The Everyday Ethics, Aesthetics and Politics of Islamic Dress. The Case of Women Converts to Islam in Buenos Aires
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31048/1852.4826.v16.n2.40916Keywords:
Gender, Islam, Conversion, Dress, Buenos AiresAbstract
This article explores the sensitivities, discursivities and materialities deployed by women converts through their reappropriation of Islam as a gender repertoire, taking the Islamic headscarf, body care and physical appearance as examples. The ethnographic work (2013–2020), carried out in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area in dialogue with the testimonies collected charts the different ways in which Islam is locally reconfigured. It reveals that, while Islamic dress does not constitute an all-pervasive set of social issues, it nevertheless emerges as a political, ethical or aesthetic resource that speaks to the performances and rhetorics of women embracing Islam. On one hand, the text takes a comparative approach to the uses and meanings given to Islamic dress by the subjects, while taking into consideration whether they are converts adhering to Shi’ite and Sunnī Islam or follow Sufism, and the convergences and tensions arising with Muslims by birth. On the other hand, it reflects on female agency beyond religious normativity and the misleading dichotomy of the acceptance or rejection of the Islamic headscarf.
Downloads
References
Algranti, J. (2016). Modelos de orden, modelos de juego. Notas para una sociología del gusto religioso. Estudos de Religião, 30(1), 145-164.
Algranti, J. y Setton, D. (2021). Clasificaciones imperfectas. Sociología de los mundos religiosos. Buenos Aires: Biblos.
Arthur, L. (1999). Dress and the Social Control of the body. En: Arthur, L (Ed.). Religion, Dress and the Body. Oxford: Berg (pp. 1-8).
Bard, C. (2012). Historia política del pantalón. Buenos Aires: Tusquets Editores.
Brenner, S. (2011). Private Moralities in the Public Sphere: Democratization Islam and Gender in Indonesia. American Anthropologist, 113(3), 478-490.
Bucar, E. (2016). Secular Fashion, Religious Dress, and Modest Ambiguity: The Visual Ethics of Indonesian Fashion-Veiling. Journal of Religious Ethics, 44(1), 68-91.
Butler, J. (2007 [1999]). El género en disputa. El feminismo, la rebelión de la identidad. Buenos Aires: Paidós.
Castro, C.M. (2015). Usar ou não o hijab no Brasil? Uma análise da religiosidade islâmica em um contexto minoritário. Religião & Sociedade, 35, 363-383.
Chagas, G. y Mezabarba, S. (2018). Fashioning selves: Biographic pathways of hijabi women in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. En: Almila, A.M. e Inglis, D. (Eds.) The Routledge International Handbook to Veils and Veiling Practices. Londres: Routledge (pp. 18–194).
Chagas, G. y Mezabarba, S. (2019). Dressed to marry: Islam, fashion, and the making of muslim brides in Brazil. Religions, 10(9), 499. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10090499
Csordas, T. (2007). Modalities of transnational transcendence. Anthropological Theory, 7, 259-272.
De la Torre, R. y Gutiérrez Zúñiga, C. (2005). La lógica del mercado y la lógica de la creencia en la creación de mercancías simbólicas. Desacatos, 18, 53-70.
De Lauretis, T. (1996). La tecnología del género. Revista Mora, 2, 6-34.
Deeb, L. (2009). Piety Politics and the Role of a Transnational Feminist Analysis. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, (s/n), 112-126.
Dumovich, L. (2013). O que importa é a intenção: a reconfiguração do “self religioso” na conversão de mulheres o islã na mesquita da luz. REVER-Revista de Estudos da Religião, 13(1), 85-111.
El Guindi, F. (1999). Veil: Modesty, Privacy and Resistance. London: Berg.
Elizalde, S. y Felitti, K. (2015). “Vení a sacar a la perra que hay en vos”: Pedagogías de la seducción, mercado y nuevos retos para los feminismos. Revista interdisciplinaria de Estudios de Género de El Colegio de México, 1(2), 3-32.
Espinola, C. (2005). O véu que (des)cobre: Etnografia da comunidade árabe muçulmana em Florianópolis. Tesis de doctorado en antropología, Universidad Federal de Santa Catarina.
Esteban, M. L. (2004). Antropología del cuerpo. Géneros, itinerarios corporales, identidad y cambio. Barcelona: Bellaterra.
Fadil, N. (2011). Not-/Unveiling as an Ethical Practice. Feminist Review, 98, 83-109.
Ferreira, F. (2013), Diálogos sobre o uso do véu (hijab): empoderamento, identidade e religiosidade. Perspectivas, 43, 183-198.
García Linares, R. J. (2018). Observaciones metodológicas. Lo decolonial en el análisis de las mujeres y el islam en México. Interdisciplina, 6(16), 137-166.
García Somoza, M.S. y Valcarcel. M. S. (2020). Mi Corazón late Husayn: Identity, Politics and Religion in a Shi´a community in Buenos Aires. En: Scharbrodt, O. y Shanneik, Y. (Eds.) Shi´a Minorities in the Contemporary World. Migration, Transnationalism and Multilocality. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press (pp. 46-72).
Gill, R. (2007). Postfeminist media culture: Elements of a sensibility. European Journal of cultural studies, 10 (2), 147-166.
Gökarıksel, B. (2009). Beyond the Officially Sacred: Religion, Secularism and the Body in the Production of Subjectivity. Social and Cultural Geography, 10(6), 657-674.
Gökarıksel, B. y McLarney, E. (2010). Introduction: Muslim Women, Consumer Capitalism, and the Islamic Culture Industry. Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, 6(3), 1-18.
