Knowledge and agency: The social relations of Islamic expertise in Zanzibar town.
Item
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Title
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Knowledge and agency: The social relations of Islamic expertise in Zanzibar town.
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Identifier
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AAI9732962
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identifier
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9732962
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Creator
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Purpura, Allyson.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Vincent Crapanzano
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Date
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1997
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Anthropology, Cultural | Religion, General
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Abstract
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Based on twenty months of field and archival research in Zanzibar, this dissertation examines the social construction of Islamic expertise and its connection to power and agency in Zanzibar Town.;The thesis suggests that Islamic expertise resists easy categorization. Rather than being determined by fixed religious categories or agreed upon social roles, Islamic expertise is given form and meaning collaboratively, through the social relations of performance. As such, Islamic expertise is contingent and versatile, and this versatility has important political implications. Examining both historical and contemporary contexts, I argue that control over the definition of and access to Islamic expertise is always incomplete. Instead, Islamic expertise is used in various forms and in diverse settings to inform initiatives and to authorize and contest the construction of cultural, class, and religious identifications that express the changing realities of political and economic life in Zanzibar.;This creative dynamic of Islamic knowledge is explored by examining the day to day practices through which it is defined and brought into the social world. Study and prayer groups, lectures, healing practices, recitation and extemporaneous prayer on the behalf of others, and spirit-calling sessions are all discursive practices in which Islamic knowledge is used to express a range of experience, from personal affliction to social protest. It is in the performance of these practices, and in the agency they confer upon the participants, that the significance of Islamic expertise is renewed and asserted in multiple forms: knowledge that informs and reaffirms one's identity as a Muslim; knowledge embodied in a person by virtue of her/his exceptional piety; knowledge as a thing in itself with the power, if manipulated correctly, to act on the world. Significantly, performance also creates a space where Islamic knowledge can be critiqued, essentialized, even parodied by individuals or groups with differing ideas about how Islam in Zanzibar can or "ought" to be represented. Indeed, it is in voicing and responding to such commentary that individuals conceive of Islamic expertise as contemporary, provocative, and potentially political discourse that can signal aspects of their identity, status, and convictions to the world.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
