Doctoral Dissertation Research: State-Muslim Relations and Working Class Values

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

Title: Doctoral Dissertation Research: State-Muslim Relations and Working-Class Values Principal Investigator: Michael Burawoy Co-Principal Investigator: Zehra Parvez Institution: University of California at Berkeley This dissertation is a comparative ethnographic study of the politics of Muslim minority communities in Lyon, France and Hyderabad, India. France and India are both secular democracies that have been challenged by religious policy demands by Muslims, who comprise their largest minority populations. Both countries have experienced a growth in Islamization and have had episodes of violent civil conflict involving poor Muslim areas. There are two central questions: (1) How does the experience of socioeconomic dislocation shape the religiosity and politics of Muslim communities? (2) What is the relationship between the politicization of Islam and growing religiosity in civil society? Five hypotheses will be examined: (1) Islamization has grown in part as a way to preserve honor and culture in the face of discrimination and barriers to immigrant assimilation; (2) Neighborhood mosques provide an important space for social life and respite from cramped living conditions; (3) The transnational import of Salafist forms of Islam is tied to migration; (4) Stricter forms of Islam provide a moral and temporal framework for the poor; and (5) The growth of Islamization is a response to a context of state hostility, surveillance, and retrenchment. The primary methodology is participant observation at three sites in two neighborhoods in each city: Islamic schools, neighborhood mosques, and Islamic welfare associations. The ethnographic component will be supplemented by a total of 50 semi-structured interviews; media analysis of literature catering to Muslim minorities in these countries; and archival research to place findings in their historical contexts. The project will expand knowledge about the relationship between domestic conflict and transnational Islamism, an issue of heightened interest after 9/11. It will also show how the vexed relationship between minority Muslims and the state takes on religious overtones, when in fact it may be more entangled with issues of distribution in the context of poverty or attempts at multicultural recognition. It has the potential to add clarity to several debates in the social sciences, including: the relationship between class and religious movements; the nature of emerging social movements in response to globalization; theories of the public sphere; and the relationship between the state and civil society. Finally, broader impacts of the research include enhancing public understanding of underrepresented and misrepresented groups, specifically poor, religious, Muslim communities, including their diverse politics, complex forms of piety, and oft-misunderstood gender dynamics. The result will be a more refined understanding of political Islam as a growing force in global politics, but one that cannot be viewed or approached as monolithic.