WOMEN Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject, by Saba Mahmood Princeton, NJ and Oxford, UK: Princeton University Press, 2004 xvi + 199 pages Gloss, to p 203 Refs to p 223 Index to p 233 $55 cloth; $1795 paper This book explores "the conceptual challenges that women's involvement in the Islamist movement poses to feminist theory in particular and to secular-liberal thought in general through an ethnographic account of the urban women's mosque movement that is part of the Islamic Revival in Cairo, Egypt" (p 2) However, Saba Mahmood promises more than an ethnography based on two years of fieldwork (1995-1997) She embarks on an intellectual journey of selfreflection in which she has come "to believe that a certain amount of self-scrutiny and skepticism is essential regarding the certainty of my own political commitments, when trying to understand the lives of others who do not necessarily share these commitments" (p xi) By refusing to take her own political stance as the necessary lens through which the analysis proceeds, the author opens up the possibility that "my analysis may come to complicate the vision of human flourishing that I hold most dear and which has provided the bedrock of my personal existence" (p xii) It is necessary, the author cautions as she embarks upon her inquiry, not to assume that the political position we uphold will necessarily be vindicated or provide the ground for our theoretical analysis As readers, we are invited to join her in "parochializing our assumptions, about the constitutive relationship between action and embodiment, resistance and agency, self and authority - that inform most feminist judgments from across a broad range of the political spectrum about non-liberal movements such as the women's mosque movement" (p 38) It is within that spirit that I have critiqued this book The five chapters are a running argument with and against key analytic concepts in liberal thought as these concepts have come to inform various strands of feminist theory through which non-liberal movements, such as the women's mosque movement, are analyzed Through each chapter Mahmood makes her ethnographic talk back to the normative liberal assumptions about human nature against which such a movement is held accountable "The Subject of Freedom" illustrates the different ways in which the activism of the mosque movement challenges the liberal conception of politics Mahmood analyzes the conception of self, moral agency, and politics that undergird the practices of this non-liberal movement in order to come to an understanding of the historical projects that animate it The pious subjects of the mosque movement occupy an uncomfortable place in feminist scholarship because they pursue practices and ideals embedded in a tradition that has historically accorded women a subordinate status "Topography of the Piety Movement" provides a brief sketch of the historical development against which the contemporary mosque movement has emerged and critically engages with themes within scholarship of Islamic modernism regarding such movements We sense the broad-based character of the women's mosque movement through the author's description and analysis of three of six mosques where she concentrated her fieldwork Despite the differences among the mosque groups - ranging from the poorest to the upper-middle income neighborhoods of Cairo - they all shared a concern for the increased secularization of Egyptian society and illustrate the increasing respect accorded to the da 'iya preacher/religious teacher (who undertakes da'waliterally call, summons or appeal that in the 20th century came to be associated with proselytization activity) "Women and the Da'wa" (pp 64-72) is particularly insightful, as the author juxtaposes the emergence of secular liberalism with the da'wa movement and concludes that "the modernist project of the regulation of religious sensibilities, undertaken by a range of postcolonial states (and not simply Muslim states), has elicited in its wake a variety of resistances, responses and challenges …

Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject

American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us

List of Plates.Preface.Introduction.1. Distinguishing Religion and Spirituality: Findings from Kendal.2. Testing the Spiritual Revolution Claim in Kendal.3. Evidence for a Spiritual Revolution: Britain and USA.4. Bringing the Sacred to Life: Explaining Secularization and Sacralization.5. Looking to the Future.Appendices.References.Index.

The spiritual revolution : why religion is giving way tospirituality

The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics

After Finitude An Essay On The Necessity Of Contingency

Preface Part I: Mapping the Theoretical Terrain Part II: Competing Experiences of Postsecular Cities Part III: Postsecular Policies and Praxis Part IV: Theological and Secular Interpretations Conclusion: Postsecular Cities - Future Directions?

