Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Circulation of Public Religious Speech and the Remaking of Community

Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore MD

Investigators

Abstract

Johns Hopkins University doctoral student Fouad Halbouni, with the guidance of Dr. Veena Das, will undertake research on the circulation of public religious speech, in the form of sermons, homilies and recorded lessons, from formal religious institutions to less formal public spaces of interaction. He is particularly interested in how such circulation takes place in the aftermath of political upheaval. For the purposes of this project, he will focus on religious ideas in an old popular quarter in Cairo which has a long history of religious plurality. While this plurality is often represented in the media as an oppositional relationship between two monolithic groups, Coptic Orthodox Christians and Muslims, the researcher wishes to investigate the possibility that the two communities are not as monolithic as they are portrayed and that there may be or may develop a plurality of positions regarding questions of the religious "other." The researcher will undertake 12 months of field research in al-Azbakiya, a popular Cairo neighborhood. He will employ multiple social science research methods, including: participant observation and recording at mosque and church sermons; participant observation at local Muslim and Christian teaching institutions; discourse analysis of commercially available sermon recordings; tracking of sermons and the ideas they contain as the sermons move out of the formal sphere to be dispersed and discussed in public venues; focus groups; and interviews with religious officials and lay people. This research is important because its findings will contribute to social scientific understanding of how ideas in general, and public religious speech in particular, may contribute to the making and remaking of political community. Significant public religious speech and political activity co-occur throughout the world. Understanding their relationship is critical for theorists and policy makers alike. Funding this research also contributes to the education of a graduate student.