“Are You Married?”: Gender and Faith in Political Ethnographic Research

Abstract

In this article, I look at how political ethnography can contribute to the study of religious dynamics within conservative religious communities. Based on fieldwork conducted in Tajikistan within conservative Muslim circles, I take a reflexive stance by arguing that my informants used my status as a single foreign woman to steer interactions toward those of my religious conversion and need for marriage. Their repeated efforts and our interactions exposed the depth of their religious beliefs and its precedence over other identity markers such as ethnicity and language. This close access also allowed me to witness the exclusion and distrust that conservative Muslims face from the rest of the society as well as state authorities. Ultimately, I argue that political ethnography enables the production of a more nuanced portrait of conservative Muslims communities, which are often represented as hermetic and hostile. Political ethnography can be particularly useful to investigate sensitive issues such as religious identities and their complex relations to structures of power.

From Nativeness to Strangeness and Back: Ascribed Ethnicity, Body Work, and Contextual Insiderness

“…However, this is related to the perpetuation of the tendency to privilege ethnicity and ignore other factors that may have a greater impact on what is happening in the field (Anthias 2008; Schiller, Çaglar, and Guldbrandsen 2006; Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002). In recent years researchers have proposed inspiring studies on positionality, modelled by, for example, gender, race, being an “insider within,” vulnerability and trauma, or the material side of fieldwork (Bucerius 2013; Bucerius and Urbanik 2019; Laube 2021; Mazzei and O’Brien 2009; McKinnon-Crowley 2020; McQueenay 2013; Meadow 2013; Thibault 2021; Winfield 2021). Also, in the case of reflexive migration studies, the positioning of the researcher as an important ethical and methodological problem is gaining attention, although on a small scale and only in the last few years.…”