Sign Up Now
Get instant access to over 1 million+ study documents
OR
Already registered? click here to login
By creating your account, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and student honor code.
Part of the answer to the anthropologist's question "What is Islam?" is conditioned by what she may or may not include in her definition of Islam. For instance, are local spirit beliefs, saint's shrines, and festivals Islamic? To deal with these issues more effectively it is necessary to take a step back from Islam. The problems encountered by anthropologists studying Islamic societies are also faced by anthropologists studying other monotheistic societies. John Bowen argues that the main impediment to the anthropological study of monotheisms is that these religions do not fit well in the normal ethnographic model. The texts and rituals common to a monotheism transcend any particular locale. These texts and rituals take the believer, and should take the ethnographer, outside the village to a "worldwide confessional community" (1993a:185) (Lukens, 1999). "
This is exactly what is seen in Eikelman's ethnography as he illuminates the differences between the Islamic culture and the rest of the world when it comes to elements such as higher education and the number of new book titles printed each year.
Luken suggests that Islamic traditions are often derived from public interest and utility, which dovetails with Eikelman's ethnographic discussion about how religion changes through higher education as those who become educated have changes in their mindsets.
To fully understand the significance of Islam are a discursive tradition we must understand the nature of social discourse. Discourse can be defined as the social process of constructing shared meaning. This process is necessarily...
While Eikelman portrays the evolutionary changes in the understanding and meaning of Islam through the increased rate of higher education among Muslims, Lukens points to social desire to explain the changes, however, when one takes social desire into consideration the fact that many more Muslims than ever before are receiving higher educations it will likely have a significant impact on what the social desires amount to and those are the driving forces behind changes in the faith of Islam.
Each of the authors are basically saying the same thing.
References
Lukens-Bull Roland, "Between text and practice: considerations in the anthropological study of Islam."
Dale F. Eickelman, "Mass Higher Education and the Religious Imagination in Contemporary Arab Societies." American Ethnologist, Vol. 19, No. 4, pp. 643-655.
There is plenty of time to re-resent petty humiliations or wince over one's own stupidity or insensitivity. Writing ethnography is a purgatory of pensees d'escalier (Metcalf)." Part of Ethnology As a whole, we are all part of ethnology. Everyone is a part of some type of culture, and this culture is open to interpretation by any ethnographer. Our cultures are what shapes who we are, and how we react to a given
Ethnography Le Petit Cafe in Brighton Beach is a Russian-owned pastry shop managed by my father Oleg Reyngach. With a clientele that consists almost entirely of Russian immigrants living in the local community, Le Petit Cafe offers a wonderful opportunity for an ethnographic study. What the patrons lack in terms of ethnic and linguistic diversity, they make up for in terms of socio-economic class and gender diversity. Blue collar and working
Having experienced firsthand the reprieve his profession offers, the barometer of his success is simple, if there was no pain and no lingering side effects, then there was success. Surgical Technologist I was also able to interview the surgical technologist. She occupied many of the duties I had always believed were held by the head nurse. In fact the role of the surgical technologist entails not only having a detailed knowledge
More than one example would support the author's ability to make generalizations about gender related power struggles within the community. Stack conducted a formal quantitative study in Appendix A (Stack, p. 130) to support that conclusions that were drawn in the qualitative portion of her survey. The statistics that she found through a study of 200 AFDC case studies supported the assumption that the families she portrayed did represent typical
However, FGD is most vulnerable to external influences and participants have the tendency to be "swayed" by dominant participants. Thus, while it is more interactive and generates more information than in-depth interviews, FGD is susceptible to dominance of one or few participants, thereby resulting to information that is unreliable. Lastly, ethnography provides a more detailed, objective, and authentic information about a phenomenon that is worth noting for purposes of research
ethnography of fictional individual who wanted to enter the medical field. The paper starts off with a 2-page assessment of a pseudo-interview that will form the structure of the entire ethnography. The interview and the analysis followed all exhibit the different social, ethnic and cultural aspects of the fictional character. Ethnography The fictional character constructed for this paper is Sara Bench. Sara is a foreigner who moved in from a European