"Here, here is a place where I can cry". Religion in a context of displacement: Congolese churches in Kampala

Gusman’s chapter centres on the question of what it takes to explore religion and emotions in the contexts of forced displacement. He focuses on the experiences of Congolese refugees who have resettled in the Ugandan capital city of Kampala, and on the meanings of belonging to one of the many Congolese Pentecostal churches. Despite their relief at having escaped the violence in the Congo, for Gusman’s interlocutors the city is initially a place of radical insecurity and solitude. Subsequently, Christian beliefs in and practices of salvation acquire dramatic importance for these refugees as they reconstitute their lives. Gusman highlights the need to take seriously the hermeneutic limits that can emerge in ethnographic encounters of this kind. In order to tackle these limits, he reengages with phenomenological traditions in social theory and argues that emotions play a central role in the working of inter-subjectivity as the basic condition for understanding experience.