Negotiating Development in Muslim Societies

Negotiating Development in Muslim Societies
Author: Gudrun Lachenmann
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2008
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780739126196

"Negotiating Development in Muslim Societies explores the negotiation processes of global development concepts such as gender equality, human rights, and poverty alleviation. It focuses on three countries that are undergoing different Islamization processes: Senegal, Sudan, and Malaysia. While much has been written about the hegemonic production and discursive struggle of development concepts globally, this book analyzes the negotiation of these development concepts locally and translocally. This comparative study examines the ways the activities of women's organizations and groups constitute new spaces by transferring and negotiating global development concepts, networking, and interactions with different local and translocal actors. Negotiating Development in Muslim Societies broadens the understanding of the relationship between gender, development, and Islam and the meanings of development in different cultural contexts in a globalizing world."--BOOK JACKET.

Islam in Southeast Asia

Islam in Southeast Asia
Author: Norshahril Saat
Publisher: ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2018-05-30
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9814786993

"Islam in the Malay world of Southeast Asia or Islam Nusantara, as it has come to be known, had for a long time been seen as representing the more spiritual and Sufi dimension of Islam, thereby striking a balance between the exoteric and the esoteric. This image of 'the smiling face of Islam' has been disturbed during the last decades with increasing calls for the implementation of Shari’ah, conceived of in a narrow manner, intolerant discourse against non-Muslim communities, and hate speech against minority Muslims such as the Shi’ites. There has also been what some have referred to as the Salafization of Sunni Muslims in the region. The chapters of this volume are written by scholars and activists from the region who are very perceptive of such trends in Malay world Islam and promise to improve our understanding of developments that are sometimes difficult to grapple with." — Professor Syed Farid Alatas, Department of Sociology, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, National University of Singapore

Translocality

Translocality
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 472
Release: 2010-01-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004186050

This volume discusses globalising processes from the perspective of the humanities and social sciences. It focuses on the ‘global south’, notably the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. Densely researched case studies examine a variety of approaches for their potential to understand connecting processes on different scales. The studies seek to overcome the main traps of the ‘globalisation’ paradigm, such as its occidental bias, its notion of linear expansion, its simplifying dichotomy between ‘local’ and ‘global’, and an often-found lack of historical depth. They elaborate the asymmetries, mobilities, opportunities and barriers involved in globalising processes. Their new perspective on these processes is captured by the concept of ‘translocality’, which aims at integrating a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches from different disciplines.

Islam and the Secular State

Islam and the Secular State
Author: Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2010-03-30
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0674261445

What should be the place of Shari‘a—Islamic religious law—in predominantly Muslim societies of the world? In this ambitious and topical book, a Muslim scholar and human rights activist envisions a positive and sustainable role for Shari‘a, based on a profound rethinking of the relationship between religion and the secular state in all societies. An-Na‘im argues that the coercive enforcement of Shari‘a by the state betrays the Qur’an’s insistence on voluntary acceptance of Islam. Just as the state should be secure from the misuse of religious authority, Shari‘a should be freed from the control of the state. State policies or legislation must be based on civic reasons accessible to citizens of all religions. Showing that throughout the history of Islam, Islam and the state have normally been separate, An-Na‘im maintains that ideas of human rights and citizenship are more consistent with Islamic principles than with claims of a supposedly Islamic state to enforce Shari‘a. In fact, he suggests, the very idea of an “Islamic state” is based on European ideas of state and law, and not Shari‘a or the Islamic tradition. Bold, pragmatic, and deeply rooted in Islamic history and theology, Islam and the Secular State offers a workable future for the place of Shari‘a in Muslim societies.

