Lecture: The Bureaucratization of Islam and its Socio-Legal Dimensions in Southeast Asia
Dominik Müller (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle) will present the conceptual framework of the DFG Emmy Noether Junior Research Group "The Bureaucratization of Islam and its Socio-Legal Dimensions in Southeast Asia" on 12 January 2017, 3 p.m. – 5 p.m. at the Institute of Oriental Studies in Leipzig (Schillerstraße 6, room S 202). The presentation will be held in German.
The Junior Research Group will investigate the bureaucratization of Islam and its socio-legal dimensions from an anthropological perspective, with a particular focus on the state's exercise of ‘classificatory power’ and its actual workings on the micro-level. The project argues that the bureaucratization of Islam far transcends the boundaries of its institutions. Focusing on diverse empirical contexts, the group will scrutinize how the imposition of formalized schemes of Islam – a transformation of Islam into the codes and procedures of bureaucracy – has socio-legal consequences that penetrate deeply into public discourse and the everyday lives of various affected social actors. The project also asks how the bureaucracies’ classificatory practices and micro-politics of power resonate with social realities among the wider population and how social actors actively react to them, always with the intention of going beyond unidirectional ‘cause–effect models’ that overstate the power of official policies.
