Practicing Islam : knowledge, experience, and social navigation in Kyrgyzstan / David W. Montgomery.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Montgomery, David W., 1968- author.

Series:

Central Eurasia in context

Central Eurasia in context series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Islam--Kyrgyzstan.

Islam.

Kyrgyzstan--Religious life and customs.

Kyrgyzstan.

Physical Description:

xix, 219 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Pittsburgh : University of Pittsburgh Press, [2016]

Summary:

Practicing Islam offers the most thorough English-language ethnographic study to date of Islam in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan. As David W. Montgomery shows, becoming and being a Muslim are based on knowledge acquired from the surrounding environment and enabled through the practice of doing. Through these acts, Islam is imbued in both the individual and the community. To Montgomery, religious practice and lived experience combine to creat and ideological space that is shaped by events, opportunities, and potentialities that form the context from which knowing emerges. This acquired knowledge further frames social navigation and political negotiation. Through years of on the ground research and data collection, bolstered by numerous in-depth interviews, Montgomery assembles both an anthropology of knowledge and an anthropology of Islam, demonstrating how individuals make sense of and draw meanings from their environments. His study provides a broad view of the cognitive processes of Central Asian populations that will serve students, researchers, and policymakers alike. Book jacket.

Contents:

An anthropology of knowledge and life "in the field"

Learning everyday (Islam)

"Muslim by birth, atheist by belief": the social organization of knowledge

"Our ancestors also live here": the corpus of knowledge

"Listen and watch": the medium of knowledge

Framing politics, morality, and practice

Social navigation as knowing enacted/in action

Overview of interlocutors

Methodology and description of the field.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780822964285

0822964287

OCLC:

951157503