Synopses & Reviews
Anthropology has enjoyed a lengthy - and at times problematic - engagement with Islam and Muslim societies. Islam, Politics, Anthropology offers critical reflections on past and current studies of Islam and politics in anthropology and charts new analytical approaches to examining Islam in the highly charged atmosphere of the post-9/11 world. Working with an intentionally broad understanding of politics, the volume considers not just the state, formal politics, and organizations, but also everyday politics and micropolitics - arenas where anthropology is especially adept at analysis. Essays explore contemporary ways of being Muslim and the complex politics of Muslim self-fashioning, and consider current debates about religious practice and ethics, the nature of the state, citizenship, and Muslims’ efforts to simply get by in the current historical conjuncture. Challenging formalist models of political participation in the social sciences, widespread assumptions about Muslim exceptionalism, and the recent so-called 'ethical turn,' the volume highlights the complexities, contingencies, and contradictions in the political engagements of contemporary Muslims in a variety of locales in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and North America. Provocative and timely, Islam, Politics, Anthropology represents a valuable contribution to understanding the place of Islam in the 21st century world.
Synopsis
Part of The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute Special Issue Book Series,
Islam, Politics, Anthropology offers critical reflections on past and current studies of Islam and politics in anthropology and charts new analytical approaches to examining Islam in the post-9/11 world.
- Challenges current and past approaches to the study of Islam and Muslim politics in anthropology
- Offers a critical comprehensive review of past and current literature on the subject
- Presents innovative ethnographic description and analysis of everyday Muslim politics in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and North America
- Proposes new analytical approaches to the study of Islam and Muslim politics
About the Author
Filippo Osella is a Reader in Anthropology at the University of Sussex, UK. For the past 20 years, Osella has conducted research in South India, and more recently in a number of West Asian Gulf countries. His current research focuses on the emergence of Islamic reformist movements and the rise of a new Muslim middle class in Kerala.
Benjamin Soares is an anthropologist and Senior Research Fellow at the Afrika-Studiecentrum in Leiden, The Netherlands. Soares' publications include Islam and the Prayer Economy (2005) and two edited volumes, Islam and Muslim Politics in Africa (2007) and Muslim-Christian Encounters in Africa (2006).
Table of Contents
Notes on contributors.1 Benjamin Soares & Filippo Osella
Islam, politics, anthropology.
2 Samuli Schielke
Being good in Ramadan: ambivalence, fragmentation, and the moral self in the lives of young Egyptians.
3 Hatsuki Aishima & Armando Salvatore
Doubt, faith, and knowledge: the reconfi guration of the intellectual field in post-Nasserist Cairo.
4 Magnus Marsden
A tour not so grand: mobile Muslims in northern Pakistan.
5 Kai Kresse
Muslim politics in postcolonial Kenya: negotiating knowledge on the double-periphery.
6 Rosa De Jorio
Between dialogue and contestation: gender, Islam, and the challenges of a Malian public sphere.
7 Lara Deeb
Piety politics and the role of a transnational feminist analysis.
8 Julie McBrien
Mukadas's struggle: veils and modernity in Kyrgyzstan.
9 Irfan Ahmad
Genealogy of the Islamic state: reflections on Maududi's political thought and Islamism.
10 Maimuna Huq
Talking jihad and piety: reformist exertions among Islamist women in Bangladesh.
11 Daromir Rudnyckyj
Market Islam in Indonesia.
12 Filippo Osella & Caroline Osella
Muslim entrepreneurs in public life between India and the Gulf: making good and doing good.
13 Gregory Starrett
Islam and the politics of enchantment.
Index.