Date de publication:
20 Novembre 2012
Publié ici :
20 Novembre 2012Mis à jour le :
22 Juin 2017Mots-clefs:
- publication
- ethnographie
- Islam
- ouvrage collectif
- religion
Zone géographique:
- Moyen-Orient
Ethnographies of Islam. Ritual Performances and Everyday Practices
Sous la direction de B. Dupret (directeur du CJB), Th. Pierret (ancien chercheur à l'Ifpo), P. G. Pinto, K. Spellman-Poots
Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2012.
ISBN-13: 978-0748645503
This comparative approach to the various uses of the ethnographic method in research about Islam in anthropology and other social sciences is particularly relevant in the current climate. Political discourses and stereotypical media portrayals of Islam as a monolithic civilisation have prevented the emergence of cultural pluralism and individual freedom. Such discourses are countered by the contributors who show the diversity and plurality of Muslim societies and promote a reflection on how the ethnographic method allows the description, representation and analysis of the social and cultural complexity of Muslim societies in the discourse of anthropology.
Introduction
In the past three decades, the social sciences in general, and anthropology in particular, have developed an ambiguous relationship with their descriptive traditions, as epistemic relativism and self-defeating critique have led scholars to reflexive deadlocks and fruitless glossing over issues. Instead of attempting to describe the social world as it unfolds when empirically observed, researchers often lose the actual object of interest and propose new narratives in its place that are devoid of the contextual and praxiological specificities of any actual situation. This holds especially true where religious phenomena are concerned. This is probably due to a theorising attitude, what Wittgenstein called the "craving for generality", that looks for big explicative schemes and neglects the situational and self-producing capacity of the social world to produce its own endogenous order. Without advocating a return to positivism, we contend that the social sciences should pay closer attention to actual social practices and adopt a more empirical and analytical attitude vis-à-vis their object of scrutiny.
We can identify at least three problems in the social sciences which justify some sort of ethnographic re-specification of our attitude vis-à-vis "the real". The first one is the tendency to seek for the nature of things instead of their workings, which often results in a "descriptive gap". The second is the quest for data which is often oblivious to the conditions of how this data is produced and thus provide the reader with sketches that somehow miss the phenomena under scrutiny. The third problem resides in the depreciation of descriptive work due to its limited capacity for explanation; although an adequate description is nothing less than a thorough analysis of a chunk of the world as it actually functions.
An important development in the social sciences over the past three decades has been the spread of the ethnographic approach beyond the boundaries of anthropology. Nowadays it is fairly common to have researchers in other academic disciplines such as sociology and political science, who use ethnography. This trend has allowed the social sciences to gradually shift their focus from the structural organisation of social systems to the role of people in producing and reproducing social processes through their everyday practices.
(Read the end of the introduction on Centre Jacques Berque's website)
By Baudouin Dupret, Thomas Pierret, Paulo Pinto and Kathryn Spellman-Poots.
Table of contents
Introduction, Baudouin Dupret, Thomas Pierret, Paulo Pinto and Kathryn Spellman-Poots; Part One: Rituals and Symbols: 1. Black Magic, Divination and Remedial Reproductive Agency in Northern Pakistan, Emma Varley; 2. Preparing for the Hajj in Contemporary Tunisia: Between Religious and Administrative Ritual, Katia Boissevain; 3. 'There Used To Be Terrible Disbelief': Mourning and Social Change in Northern Syria, Katharina Lange; 4. Manifestations of Ashura among Young British Shi'is , Kathryn Spellman-Poots; 5. The Ma'ruf: An Ethnography of Ritual (South Algeria), Yazid Ben Hounet; 6. The Sufi Ritual of the Darb al-Shish and the Ethnography of Religious Experience, Paulo G. Pinto; 7. Preaching for Converts: Knowledge and Power in the Sunni Community in Rio de Janeiro, Gisele Fonseca Chagas; 8. Worshipping the Martyr President: The Darih of Rafiq Hariri in Beirut, Ward Vloerberghs; 9. Staging the Authority of the Ulama: The Celebration of the Mawlid in Urban Syria, Thomas Pierret; Part Two: Practices and Actions, Cedric Baylocq and Akila Drici-Bechikh; 10. The Salafi and the Others: An Ethnography of Intracommunal Relations in French Islam, Cedric Baylocq and Akila Drici-Bechiki; 11. Describing Religious Practices among University Students: A Case Study from the University of Jordan, Amman, Daniele Cantini; 12. Referring to Islam in Mutual Teasing: Notes on an Encounter between Two Tanzanian Revivalists, Sigurd D'hondt; 13. Salafis as Shaykhs: Othering the Pious in Cairo, Aymon Kreil; 14. Ethics of Care, Politics of Solidarity: Islamic Charitable Organisations in Turkey, Hilal Alkan-Zeybek; 15. Making Shari'a Alive: Court Practice under an Ethnographic Lens, Susanne Dahlgren; 16. Referring to Islam as a Practice: Audiences, Relevancies and Language Games within the Egyptian Parliament, Enrique Klaus and Baudouin Dupret; 17. Contesting Public Images of 'Abd al-Halim Mahmud (1910-78): Who is an Authentic Scholar?, Hatsuki Aishima; Part Three: The Ethnography of History; 18. Possessed of Documents: Hybrid Laws and Translated Texts in the Hadhrami Diaspora, Michael Gilsenan; About the Contributors; Index.
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