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"How do Islamic discourses, practices, and symbols become a concrete and meaningful facet of the lives of individuals and communities in the cities of contemporary Pakistan? How do they constitute relationships between neighbors, friends, relatives, strangers, and various urban groups? In other words, how is Islam woven into the social fabric of urban Pakistan? The Social Life of Islam addresses these questions through an ethnography of Sufi shrines in Pakistan's second largest metropolitan center, Lahore. It argues that Sufi shrines' position as a vital hub of metropolitan public life is critical to their capacity to serve as a conduit for Islam. Connecting urban studies with the study of religion, this book explores interactions between pirs, murids, visitors, locals, entrepreneurs, and other actors that constitute Sufi shrines as a key social, political, and religious space for the mediation, contestation, and reproduction of social relations in the city and for producing a distinct embodiment of Islam"--
List of contents
List of Figures and Plans; Introduction: Shrine as a Social Form; 1. Life among the Dead: The Shrine of Bodianwale; 2. Mohalla Pirs and Qalandari Entrepreneurs: Striving in Urban Sufi Worlds; 3. Festive Publics: Islam and Other Performances in Saintly Celebrations; 4. Sufis in the Periphery: Forging Other Spiritual Worlds in the City; Conclusion: Islam and the City; Bibliography; Index.
About the author
Amen Jaffer is a Sociologist at the Department of Humanities & Social Sciences, Lahore University of Management Sciences, Pakistan. His research interests lie in the fields of religion, urban studies, everyday life, difference and social control, social theory, political economy of waste and recycling, and the politics of space and infrastructure. He has recently co-edited a volume titled State and Subject Formation in South Asia (Oxford University Press, 2022)