Contested Public Spheres

Contested Public Spheres
Author: Anna Spiegel
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 361
Release: 2010-06-07
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3531923714

1. 1 Researching the global everyday of women activists 1. 1 Researching the global everyday of women activists: Experiencing and doing globalisation Going through the broad spectrum of globalisation research and literature, one might be astonished at how much it assumes the force of global change, and how little of this literature demonstrates this force in an empirically grounded way. This study, being based on six months of empirical research in Malaysia in 2004, sets out to counter this lack of thick description of globalisation processes. It takes up the challenge of researching the “global everyday” (Appadurai 2000, 18) of civil society actors in Malaysia and focuses on how social activists belonging to different branches of the women’s movement selectively app- priate, transform and even create global meanings and materialise them in local practices. The methodological endeavour of combining globalisation research and ethnography has been taken up by a diversity of authors. Burawoy and his research team have developed a complex methodological framework by focusing on the experiential dimensions of globalisation. They want to produce a “grounded globalisation” or “perspectives on globalisations from below” (Burawoy 2000b, 338, 341). This perspective is very fruitful, as the notion of experiencing globalisation as “forces, connections, and imaginations” (Burawoy et al. eds. 2000) relocates the global in the local and ties both together in mutual constitution.

Multiple Gender Cultures, Sociology, and Plural Modernities

Multiple Gender Cultures, Sociology, and Plural Modernities
Author: Heidemarie Winkel
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2020-12-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 042984476X

Until today, Western, European sociology contributes to the social reality of colonial modernity, and gender knowledge is a paradigmatic example of it. Multiple Gender Cultures, Sociology, and Plural Modernities critically engages with these ‘Western eyes’ and shifts the focus towards the global variety of gendered socialities and hierarchically entangled social histories. This is conceptualised as multiple gender cultures within plural modernities. The authors examine the multifaceted realities of gendered life in varying contexts across the globe. Bringing together different perspectives, the volume provides a rereading of the social fabric of gender in contrast to androcentrist-modernist as well as orientalist representations of ‘the’ gendered Other. The key questions explored by this volume are: which social mechanisms lead to conflicting or shifting gender dynamics against the backdrop of global entanglements and interdependencies, and to what extent are neocolonial gender regimes at work in this regard? How are varying gender cultures sociohistorically and culturally structured, and how are they connected within (global) power relations? How can established hierarchies and asymmetries become an object of criticism? How can historical, cultural, social, and political specificities be analysed without gendered and other reifications? That way, the volume aims to promote border thinking in sociological understanding of social reality towards multiple gender cultures and plural modernities.

Between Islam and the State

Between Islam and the State
Author: Berna Turam
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2007
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780804755016

Examines how shifting power dynamics between the state and Islamic forces during the 1990s have transformed both Islam and the Turkish state.

The Politics of Islamic Law

The Politics of Islamic Law
Author: Iza R. Hussin
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2016-03-31
Genre: Law
ISBN: 022632348X

In The Politics of Islamic Law, Iza Hussin compares India, Malaya, and Egypt during the British colonial period in order to trace the making and transformation of the contemporary category of ‘Islamic law.’ She demonstrates that not only is Islamic law not the shari’ah, its present institutional forms, substantive content, symbolic vocabulary, and relationship to state and society—in short, its politics—are built upon foundations laid during the colonial encounter. Drawing on extensive archival work in English, Arabic, and Malay—from court records to colonial and local papers to private letters and visual material—Hussin offers a view of politics in the colonial period as an iterative series of negotiations between local and colonial powers in multiple locations. She shows how this resulted in a paradox, centralizing Islamic law at the same time that it limited its reach to family and ritual matters, and produced a transformation in the Muslim state, providing the frame within which Islam is articulated today, setting the agenda for ongoing legislation and policy, and defining the limits of change. Combining a genealogy of law with a political analysis of its institutional dynamics, this book offers an up-close look at the ways in which global transformations are realized at the local level.

Ester Boserup’s Legacy on Sustainability

Ester Boserup’s Legacy on Sustainability
Author: Marina Fischer-Kowalski
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2014-08-19
Genre: Science
ISBN: 940178678X

Arising from a scientific conference marking the 100th anniversary of her birth, this book honors the life and work of the social scientist and diplomat Ester Boserup, who blazed new trails in her interdisciplinary approach to development and sustainability.