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Certain knowledge, contestable authority: power and practice on the Islamic periphery
Author(s) -
LAMBEK MICHAEL
Publication year - 1990
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1525/ae.1990.17.1.02a00020
Subject(s) - islam , power (physics) , meaning (existential) , cognitive dissonance , sufism , action (physics) , sociology , politics , relevance (law) , epistemology , order (exchange) , law , history , political science , social psychology , psychology , philosophy , archaeology , physics , finance , quantum mechanics , economics
The relationships among texts, readers, and moral community are explored in order to understand the dissonance and interplay of personal and textual authority in local Islamic practice (Sunni, Shaf'i branch) among Malagasy‐speaking villagers of Mayotte (Comoro Islands, East Africa). A political economy of knowledge approach is linked to an analysis of recitation as a ritual activity in which illocution‐ary force exceeds referential meaning. The discussion has relevance for the understanding of the relationship between religious knowledge, power, and action in Islamic societies as well as of the interface between the oral and the written more generally. [Islam, religious texts and ritual utterances, knowledge, power, Malagasy, Comoros]