Abstract
Coleman’s afterword provides an over-arching theoretical context that discusses the anthropology of Islam in relation to the anthropology of Christianity, assesses the overall importance of the volume’s main thrust and points to the potential formulation of a shared research agenda.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
We might also ask whether ‘Islam’ needs to be seen as instanciated by those who self-identify as Muslims, but that can be a debate for another time.
- 2.
Though deploying a rather different attitude towards agency.
- 3.
Rasanayagam also points to the resonances between his stance on intelligibility and that of Michael Carrithers, whom he describes as presenting sociality as the innate propensity of human beings to interpret the speech and actions of others as ‘unfolding stories’ (Carrithers 1992). I would also point to the parallels between the more general theoretical orientation of the present volume and Carrithers’s presentation of ‘rhetoric culture’ as perceiving social life as moving through messy and mutual action and reaction, drawing on cultural schemas that are plastic and mutable, the material of constant symbolic play (2008:161–2; see also Coleman forthcoming, in a special issue of Ethnos edited by Andreas Bandak and Jonas Adelin Jørgensen that also reflects on issues of foregrounding and backgrounding in ‘religious’ contexts).
- 4.
Though in invoking scale, we should not always assume that a model of ever greater encompassment is the culturally appropriate one.
- 5.
Marsden points out that Mahmood focuses almost exclusively on what her informants say and do in mosques and at prayer gatherings, rarely, if at all, describing their lives in the workplace, on the street, or even at play (see also Schielke 2010).
- 6.
This is not to say of course, that anthropologists did not study cultural arenas relevant to Christianity before the last few decades, but it is to state that the conscious development of the sub-field is barely a decade old.
- 7.
- 8.
Some current anthropological debates make explicit their connections with specific theological debate: in this book, for instance, Simpson refers to the ‘rupture’ inherent in the workings of the patriarchal relations that he studies, but this has very different implications to the use of the term by both anthropologists and others considering the current theoretical significance of Pauline visions of social change to the study of Christian contexts (e.g. Engelke and Robbins 2010). At the same time, it is important to appreciate the changing political economy and institutional landscape of anthropology itself, and to appreciate that new intellectual pathways are being created for the discipline by scholars who would not readily associate themselves with Christian intellectual genealogies.
- 9.
‘Belief, Participation, Circulation: Challenges in Participation-Observer Fieldwork within Evangelical, Pentecostal, and Charismatic Christianities’, organizers Jon Bialecki, Robin Shoaps and Henri Gooren, November 19, 2010, AAA Meetings, New Orleans.
- 10.
In his chapter, Retsikas points out yet another problem with a focus on Islamic revival when he questions the widespread assumption in the anthropology of Islam that reformist Islam can somehow be seen as compatible with ‘modernity,’ whereas Sufi practices are relegated to ‘tradition’.
- 11.
- 12.
- 13.
Consider the following quotation from ‘A senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood, Issam al-Aryan’ who is both presenting his political agenda and denying his own organization’s ambitions for the presidency: ‘We want a civil state, based on Islamic principles. A democratic state, with a parliamentary system, with freedom to form parties, press freedom, and an independent and fair judiciary.’
- 14.
For a consideration of the political value of an ‘immanent’ anthropology, see Coleman (2010).
References
Ahmed, Akbar. 1988. Discovering Islam. Making sense of Muslim history and society. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Asad, Talal. 1986. The idea of an anthropology of Islam. Occasional Paper Series. Washington, DC: Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University.
Bailey, Edward. 1998. Implicit religion: An introduction. London: Middlesex University Press.
Bialecki, Jon, Naomi Haynes, and Joel Robbins. 2008. The anthropology of Christianity. Religion Compass 2(6): 1139–1158.
Bowen, John. 1993. Muslims through discourse. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Cannell, Fenella. 2005. The Christianity of anthropology. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 11(2): 335–356.
Cannell, Fenella. 2006. Introduction: The anthropology of Christianity. In The anthropology of Christianity, ed. F. Cannell, 1–50. Durham: Duke University Press.
Carrithers, Michael. 1992. Why humans have cultures: Explaining anthropology and social diversity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Carrithers, Michael. 2008. From inchoate pronouns to proper nouns: A theory fragment with 9/11, Gertrude Stein, and an East German ethnography. History and Anthropology 19(2): 161–186.
Coleman, Simon. 2004. The charismatic gift. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 10(3): 421–442.
Coleman, Simon. 2010. An anthropological apologetics. The South Atlantic Quarterly 109(4): 791–810.
Coleman, Simon. forthcoming. Anthropology on shifting grounds. Ethnos 77(4), 2012.
Csordas, Thomas. 1994. The sacred self: A cultural phenomenology of charismatic healing. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Eickelman, Dale. 1981. A search for the anthropology of Islam: Abdul Hamid El-Zein. International Journal of Middle East Studies 13: 361–365.
EL-Zein, Abdul H. 1977. Beyond ideology and theology: The search for an anthropology of Islam. Annual Review of Anthropology 6: 227–254.
Engelke, Matthew, and Joel Robbins. 2010. Introduction: Global Christianity, global critique. The South Atlantic Quarterly 109(4): 623–631.
Freedberg, David. 1989. The power of images: Studies in the history and theory of response. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Geertz, Clifford. 1971. Islam observed: Religious development in Morocco and Indonesia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Gellner, Ernest. 1980. Muslim society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hann, Chris. 2007. The anthropology of Christianity per se. Archives Européennes de Sociologie 48(3): 391–418.
Marti, Gerardo. 2008. Hollywood faith: Holiness, prosperity and ambition in a Los Angeles church. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
McGuire, Meredith. 2008. Lived religion: Faith and practice in everyday life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mernissi, Fatima. 1975. Beyond the veil: Male-female dynamics in a modern Muslim society. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Osella, Filippo, and Benjamin Soares. 2009. Islam, politics, anthropology. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 15(Special Issue): S1–S23.
Robbins, Joel. 2003. What is a Christian? Notes toward an anthropology of Christianity. Religion 33: 191–199.
Schielke, Samuli. 2010. Second thoughts about the anthropology of Islam, or how to make sense of grand schemes in everyday life. Zentrum Moderner Orient Working Papers. Berlin: ZMO.
Tsing, Anna. 2005. Friction: An anthropology of global connection. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Varisco, Dan. 2005. Islam obscured. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2012 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Coleman, S. (2012). Afterword: De-exceptionalising Islam. In: Marsden, M., Retsikas, K. (eds) Articulating Islam: Anthropological Approaches to Muslim Worlds. Muslims in Global Societies Series, vol 6. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4267-3_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4267-3_12
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-4266-6
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-4267-3
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPhilosophy and Religion (R0)