turner, the sociology of islam.pdf

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introduction Bryan S. Turner: Building the Sociology of

islam

if we accept the orwellian notion that ones writings are necessarily borne out of either political purpose, historical compulsion, aesthetic enthusiasm or sheer egoism, then it is safe to assume that Bryan Turners prolific career was shaped by the shifting constellations and structures of his time. Turner was born in January 1945, towards the end of the World War, to working-class parents in Birmingham, england. as a schoolboy, he attended the harborne collegiate School for Boys from 195661, before moving on to george dixon grammar School. he went on to read Sociology at the University of leeds in an established social sciences school where roland robertson had received his Phd and was experimenting with what was to become the theory of globalization. Turner completed a first class honours degree in 1966 rather easily and received his doctor of Philosophy in the same university four years later with a thesis on methodism. The Phd thesis was favourably reviewed by the external examiner, Professor david martin from the london School of economics, a leading sociologist of religion. martin had in fact just completed his magnum opus, developing a trenchant critique of secularization as a theory of social process and questioning the dominant narrative of the inevitability of secularization in modern societies.1 Turner never looked back to that early treatise but the thesis that lay in some remote shelves of the university library became a toolbox from which he drew to write his subsequent books.

it was during these formative years that Turner became increasingly drawn to the comparative sociology of religion promulgated by Professor Trevor ling and the emergent theory of globalization by Professor roland robertson. The years 1963 to 1972 saw lings appointment in the department of Theology at the University of leeds where he published a volume called Buddha, Marx and God (1966). ling later became Personal chair in comparative religion. There, his interest in the Buddhist historical tradition served as an entry point to the Southeast Asian empirical field where he focused on Theravada Buddhism in Sri lanka, Burma, Thailand, cambodia and laos. ling cast a long shadow on Turners scholarly career. Upon taking up the position of research Team leader for the religion cluster at the asian research institute at the National University

1 Sociology of English Religion (Scm, 1967), The Religious and the Secular (routledge, 1969), and A Wilderness of Monkeys: The Case for Christianity in a Scientific Age (marshall, morgan & Scott 1970).



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The Sociology of Islam2

of Singapore (20052009), Turners gaze turned upon Southeast asia as a new site of his scholarly curiosities.

As mentioned, Robertsons ideas on globalization are a significant stimulus to Turners scholarship. Turner, whose first book Weber and Islam has since become a classic in the field, published a long commentary on Robertsons theory of globalization where he found a strong affinity with Robertsons thoughts. He asserted that Robertsons sociology is a consequence of his debate with Weber via the work of Talcott Parsons. one might think of much of robertsons oeuvre as an attempt to understand the global place of religion (in the broad sense) within a Weber/Parsons paradigm (Turner 1992: 312). The two heavyweights of the discipline worked together on a number of projects on social theory, globalization and religion. in 1989, they also collaborated to produce an article on Talcott Parsons and modern social theory. over time, Turner himself grew to become an authority on the theory of globalization and applied his postulations to his study of islam.

Turners deliberations of globalization were not without physical manifestations. in these challenging times when university jobs are scarce and hardly available, academics would often cherish the idea of being entrenched in a given university, ivy-league or otherwise. Turner, on the contrary, has no such ambitions. He leads a remarkably nomadic life, having held university appointments in various countries. he taught at the University of aberdeen (Scotland) and the University of lancaster (england) and became a Professor of Sociology at flinders University (australia) after which he took up the alexander von humboldt fellow at Bielefeld University (germany). after short stints at Utrecht (holland) and essex (england) and serving as dean at deakins (australia), Turner was appointed Professor of Sociology at the University of cambridge (england). he arrived at National University of Singapore in 2005, and four years later, left for a Visiting Professorship at Wellesley (United States) teaching the sociology of asian societies. Turner currently straddles the positions of Presidential Professor of Sociology and director of the committee on religion at The city University of New york (United States), as well as Professor of Social and Political Thought and the director of the centre for the Study of contemporary muslim Societies (cScmS), which he founded at the University of Western Sydney (australia). cScmS has been recently renamed the centre for religion and Society with a broader remit to study religions. he is also faculty associate of the center for cultural Sociology at yale University (United States), Research Associate at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (France), fellow of the academy of the Social Sciences (australia) and member of the american Sociological research association.

