Course syllabus

 

 

SEMESTER 2, 2019

15 points

 

Well-Being Always Comes First We all go through tough times during the semester, or see our friends struggling. There is lots of help out there. For more information, look at this Canvas page, which has links to various support services in the University and the wider community.

 

Teacher:  Dr Christine Dureau (cm.dureau@auckland.ac.nz)

Course delivery format:

Classes consist of linked seminars addressing a key theme or debate as approached in selected ethnographies and commentaries.

(Timetable and room details can be viewed on Student Services Online)

Course Outline: 738 Outline 2019.pdf

Summary of Course Description:        

This reading and discussion course addresses classical and contemporary anthropological approaches to Islam via a mix of conceptual commentaries and ethnographies by Muslim and non-Muslim anthropologists.

Islam, one of the largest of the world religions, is entangled in global and local politics, including here. While there have been Muslims in Aotearoa/New Zealand for a long time, Islam has become increasingly prominent in public and private politics over recent years. This prominence is partly, but only partly, related to increasing international Muslim migration to places with previously small Muslim populations; the visual practices of some Muslims (e.g., in architectural forms and modes of attire); global awareness of extremist versions of the religion; media representations (informed at least as much by ignorance, stereotypes and bigotry or patronizing tolerance as much as by knowledge or understanding) and by the politicization of the religion by members and non-members. Unfortunately, much of the talk and writing about it, from both good- and bad-willed commentators, is marked by ignorance, simplisticism and suppression of Islam’s diversity and complexity.

In such a context, Anthropology’s commitment to ethnographically-based knowledge proffers a much-needed corrective to emotive othering and good-willed ignorance. In particular, our disciplinary insistence on understanding the dense particularities of cultural worlds enable us to deconstruct “common-sense” and “general knowledge” in order to take account of how any religion is entangled in political, gendered, economic and ideological forces as well as marked by the intimacies of belief and spirituality and social and kin networks.

Understanding something about Islam requires grasping its character as a “world religion”, one globally connected by some commonalities of doctrine, textual commitment and practice and simultaneously marked by the distinctive forms and understandings that make it sufficiently flexible to be deeply meaningful in radically different cultural worlds and social situations. This concurrent commonality and distinctiveness means that, like all world religions, it is marked by historically and culturally particular forms as a result of cultural translation and hybridization and the local circumstances of its establishment and continuity. And this, as in all such religions, makes it susceptible to doctrinaire and fundamentalist efforts to control its content, political appropriation and destructive othering.

THE COURSE IS NOT INTENDED TO DETERMINE WHAT ISLAM IS OR IS NOT. Nor is it an account of its major forms (Shi’ite, Sufi, Sunni, etc.), although those may be significant to your reading and coursework. Rather, the emphasis is on developing general understanding of anthropological approaches to a religion that has profoundly inflected our world.

You are not expected to have expertise in Anthropology or Islam (or religion more broadly), but you are expected to be open to learning about the discipline, about the phenomenon of religion and about Islam as a sociological and cultural phenomenon. Whether you are religious, irreligious or anti-religious, I hope you find that the course helps you to better understand a little about one of the topics of our time.

We read ethnographies and commentaries by both Muslim and non-Muslim anthropologists, bookending our seminars with, first, the piece broadly understood as the foundational anthropological approach to Islam as a world religion and, finally with a commentary on this and other “classical” approaches. In between, we look in depth at ethnographies concerned with some topical issues in Islam (this year these concern gender, embodiment and immigrant Muslims in the West).

By the end of the course, you should have

• Broad familiarity with some of the key issues in anthropological approaches to Islam
• Awareness of the nature of world religions
• An ability to think critically about accounts and representations of Islam
• A capacity to use course materials to consider social and cultural issues concerning Islam, specifically, and religion, more generally, in your own and other societies
• A deeper knowledge and understanding of political, economic, cultural, symbolic and ideological aspects of religion.

Assessment Summary:

Here is the Assignment Sheet: 738 Coursework 2019.pdf

Participation 10%

Presentation & Write-Up 20%

Essay 40%

Book Review 30%

Weekly Topics:

Week 1: General Discussion

Week 2: Contexts/Contextualizing Anthropology & Islam

Week 3: One Starting Point, Geertz

Weeks 4 – 5: Islam in New Places

Weeks 6 – 7: Islam and Gender

Week 8: Islam, Gender Politics & Scholarship

Weeks 9 – 10: Islam, Embodiment & Media

Weeks 11 – 12: And Back to Anthropology & Islam…

  Workload and deadlines for submission of coursework:           

The expected workload commitment for a 15-pt course is approximately 10 hours/week throughout the semester, including study break. You should therefore be dedicating about eight hours/week, independently of classes, to reading, preparing for assignments and revising your notes. This course is predicated on this workload and designed to allow you to work in-depth by linking much of your coursework to the lectures and set readings.