The ontological pitfalls of Islamic exceptionalism: A re-inquiry on El-Bassiouny's (2014, 2015) conceptualization of “Islamic marketing”

Abstract

In response to Jafari and Sandıkcı's (2015a) critique of her 2014 article entitled "The one-billion-plus marginalization", El-Bassiouny (2015) dismisses the authors' key ontological debate over exceptionalism as a historical and political discourse and diverts attention to new areas of enquiry (e.g., disciplinary legitimacy, Islamic jurisprudence and methodological pluralism) to further her original "transcendental values integration" approach to marketing theory, practice and education. While offering new insights, El-Bassiouny's account is still largely driven by discourses of marginalization, exceptionalism and Islamism. This article therefore: (1) reappraises the oversimplification of the marginalization discourse; (2) reiterates the pitfalls of Islamic exceptionalism at an ontological level; (3) cautions against the consequences of ideological readings of Islam in marketing and consumer research; and (4) re-emphasizes the importance of understanding identity dynamics in the analysis of the complex intersections of Islam, marketing and consumption. In conclusion, the article offers some areas for future research.

Harnessing the Power of Religion

“…opposing alternative lifestyles, gender equality, and freedom of speech). Much destruction and death have been and are being committed in the name of religion, from the Crusades, to the Salem witch hunts, to the more recent atrocities by the self-claimed Islamic State (see Jafari and Sandıkcı 2016). While these factors may have influenced people’s skepticism towards religious institutions and hindered the potential role religions can play in promoting sustainability, Campbell (1975) argues that society’s hostility towards religions’ perceived “inhibitory force” is rather exaggerated.…”

‘I once wore an angry bird T-shirt and went to read Qur’an’: Asymmetrical institutional complexity and emerging consumption practices in Pakistan

“…We specifically aim to understand (1) how emerging consumption practices fit within Pakistani Muslim children’s daily lives, (2) the specific role of religion as a dominant institution in the shaping of consumption practice and, therefore, (3) how dominant and subordinate institutional logics are negotiated to keep separate and maintain differences between them. In asking such questions, we are sensitive to the need to avoid presenting Islam as an unified global segment that is in opposition to consumer culture on a transcendental level (Jafari, 2012; Jafari and Sandıkcı, 2015, 2016) and, instead, locate it within a specific historical and social context (Pakistan) where both Islam and the market represent structuring forces on how consumer practices emerge and so markets are formed.…”

“…The article is organized as follows. We first consider the specific research context, Pakistan, then the existing work on Muslim consumer practices, noting the emphasis on adult practices and on more moderate Muslim contexts, in addition to the debates about misrepresentations of Islam in marketing studies (see the dialogue between El-Bassiouny, 2014, 2015 and Jafari and Sandicki, 2015, 2016 in the Journal of Business Research , for example). We highlight the absence of work in countries where Islam plays a dominant role in everyday life (e.g.…”

“…There is a risk here of reducing ‘Islam’ and ‘consumerism’ to blunt opposites such as freedom/restriction, profane/sacred or even West/East (see Jafari, 2012) that become distant from an understanding of the unique experiences of local actors who go through daily life within both these logics. Jafari and Sandicki (2015, 2016) argue that there is in fact no absence of either Western goods or a consumer culture in Islamic geographies. In other research then, market meanings are recognized as being weaved into Islamic practices.…”

“…From Sandikci and Ger’s (2010) fashionable veils to Izberk-Bilgin’s (2012) conceptualization of ‘jihadi consumers’, and Karataş and Sandıkcı’s (2013) appropriate clothing style and movies, legitimacy of consumption practices is contextual. Again, understandably, scholars have, therefore, argued against the tendency to view Muslim consumers as a homogenous market segment (Jafari and Sandikci, 2015, 2016), recognizing the need for more specific contextualized empirical work.…”