Ist emanzipatorisches Handeln von Frauen innerhalb einer religiös-patriarchalen Kultur möglich? Wird es gesucht? Es löst oft ein Unbehagen aus, wenn Frauen ihre Identität und Macht in anderen Kontexten verorten als in säkularen Vorstellungen von Begehren und Freiheit. Anhand der tamilischen Mystikerin Andal (9. Jh.) und Beispielen der gegenwärtigen hinduistischen Kultur wird Fragen nach Widerstand, Unterwerfung und systemischer Gewalt nachgegangen.

When addressing the Muslim women question, one of the problematic issues is the centrality of a religious tradition or a political ideology as a primary subject of inquiry. Muslim women are seen as the embodiment of a singular tradition or ideology, as in the case of Turkey, where the contemporary headscarf-wearing women are represented as ‘Islamist’. In this project, I aim to problematise this stereotyping categorisation through ontological conceptualisations, inspired by the French thinker Gilles Deleuze. To implement the relational ontology (...) of Deleuze, I examine headscarf contestations in Turkey through interviews conducted in two women’s organisations in Turkey: Capital City Women’s Platform (Baskent Kadin Platformu) and Hazar. I argue that the world constantly ‘becomes’ through flows of relations between multiple elements; therefore, it is a multiplicity, an intensity and fractured. With this Deleuzian ontology in mind, I consider the quotidian physical, material and social resources of my interviews with the aim of elucidating relations between a female body and the commodities produced by multiple socio-economic and political factors in Turkey. Then I address a Deleuzian understanding of categorisations such as class, gender, race and ideology. These categorisations, for Deleuze, are aggregations of multiplicities and fluidities forming specific fixations according to a range of ascribed characteristics, such as income, education, employment or dress codes. In this regard, I conclude that the label ‘Islamist’ restrains the relational and multiple characters of headscarf practices within a unifying category by attributing certain features to particular embodiments and materials. (shrink)

This special focus issue brings to the Journal of Religious Ethics fresh considerations of moral anthropology as practiced by four emergent voices within the field. Each of these essays, in varying ways, seeks not only to advance an understanding of ethics in a particular time, place, and context, but to draw our attention to shared aspects of the human condition: its discontinuities and fractures, its practices of perception and attention, its interplays of emotion, intuition, and reason, and its thoroughly intersubjective (...) nature. To learn something of Thai Buddhist life-worlds, contemporary Russian modes of being, or the experience of immorality in today's China, each essay argues in turn, is to gain new insight into ourselves. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been a growing anti-feminist, conservative movement across many parts of the world known as the anti-gender movement. This movement has been especially strong in Central Eastern Europe, where anti-gender actors have framed ‘gender’ as a static, foreign concept imported from ‘the West’ and destructive to ‘traditional’ societies. Utilising a postcolonial feminist approach, I examine the concept of ‘gender’ in Czechia, drawing attention to the role played by Czech academics, activists and policymakers in negotiating the use (...) of the term ‘gender’. This article traces the history of the term from the 1990s when ‘gender’ was first introduced to a Czech academic audience, through public seminars and lectures hosted by the Prague Gender Studies Centre, to the present-day inclusion of gender mainstreaming discourse in Czech policy documents. I reveal that ‘gender’ is not a timeless, clearly defined, fixed term wholly imported from ‘the West’ but rather a concept with a variable and complicated history. Thus, this crucial term, first developed in Anglo-academia, is not uncontested or uncritically accepted, contrary to the claims made by anti-gender actors. The findings presented in this article hold implications critical to transnational feminist dialogue and activism during the current period of growing global anti-feminist sentiment. (shrink)

The term “dualism” is used in quite divergent connotations across religious studies, sociology, theology, anthropology, and other academic fields. This paper characterizes the differing usages of the term, and uses them to explore the sometimes-converging and sometimes-orthogonal relationship between academic fields, with a focus on religious studies and the sociology of religion. I argue that although the two fields have mutually benefited from insights originating on either side of their divide—and thus converged in important ways—substantive differences remain. Their differing understandings (...) of “dualism” represents important theoretical and analytic divergence, and the justified critique of certain forms of dualism has been used to reject all versions of the concept, including some—here termed “embodied dualism” or “experiential dualism”—that remain analytically crucial to the study of social life generally and religion particularly. (shrink)

In the Islamic world, numerous shrines shape and define its spiritual landscapes. While some of the shrines are tombs and memorials of major religious and historical figures, a majority of the sites are dedicated to ancestors of the local families and tribes. They function as centres of the religious community, but they also provide a secluded location for private spiritual visits and individual prayers. Women have participated in public rituals also, but it is in the private religious sphere that the (...) women have created a space for independent religious action, connected, and yet separate from their mundane roles. (shrink)

Drawing on theories of structure and agency, this article assesses how women in lower-income households in Damascus use existing gender schemas to avoid unattractive employment and improve their access to income and employment. It highlights the overlapping effects of economic policy and gender dependency schemas on both the need for additional income and women's employment opportunities. While providing greater access to resources, women's accommodation to gender dependency schemas also helps to maintain domesticity and dependence on men. Agency for these women (...) draws on and reinforces a collectively gendered sense of self that is central to the process of both obtaining resources and doing gender. (shrink)