Göle, N. (2002). Islam in Public: New Visibilities and New Imaginaries. Public Culture, 14(1), 173-190.
Haeri, N. (2017). The sincere subject: Mediation and interiority among a group of Muslim women in Iran. HAU, Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 7(1), 139-161.
Hakim, C. (2010). Erotic capital. European Sociological Review, 26(5), 499-518.
Hansen, K. (2004). The world in dress: Anthropological perspectives on clothing, fashion, and culture. Annual Review of Anthropology, 33, 369-392.
Irisarri, V. y Viotti, N. (2019/2020). ¿Más allá de la distinción? La reproducción de diferencias sociales y los regímenes de objetos-personas. Cuadernos del Centro de Estudios en Diseño y Comunicación, 88, 205-222.
Jones, C. (2010). Materializing Piety: Gendered Anxieties about Faithful Consumption in contemporary Urban Indonesia. American Ethnologist, 37(4), 617-637.
Lazreg, M. (2014). Resucitando el pasado: las mujeres, el islam y la identidad. En: Ramírez, A. (Ed.). La identidad imaginada. El pánico moral y la construcción de lo musulmán en España y Francia. Barcelona: Bellaterra (pp.79-97).
Le Breton, D. (2002). La sociología del cuerpo. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Nueva Visión.
Lewis, R. (2015). Muslim fashion: Contemporary style cultures. Durham: Duke University Press.
Mahmood, S. (2012 [2005]). Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton University Press y Oxford University Press.
McRobbie, A. (2004). Post-feminism and Popular Culture. Feminist media Studies, 4(3), 255-264
Miller, D. (2005). Introduction. En: Küchler, S. y Miller, D. (Eds.) Clothing as material culture. Oxford: Berg (pp. 1-13).
Montenegro, S. (2014). El Islam en la Argentina contemporánea: estrategias institucionales y modos de estar en el espacio nacional. Estudios Sociológicos, 21, 593-617.
Montenegro, S. y Setton, D. (2016). Trayectorias militantes: formación e ideario de la Federación de Entidades Argentino-Palestinas. En: Kahan, E. (Comp.), Israel-Palestina: una pasión argentina. Estudios sobre la recepción del conflicto árabe-israelí en Argentina. Buenos Aires: Prometeo (pp. 215-238).
Moors, A. (2007) Fashionable Muslims: Notions of Self, Religion, and Society in Sana’a. Fashion Theory, 11(2/3), 319-346.
Noel, G. (2013). De los códigos a los repertorios: algunos atavismos persistentes acerca de la cultura y una propuesta de reformulación. Revista Latinoamericana de Metodología de las Ciencias Sociales, 3(2), 36-65.
Pellegrin, N. (1993). Le vêtement comme faite social total. En: Charle, C. (Ed.). Historie sociale, historie globale? París: EHEES (pp. 81-94).
Probyn, E. (2003). The Spatial Imperative of Subjectivity. En: Anderson, K. et al. (Eds.) Handbook of Cultural Geography. Londres: Sage (pp. 290-299).
Rancière, J. (2010). El espectador emancipado. Buenos Aires: Manantial.
Rubin, G. (1998 [1975]). El tráfico de mujeres: notas sobre la economía política del sexo. En: Navarro M. y Stimpson, C. (Comps.) ¿Qué son los estudios de mujeres? Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica (pp. 17-74).
Sandıkçı, Ö. y Ger, G. (2005). Aesthetics, Ethics and Politics of the Turkish headscarf. En: Kühler, S. y Miller, D. (Eds.) Clothing as material culture. Oxford: Berg (pp. 61-82).
Scott, J.W. (1986). Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis. American Historical Review, 91, 1053-1075.
Slaby, J. y von Scheve, C. (Eds.) (2019). Affective Societies. Key Concepts. New York: Routledge.
Tarlo, E. (2007). Islamic Cosmopolitanism: The Sartorial Biographies of Three Muslim Women in London. Fashion Theory, 11(2-3), 143-172.
Tarlo, E. y Moors, A. (Eds.). (2013). Islamic fashion and anti-fashion: New perspectives from Europe and North America. Londres: Bloomsbury.
Topal, S. (2017). Female Muslim Subjectivity in the Secular Public Sphere: Hijab and Ritual Prayer as ‘Technologies of the Self’. Social Compass, 64(4), 582-596.
Valcarcel, M. (2021). “Allah sabe más”. Femineidades e itinerarios de conversión en Buenos Aires. Tesis doctoral en antropología. Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires.
Valcarcel, M. (2022). Women Embracing Islam in Buenos Aires: Unsubmissive Femininities on the Move. Journal of Latin American Religions. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41603-022-00166-6
Zine, J. (2006). Unveiled Sentiments: Gendered Islamophobia and Experiences of Veiling among Muslim Girls in a Canadian Islamic school. Equity & Excellence in Education, 39(3), 239-252.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2023 Mayra Valcarcel
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Those authors who have publications with this Journalaccept the following terms:
a. Authors will retain their copyrights and guarantee the journal the right of first publication of their work, which will be simultaneously subject to the Creative Commons Attribution License (Licencia de reconocimiento de Creative Commons) that allows third parties to share the work as long as its author and his first publication in this journal.
b. Authors may adopt other non-exclusive licensing agreements for the distribution of the version of the published work (eg, deposit it in an institutional electronic file or publish it in a monographic volume) provided that the initial publication in this journal is indicated.
c. Authors are allowed and recommended to disseminate their work on the Internet (eg in institutional telematic archives or on their website) before and during the submission process, which can lead to interesting exchanges and increase citations of the published work. (See The Effect of Open Access - El efecto del acceso abierto)
How to Cite
