion and what they make of it are not only open to varied engagements but inherently diverse.

The conclusion offers a general summary and some reflections on the book. I argue that the diversity of lived Islam in the zongos is informed by and informs the lifeworld of these wards as the people of the zongos relate to and live with one another as Muslims. In the process, they engage with and (re)make their religion in open but not ungrounded processes as they ground their divergent Islamic conceptions, practices, and imaginaries in the discursive tradition of their religion and thus participate in and perpetuate it. As a lived and living tradition, Islam is inextricably bound up with how people live it.

Chapter 1 narrates a history of Muslim presence in Asante. Drawing on oral histories, interviews, archival records, and secondary literature, I trace this history since the early eighteenth century. Originating from across the West African subregion, Muslim migrants have been present as a minority in Asante at least since the foundation of the Asante dominion in around 1700. Throughout the Asante dominion, theirs was a small community of Dioula living at the royal court. Under colonial rule, numerous Muslim traders and labourers from the northern regions moved into Asante and founded zongos across the region. In the process, Hausa displaced Dioula as the hegemonic group, and the Qadiriyya order became the predominant Islamic group in the zongos. During the early twentieth century, the Qadiriyya were supplanted by the Tijaniyya, who held Islamic hegemony until the 1970s, when they came under open attack by the reformist Sunna. Up to the present, both groups have struggled for Islamic hegemony in the zongos. As I argue, the current diversity of lived Islam in the zongos is at once informed by this changing history and informs its divergent and contested narrations, which are part of and co-shape the discursive tradition of this religion.

This chapter explores transhumanist attempts to live “happily ever after.” As British philosopher and transhumanist Dave Pearce expounds in The Hedonistic Imperative, “nanotechnology and genetic engineering will “eliminate aversive experience from the living world” and usher in “a sublime and all-pervasive happiness”(Pearce 1995). This chapter thus asks, how exactly do transhumanists conceive of the good life? By what means do they seek to usher it in? How do transhumanist conceptions of the good life compare and contrast with the way peope in other societies have understood and pursued the good life? This chapter seeks to further our understanding of “the hedonistic imperative” and in so doing, further illuminate some of the values transhumanists hold dear.

Chapter 4 explores the transhumanist pursuit of morphological freedom. It asks, how does the transhumanist attempt to transform the body compare and contrast with “social skins” found in other societies (Turner 1980)? Transhumanists insist that individuals should be allowed to do with their bodies what they please. At first glance, therefore, what they seem to champion is not a social skin, but rather a sovereign skin, a purely autonomous body and subject that will be unhampered by the pressures of society and absolutely free to develop in whatever way he/she/they see fit. A closer look at transhumanist initiatives to modify or enhance the body, however, do reveal a commitment to a shared set of meanings and values. Therefore, by focusing on some of the iniitatives that animate pursuits of morphological freedom, this chapter sheds further light on the values and meanings that animate the transhumanist world view. It also considers how the transhumanist pursuit of morphological freedom might be establishing new standards of techno-normativity that could have a profound consequences for the way subjects and societies will be disciplined and stratified in the future.

The concluding chapter provides some reflections on the values, visions and tensions that animate the transhumanist movement and technological imagination in the United States. It discusses the merits of approaching transhumanism from a comparative perspective and putting transhumanism in conversation with some classic disciplinary concerns. It considers what a posthuman future might mean for the discipline of cultural anthropology.

This chapter provides a brief history of the Transhumanist Movement in the United States by returning to Anthony Wallace's work on revitalization movements. More than half a century ago, Wallace defined a revitaliztion movement as a “deliberate, conscious, organized effort by some members of society to construct a more satisfying culture.” In this chapter I apply Wallace's model to the contemporary Transhumanist Movement with the aim of exploring how transhumanism is both like and unlike other revitalization movements studied by anthropologists. This exercise enables me to highlight features that have not been flagged in other histories of transhumanist thought. Second, it provides an opportunity to consider how transhumanism is emerging as catalyst of cultural change in the United States. Third, invoking the revitalization paradigm provides a way to recast debates as to whether transhumanism is best understood as a “new religious movement” or a secular response to the disenchantments of modernity. Finally, by returning to Wallace's work this chapter ultimately seeks to demonstrate that models are still good to think with. They help promote comparative modes of inquiry by enabling us to more readily recognize correspondences and differences between social phenonema occuring in different times and places.

Chapter 7 explores the varied ways transhumanists conceive of the econmoy of the future. It examines some of the ways transhumanists attempt to eliminate the problem of scarcity and it considers the values and assumptions that animate their attempts to do so. What kinds of social arrangements might a “post-scarcity” society be predicated upon? How do transhumanist conceptions of “radical abundance” compare and contrast with the way other societies have conceived of an affluent life? This chapter explores these questions by returning to Marshall Sahlin's essay, “The Original Affluent Society.” Revisiting Sahlins' essay will not only provide an ethnographic counterpoint from which to consider transhumanist conceptions of affluence, it will also enable us to consider how the economic organization of society influences other aspects of human social life.