Turner is also a habitual founder of journals and book series. he is the founding editor of Body & Society (with mike featherstone), Citizenship Studies and Journal of Classical Sociology (with John oNeill). he founded two book series for anthem Press: Key issues in modern Sociology and Tracts for our Times, and serves as the editor for the Routledge book series Religion in Contemporary Asia and the co-editor of muslims in global Societies for Springer. as of 2012, he is the associate editor of the newly established journal, Sociology of Islam, and is also on the editorial



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Introduction 3

board of about a dozen other journals. as recognition of his legacies to sociology, he was awarded several honorary degrees. he received a doctor of letters at flinders University in 1987, a master of arts at the University of cambridge in 2002 and a doctor of letters at the University of cambridge in 2009.

ironically, his transnational interactions and nomadic lifestyle have led to an enduring criticism of him. despite having travelled almost the entire globe, Turner has never been regarded as an insider in the study of islam. critics have faulted him for not having conducted extensive fieldwork in Muslim lands. His academic appointments in Western institutions of higher learning also provide further ammunition for some to discount him as an orientalist who writes about islam but knows little about muslims and their lived realities. To some extent, such criticisms are valid. Taken too far, criticisms about Turners aloofness from the field where he has dedicated his prodigious writings would prove untenable. Weber, whom Turner regards as his intellectual forebear, stressed that what is needed is verstehen (emphatic understanding). This renders the insider and outsider perspectives redundant, tout court. Besides, Turners real and valuable contribution to the sociology of islam does not lie in the unearthing of new empirical evidence but in contributing to the methodology, conceptualizing and theorizing of social phenomena. Beginning with his publication on the theories of islamic thinker ibn Khaldun in 1971 and taking his 2011 piece on Sharia and Legal Pluralism in the West as a collective project, Turner has injected a battery of concepts and developed several important approaches to the social scientific study of islam.

making sense of Bryan Turners contributions to the sociology of islam is by any means a daunting task. To try to summarize Turners large body of works is like attempting to catch quicksilver. Turner actively churns out his scholarly expositions at an impressive rate and constantly reinvents himself by looking at new axes to analyze society. The fact that this reader mainly includes his most recent reflections is testament to this. The reality of the magnitude of the task dawned upon me as I turned the pages on 40 years of his reflections on Islam and contemporary muslim societies.

This collation has a few novel aims. it is, without any apologies, a response to critiques of Turner that have often marginalized him as an outsider in the study of Islam. Alternatively, this first ever reader of Turners essays consolidates his innovative and critical interpolation in the sociology of islam. To be sure, the sociology of islam is poorly served in terms of the tracing of concepts and theoretical frameworks through the lenses of key influential figures in the field. This is the first manuscript of its sort, for we are still waiting for a manuscript that takes on, in a sustained manner, the ideas of seminal thinkers whose perspective transcends the limits of space and time. Two landmark publications, as evidenced in a recent edited book entitled The Sociology of Islam: Secularism, Economy and Politics (Tugrul 2011) and the launching of the journal Sociology of Islam (2012), are crucial steps in that direction. The poverty of writings on the subject matter becomes even more apparent when the only other compilation of a key thinkers



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thoughts on the subject is a dated manuscript of translated lectures by ali Shariati (1979) collectively titled On the Sociology of Islam. This reader by Turner thus fills some of the yawning gaps in the field and, whilst updating the literature all the way to the present, also offers a longue dure perspective to the study. in so doing, this reader also hopes to encourage other compilations of Bryan Turners writings converging on some of the core themes that he has been concerned with over the last four decades.

another aim of this reader is to showcase the ways in which Turner has attempted to critically analyze muslim communities. Taking a thematic approach, Turner traces the relationship between islam and the ideas of Western social thinkers as examined against a series of concepts such as capitalism, orientalism, modernity, gender, and citizenship among others. for Turner, muslims adaptation and resistance to the changing times can only be properly understood by ruminating on these overarching notions. This collection is even more timely as the Muslim World copes with significant developments arising from the post 9/11 islamophobic environment, in addition to the attendant problems of muslim migration to the West, as well as the rise of popular protests among muslims the world over that has captivated the minds of scholars and the layman alike. These developments amply demonstrate the heightened contemporary interest in the sociology of islam and Turners endeavours afford us with the necessary frameworks to foster constructive debates.