Postsecular Cities: space, theory and practice

This book explores the hopeful possibility that emerging geographies of postsecularity are able to contribute significantly to the understanding of how common life may be shared, and how caring for the common goods of social justice, well-being, equality, solidarity and respect for difference may be imagined and practiced. Drawing on recent geographic theory to recalibrate ideas of the postsecular public sphere, the authors develop the case for postsecularity as a condition of being that is characterised by practices of receptive generosity, rapprochement between religious and secular ethics, and a hopeful re-enchantment and re-shaping of desire towards common life. The authors highlight the contested formation of ethical subjectivity under neoliberalism and the emergence of postsecularity within this process as an ethically-attuned politics which changes relations between religion and secularity and animates novel, hopeful imaginations, subjectivities, and praxes as alternatives to neoliberal norms. The spaces and subjectivities of emergent postsecularity are examined through a series of innovative case studies, including food banks, drug and alcohol treatment, refugee humanitarian activism in Calais, homeless participatory art projects, community responses to the Christchurch earthquakes in New Zealand, amongst others. The book also traces the global conditions for postsecularity beyond the Western and predominantly Christian-secular nexus of engagement.

Geographies of Postsecularity: Re-envisioning Politics, Subjectivity and Ethics

This paper investigates the values, beliefs and attitudes (VBA) held by individual employees within business environments which motivate and shape behavior in the workplace, and the extent to which VBA reveal roots and drivers linked to spiritual capital (and associated capitals). Building on early authorial work (Baker, Stokes, Lichy, Atherton, 2011), and referring to literature from theology and religion, as well as business organization and management, the paper discusses the critical and dialectical relationship between different forms of capital (for example, social, human, economic), modernistic, ‘hard’ cultures and issues of managerialism and alternative critical, ‘soft’ frameworks and sources of ethics and values – and their impact on the business setting. It will do this primarily by proposing a new typological model showing the dynamic and potentially progressive interplay between spiritual, human, bridging and linking forms of social capital within corporate and public settings and explores their implications for management. This typological model is derived from original research using in-depth semi-structured interviews from three different organizations in North West England and North Wales, to determine the extent to which notions of the postsecular and spiritual capital may operate in workplaces.

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The Role of Embedded Individual Values, Belief and Attitudes and Spiritual Capital in Shaping Everyday Postsecular Organizational Culture

This discursive literature review was originally produced for the Leverhulme Trust in 2007 by the William Temple Foundation as a part of a research project to test the concept of religious capital (along with associated ideas of spiritual, faithful and religious social capital) with new empirical research. The research project aims also to explore emerging alternative paradigms to “capital” as a way of describing and evaluating the role and contribution of faiths to civil society. To that end, the article traces the historical development of the concept of social capital and its use by three influential thinkers in the field, namely Pierre Bourdieu, James Coleman and Robert Putnam. It then proceeds to map emerging
developments in the construction of definitions of religious and spiritual capital (and including ideas of religious social and faithful capital). It concludes with an extended discussion concerning some of the public policy implications of this research field, including the emerging concept of secular spiritual capital and its contribution to discerning common core values within the public domain.

Faith and Traditional Capitals: Defining the Public Scope of Spiritual and Religious Capital—A Literature Review

This article introduces the concept of secular spiritual capital (SSC) as a contribution to new theory and praxis, which the authors believe has potential to serve as an important tool in the increasingly sensitive yet robust task of public theology; namely mapping and negotiating increasingly complex and contested public spaces between religion and secularity. The article starts with the furore caused by a public lecture given by Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury in which he argued for allowing aspects of Sharia law to function within the UK's secularized legal frameworks. The article then develops the concept of SSC by synthesizing existing ideas located within sociology, anthropology and practical theology. It refers to recent praxis in key public policy/civil society areas; such as planning, social care and community cohesion, which stress the importance of partnership and dialogue between religious and secular sectors for the sake of the common good. The article concludes that SSC helps create a ‘thicker’ public discourse based on virtues and ethics, as well as rights.

Christopher Baker

Papers

Postsecular Cities: space, theory and practice

Geographies of Postsecularity: Re-envisioning Politics, Subjectivity and Ethics

The Role of Embedded Individual Values, Belief and Attitudes and Spiritual Capital in Shaping Everyday Postsecular Organizational Culture

Faith and Traditional Capitals: Defining the Public Scope of Spiritual and Religious Capital—A Literature Review

Exploring Secular Spiritual Capital: An Engagement in Religious and Secular Dialogue for a Common Future?