Literacy, Local Culture and Identity in the Muslim World

Research project P 14598 Literacy, Local culture and Identity in the Muslim World Andre GINGRICH 27.11.2000 This research project concentrates the capacities of a number of experienced researchers, who have been engaged in discussion and debate on the anthropology of West Asia and North Africa for several years. It aims at a more profound understanding of the dynamic interplay between various literate and non-literate forms and levels of knowledge and cognition and their role in the construction of different kinds of social identities within the Muslim World. Drawing on new approaches in anthropology and related disciplines, the researchers are striving to go beyond the unnecessarily restricting ideal-type dichotomy of scriptural elite culture, based on formal learning and on writing, and oral folk culture which dominated Western perceptions of Muslim societies for a long time. This dichotomous view has its merits but tends to lead observers into neglecting the multiple forms of interaction between "high" and "folk" culture, which will be the focus of research here. It also leaves little room for the more modem forms of knowledge and communication (book printing, newspapers, radio and television, and new media) that have become very influential in today`s Muslim societies. The investigations of the project deal with specific cases of interrelations between different forms of cognition and communication, both traditional and modem, in their historical contexts and their empirically observable social manifestations. They are also attentive to the way in which supralocal and global factors influence local world-views, forms. and levels of knowledge, and social relations. An important related question is how the perception of cultural differences in knowledge and communication contributes to defining and redefining local and non-local identities in processes of social change. Sharing a common theoretical and methodological approach, the case studies investigate and compare contrasting empirical situations and places, namely, the influences of trade and pilgrimage routes on local culture and politics in the Yemeni-Saudi frontier region, the impact of modem school education on semi-nomads in Syria, the interrelations between oral tradition and historiography among Berber tribespeople in Morocco, conceptions of taboo and ritual in Syria between popular cognition and scriptural knowledge, the processes of identity construction and community building among Somali and Palestinian refugees in Egypt and the Gaza Strip, and the influence of the contradictory relations between Islamic law, tribal customary law and state law on marriage and divorce among Moroccan Berbers. By systematically combining various methods of qualitative field research with the study of written sources, the project aims at developing a theoretically grounded methodology which provides researchers with new means of interpretation and a framework for a more subtle appreciation of the processes of cognitive and cultural change affecting Muslim societies. This dynamic approach to the multi-levelled and hierarchically ordered forms of knowledge that are typical of scriptural civilizations may be fruitfully applied in other world regions as well. Thus, the project attempts to combine the well-established Austrian tradition of Arabist and anthropological research on Middle Eastern Muslim societies with the broadening of regional perspectives that is among the most important developments in current anthropology.

In the past, many scholars have tended to explain the spread of so-called "fundamentalist" Islam as a reaction to economic and technical change. To mention one influential scholar, Ernest Gellner considered traditional scriptural Islam as a predominantly urban religion that only recently took hold in rural and peripheral areas due to modern media and infrastructure. In a process of internal Islamisation, Gellner contended, the new vulgarised and simplified form of scriptural Islam suppressed oral traditions and popular cultures and also became the starting point for the Islamist counter-movement to modernity. The research project explicitly aimed at replacing the established dichotomy between scriptural elite culture and oral folk culture in Muslim societies by a focus on the dynamic interplay between them. Its results suggest a revision of Gellner`s views concerning the suppression of oral traditions in the Muslim world. The researchers stress that literate and oral forms of communication must not be seen as rigidly opposed. Their case studies demonstrate how they coexist and interact in many ways and how various kinds of social identities emerge out of their interplay. Claudia Kickinger investigated the effects of formal schooling among semi-nomadic tribes in Syria. She succeeded in showing that compulsory primary schooling provides instruments for new forms of communication but without necessarily replacing traditional ones. Particularly for girls and women, this situation results in a continuing pluralism of forms of knowledge and identity which allows them to activate various levels of identity in different contexts. Gudrun Kroner`s study of female refugees` lives, carried out among Somalis in Egypt and Palestinians in the Gaza strip, shows that today Gellner`s views are insufficient in a further respect. Due to migrants` and refugees` movements, "urban centre" and "rural periphery" can no longer be conceptualised as local categories. Rather, it is the mixing up of old oppositions and hierarchies that is typical of communication, culture, and identity in much of today`s Muslim world. Concentrating on the role of religious specialists, Wolfgang Kraus studied historical knowledge in its relation to tribal identity among Moroccan Berbers. While most knowledge about the past is orally transmitted, there are complex interrelations with historiography, crossing the double divide between orality/literacy and Berber/Arab languages. Many of these interrelations are not recent but suggest a long-term coexistence and a considerable influence of oral on written historical knowledge. Equally in Syria, Gebhard Fartacek studied conceptions of jinn, the spirits who are recognised by the scriptural tradition but play a more important, if variable, role in oral culture. Contacts with jinn are always linked to actions that are considered "forbidden". While scriptural definitions of jinn and related phenomena such as the "evil eye" are interested in unequivocal categories, in the oral tradition there is more room for ambiguity. Belief in spirits can be shown to be especially strong in those regions of Syria where the individual margin for action is more restricted. Beyond the rich findings of the four case studies, it may be concluded that Gellner`s paradigm, which no doubt had its merits in the past, only can explain small parts of present-day and future developments in Muslim societies. "Vulgarised scriptural religion" is only one facet in a wide spectrum which is becoming weaker and - perhaps as a consequence - more radical. Beneath, a heterogeneous pluralism of forms of knowledge and communication is developing. To participate in formulating a new paradigm for this pluralism will be the next task for research.