This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Bangstad, S. Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Contesting secularism/s

Secularism and Islam in the work of Talal Asad

Oslo University College, Norway, sindre.bangstad@sam. hio.no, s.bangstad{at}gmail.com

This essay deals with the influential anthropological work of Prof. Talal Asad on Islam, secularism and the secular. I argue that the binary `Western—non-Western' which is constitutive for Asad, the relative absence of ethnography in Asad's work, and the state-centred nature of Asad's approach to secularism and the secular has contributed to an anthropological impasse whereby the complex engagement of Muslims living in secular and liberal `Western' contexts with the secular has become difficult to conceptualize. I argue in favour of the conceptualizations in a nascent body of works which transcend some of these binaries, most notably those of Marsden and Soares and Otayek, and in favour of investigating the secular as a vernacular practice.

Key Words: Talal Asad • Islam • Islamic discursive traditions • Saba Mahmood • Muslims • secularism

Anthropological Theory, Vol. 9, No. 2, 188-208 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/1463499609105477


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?