Politics of Piety
by Saba Mahmood
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Description
Politics of Piety is a groundbreaking analysis of Islamist cultural politics through the ethnography of a thriving, grassroots women's piety movement in the mosques of Cairo, Egypt. Unlike those organized Islamist activities that seek to seize or transform the state, this is a moral reform movement whose orthodox practices are commonly viewed as inconsequential to Egypt's political landscape. Saba Mahmood's compelling exposition of these practices challenges this assumption by showing how show more the ethical and the political are indelibly linked within the context of such movements. Not only is this book a sensitive ethnography of a critical but largely ignored dimension of the Islamic revival, it is also an unflinching critique of the secular-liberal assumptions by which some people hold such movements to account. The book addresses three central questions: How do movements of moral reform help us rethink the normative liberal account of politics? How does the adherence of women to the patriarchal norms at the core of such movements parochialize key assumptions within feminist theory about freedom, agency, authority, and the human subject? How does a consideration of debates about embodied religious rituals among Islamists and their secular critics help us understand the conceptual relationship between bodily form and political imaginaries? Politics of Piety is essential reading for anyone interested in issues at the nexus of ethics and politics, embodiment and gender, and liberalism and postcolonialism. In a substantial new preface, Mahmood addresses the controversy sparked by the original publication of her book and the scholarly discussions that have ensued. show lessTags
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Author Information
5 Works 372 Members
Saba Mahmood was born in Quetta, Pakistan on February 3, 1961. She moved to the United States in 1981 to study architecture and urban planning at the University of Washington in Seattle. She received a doctorate in anthropology from Stanford University in 1998. She taught at the University of Chicago before joining the faculty at the University of show more California at Berkeley in 2004. She was a scholar of modern Egypt who specialized in sociocultural anthropology. Her work focused on the intersection of Islam and feminist theory. She wrote several books including Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject and Religious Difference in a Secular Age: A Minority Report. She died from pancreatic cancer on March 10, 2018 at the age of 57. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Awards and Honors
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Politics of Piety
- Original publication date
- 2005
- Important places
- Cairo, Egypt; Islamic countries
- Important events
- Islamic Revival
Classifications
- Genres
- Anthropology, Nonfiction, Religion & Spirituality, Sexuality and Gender Studies, General Nonfiction, Philosophy
- DDC/MDS
- 305.48 — Society, government, & culture Social sciences, sociology & anthropology Social group - Age, Gender, Ethnicity Women Specific groups of women
- LCC
- HQ1785 .M34 — Social sciences The family. Marriage, Women and Sexuality The Family. Marriage. Women Women. Feminism
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 264
- Popularity
- 122,642
- Rating
- (3.85)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 6
- ASINs
- 1
