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power, resistance, and the cult of Muslim saints in a northern Egyptian town
Author(s) -
REEVES EDWARD B.
Publication year - 1995
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.1995.22.2.02a00050
Subject(s) - cult , sociology , resistance (ecology) , ideology , power (physics) , marxist philosophy , ethnography , relation (database) , symbolic power , the symbolic , gender studies , anthropology , history , politics , law , political science , ancient history , psychoanalysis , psychology , ecology , physics , quantum mechanics , database , computer science , biology
Practice theory is employed to analyze the cult of Muslim saints. Unlike much of the previous work by anthropologists on this topic, the present study has an urban, rather than rural and tribal, ethnographic locus. A major finding is that privileged as well as nonprivileged individuals use the cult for ideological discourse and dramaturgy. This has seminal implications for understanding the relation of power to resistance. An unobtrusive form of power that does not inspire resistance appears to match Bourdieu's concept of “symbolic power.” In contrast with the Weberian and Marxist zero‐sum views of power, symbolic power appears to be a positive‐sum phenomenon. [power, resistance, discourse, practice theory, Muslim saint cult, urban Egypt]