Religion in Diaspora Cultures of Citizenship

by Garnett, Jane; Hausner, Sondra L.

• ISBN13: 9781137400291
• ISBN10: 1137400293
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2015-10-13
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

This edited collection addresses the relationship between diaspora, religion and politics in the modern world. It illuminates religious understandings of citizenship, association and civil society, and situates them historically within diverse cultures of memory and state traditions. The contributors include some of the foremost scholars working in the fields of religion and identity, whose analyses are grounded in a variety of disciplines and cultural perspectives. Through wide geographical, historical and religious comparisons, this volume raises new and timely questions about the conceptual categories and assumptions used in diaspora studies and in the analysis of transnational religion. In so doing it engages with religious and political theory and the intersections between them, illuminating their articulation in a variety of historical and contemporary practices.

Author Biography

Jane Garnett is a Fellow of Wadham College and Associate Professor in the History Faculty, University of Oxford, United Kingdom. She works on intellectual, cultural and religious history, predominantly since the nineteenth century, including the study of gender and visual culture over wider periods. She is a member of the Oxford Diasporas Programme (2011-15), a major collaborative and interdisciplinary project funded by the Leverhulme Trust.
 
Sondra L. Hausner is Associate Professor in the Study of Religion, and Fellow and Tutor at St. Peter's College, University of Oxford, United Kingdom. She specializes in the religions of South Asia, and has published widely on the dynamics of migrant identity, as well as on classical themes in religion – ascetic discipline, ritual practice, gender, and Durkheimian sociology – that consider movement in space.

Table of Contents

Introduction; Jane Garnett; Sondra L. Hausner
PART I: MEMORIES AND LEGACIES
1. Reconsidering "Diaspora"; Jonathan Boyarin
2. Biblical Case Studies of Diaspora Jews and Constructions of Religious Identity; Jill Middlemas
3. Historicising diaspora spaces: performing faith, race and place in London's East End; Nazneen Ahmed with Jane Garnett, Ben Gidley, Alana Harris and Michael Keith
4. Remembering the umma in the confines of the nation state; Faiz Sheikh; Samantha May
PART II: ASSOCIATION
5. Negotiating Settlement: Senegalese Muslim Immigrants and the Politics of Multiple Belongings in New York City; Ousmane Kane
6. Reconfiguring the Societal Place of Religion in Finland: Islamic Communities Move from the Margins to Partner in Civil Society; Tuomas Martikainen
7. The Voice(s) of British Sikhs; Jasjit Singh
8. State level representation versus community cohesion: competing influences on Nepali religious associations in the UK; Florence Gurung
PART III: SYMBOLS
9. The Veiling of Religious Markers in the Sahrawi Diaspora; Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh
10. 'Islam is not a Culture': Reshaping a Muslim Public for a Secular World; Katherine Pratt Ewing
11. Hope, Margin, Example: The Kimbanguist Diaspora in Lisbon; Ramon Sarró
12. Green Books, Blue Books, and Buddhism as Symbols of Belonging in the Tibetan Diaspora: Towards an Anthropology of Fictive Citizenship; Abraham Zablocki
Afterword; Jane Garnett; Sondra L. Hausner