Bryan Turners Interventions into the Sociology of Islam

from his earliest articles on ibn Khaldun, to his classic on max Webers sociology of islam, to his discussions about orientalism and its avatars, the sociology of islam has been one of the essential themes in Turnerian sociology. Nonetheless, anyone who seeks to understand Turners contribution to the study of islam must take into account the wider context of his forays into several sub-fields: from the sociology of religion in general, and Islam specifically, to his other breakthroughs in the fields of medical sociology (body and society), political sociology (citizenship and human rights) and classical social theory. These offer him the heuristic tools to ponder the larger issues of globalization and religion, religious conflict and the modern state, religious authority and electronic information, religious consumerism and youth cultures, human rights and religion, the human body, medical change, as well as religious cosmologies. it is within the context of these larger sociological pursuits that we need to situate Turners engagement with the sociology of islam. islam then becomes a prism through which Turner uses theory to illuminate social reality and social reality to challenge theory. Turners impact in the sociology of islam is evident in at least four fundamental areas.

Very few will contest that Turners leading contribution is in the theorizing of Islam. Turner received much praise for his first book Weber and Islam in 1974. The late Ernest Gellner lauded the volume as valuable and admirable. As



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Introduction 5

a corollary, Turners definitive piece entitled Islam, Capitalism and the Weber Theses, which was published in the same year, was awarded one of the best two writings of that decade by the British Sociological association in 2010. The article was extolled for having had a significant and enduring impact on sociology. Over the years, Turner has engaged with a vast array of theories, having written books and articles on the likes of Khaldun, durkheim, Weber, marx, Parsons, Simmel, Baudrillard, mannheim and Bourdieu. These have led some to mistakenly label him as a marxist (see ruthven 2006: 163), amongst others, but Weber continued to be his main source of inspiration. he has since established an international reputation for his Weberian analyses of religion from the broad perspective of comparative sociology. While this Reader ends with Turners co-written piece on the fate of islamic law in Western societies, scholars of islam can look ahead to more of such studies as this pilot project forms part of a three-year grant he won with colleagues from the australian research council in 2011 to study the Sharia in the global cities of Sydney and New york.

His second major influence rests in his consistent and measured criticisms of orientalism in islamic studies. from the 1970s through the 1990s, marked by the twin publications of Marx and the End of Orientalism (1978) and Orientalism, Postmodernism and Globalism (1994), Turner has engaged in various debates over Orientalism. Although the word Orientalism today has become synonymous with edward Saids (1978) important treatise, Turners effort remained the more theoretically informed. Turner points out how Said, whose primary examples are drawn from literary and art creations of a certain genealogy, has conflated many diverse traditions across cultures and disciplines into a monolithic orientalist tradition. in Marx and the End of Orientalism, Turner exposes and rejects the Hegelian-Marxist view of the Middle East that is founded on a false teleological-essentialist conception leading to a unilinear progression of history. he contends that overcoming Orientalism entails a rigorous questioning of the epistemological and theoretical assumptions of orientalist scholarship and advocates the eradication of certain strains of marxist thought. in his later manuscript, Turner lays bare the amorphous categories of Oriental and Occident amidst a setting of postmodern polytheism and the commodification of everyday life that has come to describe living in a globalized age. drawing on Weber and robertson, his response to the critique of Orientalism is to consciously strive towards a global sociology.

Turners third major contribution is toward the understanding of body as method. his thoughts on the theorizing of religion resulted in the publication of Religion and Social Theory (1983) where Turner engages extensively with michel foucault in constructing a methodology revolving around the body. in Religion and Social Theory, his definitive work in The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory (1984) and in the recently published Religion and Modern Society: Citizenship, Secularisation and the State (2011) which has been characterized as an attempt to revive a theory-driven macro-sociology of religion, Turner has laid concrete foundations to a new understanding of dissecting society with the body as the focal point. he outlined that all societies are faced with four tasks in



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which a sociology of the body should take into consideration: (1) the reproduction of populations in time, (2) the regulation of bodies in space, (3) the restraint of the interior body through disciplines, and (4) the representation of the exterior body in social space (1984: 38). These four axes are a useful template to understand how muslims negotiate their bodies in their everyday lives and particularly, in understanding the expressive functions of religious identity in a multiracial urban secular setting. Scholars studying islam, especially those focusing on muslim women (hargreaves 2007; Torab 2007; Schlote 2008), have done well to consider Turners sociology of the body as a penetrative way of investigating society.

