Everyday Piety: Islam and Economy in Jordan

Sarah A. Tobin

Published by Cornell University Press 2016

Everyday Piety

Islam and Economy in Jordan

Sarah A. Tobin

https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501704192

Overview
Contents

About this book

Drawing on in-depth ethnographic fieldwork in Amman, Sarah A. Tobin demonstrates that Muslims combine their interests in exerting a visible Islam with the opportunities and challenges of advanced capitalism in an urban setting, which ultimately results in the cultivation of a "neoliberal Islamic piety."

Author / Editor information

Sarah A. Tobin is the Associate Director of Middle East Studies at Brown University.

Reviews

Provides vivid insight into people's complex engagements with piety across a range of contexts.... Its subject matter, theoretical sophistication, and detailed fieldwork make this book a valuable resource for scholars and students of the Middle East, economic anthropology, and the anthropology of Islam.

Jillian Schwedler, author of Faith in Moderation:

In Everyday Piety, Sarah A. Tobin draws our attention to the complex and dynamic ways in which everyday practices of piety intersect with various dimensions of what might conventionally be called economic practices. The analysis is situated in Amman, Jordan, a growing metropolitan area in which portions of the landscape are being restructured by neoliberal practices, aesthetics, public spaces, and modes of social interaction. Tobin's original approach opens up new space for thinking about the role of religion in a rapidly changing region. A must-read and one of the most exciting and innovative works in years.

Daromir Rudnyckyj, author of Spiritual Economies:

Everyday Piety makes key interventions both in anthropological approaches to Islam and in diagramming contemporary assemblages of religious practice and economic action. Sarah A. Tobin vividly depicts middle-class Islamic piety in Jordan today. In this nuanced account her interlocutors are neither radically other nor caricatures of modernity. Everyday Piety demonstrates how Muslims carefully navigate questions of faith and reason, holding both in an uneasy yet productive tension amid extensive social and political transformations. It is a virtuoso instance of ethnography in a contemporary urban setting.

Susan MacDougall, Oxford University:

Through her examination of Islamic banking, Tobin explores the role that piety plays in the commercial interactions of middle-class Muslims in Jordan's capital, Amman.... Her stylish, ambitious, and pragmatic interlocutors undermine any stale conceptions readers might have of contemporary Muslims, and her treatment of the workplace as a space where moral debates are negotiated points to the social significance of work relationships and their related social dynamics. The book's accessible and sensitive treatment of urban Jordanians and the role of morality in their economic choices make it a fine choice for students as well as scholars interested in the topics of work, identity, religion, and global finance.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	ix
Note on Transliteration Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xiii
Chapter 1. A Muslim Plays the Slot Machines Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Chapter 2. The History of Amman “I Don’t Recognize It Anymore” Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	22
Chapter 3. Making It Meaningful Ramadan Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	46
Chapter 4. Love, Sex, and the Market The Hijab Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	74
Chapter 5. Making It Real Adequation Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	103
Chapter 6. Uncertainty Inside the Islamic Bank “Is This the Real Islam?” Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	130
Chapter 7. Consuming Islamic Banking “They Say They’re Islamic, So They Are” Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	155
Chapter 8. Branding Islam Jordan’s Arab Spring, Middle Class, and Islam Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	184
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	195
Glossary of Arabic Terms Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	203
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	207
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	221

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 248
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 10
- Images: 10
- Other: 10 halftones
Keywords: Muslim; Middle East; Islamic piety; globalization; Islamic religious life

eBook

Published: February 4, 2016
ISBN: 9781501704192