The final key feature of Turners sociology is the formation of a reliable stream of innovative and insightful concepts that have been deployed to examine muslim societies. To cite an example that is more familiar to me both in terms of scholarship and the subject matter, Muslims in Singapore: Piety, Politics and Policies (2009), which I co-wrote with Turner, is an attempt to critically apply some of the concepts that he has developed over recent times such as the enclave society (Turner 2007a), rituals of intimacy and acts of piety (Turner 2007b) with others like the Malay problem (Kamaludeen 2007) and defensive dining (Kamaludeen and Pereira 2008) that I have developed by looking at the Singapore empirical field. The book also responds to Saba Mahmoods ground-breaking research in Politics of Piety (2005) where she criticizes the traditional perspectives of western feminism on the veil in islam. The structure that mahmood devises to explore the muslim habitus for pious women in modern Egypt was useful in reflecting about the Singapore case. The ethnographic study of Singapore thus provides a framework for thinking in more global terms about islamic renewal. in the course of his career, Turner has never shied away from engaging the important treatises and the tough questions of the day, and through these encounters he has steadily furnished the sociology of islam with innovative concepts to better explain society.

Conclusion

The proliferation of articles and books on muslims in the post 9/11 era have typically examined muslims from the perspectives of radicalism, political islam and their alienation experienced as minorities living in secular multicultural societies. giving a more nuanced perspective, this book will indeed be an indispensable resource for analysts, social scientists, legal scholars as well as media observers dedicated to serious social scientific research and policy-making as it documents the dominant ways in which islam/muslims have been studied over the last four decades. in addition, this reader can be utilized in a complementary manner and in conversation with other edited volumes written on key figures within the sociology and anthropology of islam and muslim communities. Two recent publications, namely, Powers of the Secular Modern: Talal Asad and His Interlocutors (Scott and hirschkind 2006) and Clifford Geertz by His Colleagues (Shweder and good 2005), come to mind.



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Introduction 7

one can be assured that this compilation will need to be updated soon enough given Turners prolific nature and his conviction to pushing the boundaries of the discipline. a lot can be made of Turners farewell lecture at the National University of Singapore in 2009 when he left with a session humbly titled Encountering Religion and Globalization in Asia: Some Problems with My Glasses. it was clearly visible to the audience, which comprised of academicians, students and policy analysts, that Turner devotes much of himself to expanding the frontiers of his field. Three of his attributes struck me during that discussion, when as a young postgraduate, i struggled to help carry the piles of books that he had written during his brief tenure there. foremost is the rigour that Turner puts into honing his craft. and, as is evident in the title of his lecture, this is always done with a great deal of reflexivity and self-criticism.

KamalUdeeN mohamed NaSirAssistant Professor of Sociology

Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

References

Hargreaves, Jennifer. 2007. Sport, Exercise, and the Female Muslim Body: Negotiating islam, Politics and male Power, in Jennifer hargreaves and Patricia Vertinsky (eds) Physical Culture, Power, and the Body. london: routledge, 74100.

Kamaludeen mohamed Nasir. 2007. Rethinking the Malay Problem in Singapore: image, rhetoric and Social realities. Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 27(2): 30918.

Kamaludeen Mohamed Nasir and Alexius A. Pereira. 2008. Defensive Dining: Notes on the Public dining experiences in Singapore. Contemporary Islam 2(1): 6173.

Kamaludeen mohamed Nasir, alexius a. Pereira and Bryan S. Turner. 2009. Muslims in Singapore: Piety, Politics and Policies. london: routledge.

Keskin, Tugrul (ed.). 2011. The Sociology of Islam: Secularism, Economy and Politics. reading: ithaca.

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Torab, azam. 2007. Performing Islam: Gender and Ritual in Iran. leiden: Brill.Turner, Bryan S. 1978. Marx and the End of Orientalism. london: allen and

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