Accessing Things of Conflicts:
Poking Anthropology with Guns, Martyrdom, and Religion
Supplements to Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, 2022, 19: 37–57
Download here: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004523791_003 Open Access
Enchanted by the AK-47:
Contingency of body and the weapon among Hezbollah militants
Journal of Material Culture, 2017, 23 (1): 83–99
Download here: https://doi.org/10.1177/1359183517725099 Open Access
Objects, Object-Ness, and Shadows of Meanings:
Carving Prayer Beads & Exploring Their Materiality alongside Sufi Murshi
Material Religion: the Journal of Objects, Art, and Belief, 2018, 14 (3): 368-388
Download here https://doi.org/10.1080/17432200.2018.1487765 Open Access
Crafting Sacrality from the tensile life of objects:
learning about the material life of prayer beads from a Khaksari Sufi Murshid
Contemporary Islam, 2018 12: 39–55
Download here https://doi.org/10.1007/s11562-017-0407-5 Open Access
Parliament of Things and Enactment of Third Entities
with Ola Plonska & Jochem Kootstra Journal of Cultural Research, 2018 22 (3): 293-309
Download here https://doi.org/10.1080/14797585.2018.1546928
The Materiality of Martyrdom, Shia Religiosity, and Contentious Politics in Iran
Symbolic Objects in Contentious Politics, (2023, Ch 3, Michigan Uni Press)
Benjamin Abrams & Peter Gardner (Editors)
Download here, https://muse.jhu.edu/book/111514 Open Access
The Jewel of Men: weaponry as material religion among Muslim communities
The Routledge Handbook of Material Religion, (2023, Ch 3, Routledge)
Pooyan Tamimi Arab, Jennifer Scheper Hughes, S. Brent Rodríguez-Plate (Editors)
Download here: https://www.academia.edu/101414883/Weaponry_as_Material_Religion_among_Muslim_Communities
Abstract:
This article critiques anthropological approaches such as Victor Turner’s and his epigones that reduce objects to sets of meanings, functions and attributes either located in-between matter and reality or in some liminal realm. I borrow from my ethnographic encounters among the Shia nonstate armed combatants in the Middle East since 2007 and especially focus on nonideological/nonreligious elements of conflict such as materiality of combat, material expressions of violence, and pain and pleasure, to find a fresh location for the so-called in-between that upends dualities and dichotomies without compromising on how human and nonhuman relate, how they co-constitute realities and become religious through meanings and representations. By way of guns, martyrdom, and religion, this article pays attention to religion without centering on religiosity, religious practices, and religion. Instead, it follows how things gather around religion without becoming religious. In other words, I follow how things of conflict relate to religion, shape religiosity, and collaborate with believers. This is an intentional academic choice, namely, to talk about religion without engaging with religion explicitly to highlight nonhuman partners in religiously framed political violence. I propose a deeper engagement with conflict cosmologies beyond anthropological methodological routines which limit objects to a bundle of qualities both in appearances and meanings or overspreading objects to the sum of their relationships, like Actor Network Theory.
Abstract:
The constant presence of various forms and makes of firearm has turned it into an everyday item among some Lebanese. For Hezbollah militants, the AK-47 is an object of humour and fun despite its lethal potential. The weapon is saturated with representative qualities – both material and semiotic, so the author explores its materiality as a crucial nodal point from which to sketch the difficult terrain of subject–object relationship in the life of Lebanese Shi’i Hezbollah militants. He seeks to identify the material culture of a weapon that consolidates myths, reifies identities, stages propaganda and advertises threats. With this in view, the author follows the AK-47 to explore its ‘enchanting’ qualities and speak of the relationship it forms with a militant’s body. He locates the body of militants between three questions: what does the AK-47 signify, how does it arrive at that signification, and finally, how have its materiality and dynamic physicality made it the weapon of choice?
Abstract:
Prayer beads, through processes of craftsmanship and trade, arrive at meanings, significations, and imaginative associations that are inscribed by religious-cultural codes or social networks. The shadows of meanings overwhelm their material existence as prayer beads despite their lives beginning before their enactment within the socio-cultural and religious networks. Therefore, alongside an Iranian Sufi murshid, I follow the object-ness and the life of rosaries and prayer beads in an "apprenticeship ethnographic" journey. I address the material life of rosaries to explain how their object-ness contributes to their materiality and meaning formation that they gain in a Sufi order. An approach informed by speculative realism and object-oriented ontology (OOO) is chosen to examine what it means to study a religious object-in-itself. I follow the religiously loaded object and its spiritual traces by way of OOO to forgo the meanings and relationships that shadow the objects.
Abstract:
Sufi mystical experiences and practices are populated with objects. Objects exist among masters as well as disciples and followers regardless of the meanings and significations that practices impose on them. The life of these objects begins before they are enacted into sociocultural and religious relationships, as they are crafted or traded before they take on the overwhelming semiosis ascribed to them by religious-cultural codes or social networks. This article presents an apprenticeship ethnographic journey in which I follow an Iranian Sufi master and, along with him, the tensile life of Sufi prayer beads, or tasbihs. I address prayer beads as an object prior to their gaining of any religious meaning in the networks of everyday life. Tracing the material life of prayer beads reveals how the “objectness” of the rosary preexists the material practices that give it meaning in the Sufi order. Through the approach of speculative realism I examine what it means to study a religious-object-in-itself. I follow the religiously loaded object and its spiritual emergence by way of object-oriented ontology to forgo the meanings and relationships that shadow the objects.
Abstract:
Things/objects/materials/nonhumans are integral components of everyday material ecology of humans. The nonhuman elements contribute to sociality, socialization and configuration of political subjectivities. We explore the dynamics of subject-object relationships via ethnographies of urban gardens and robotic labs. We trace the dynamics of man-plant relationships in urban gardens of Cuba and engineer-humanoid relationships in the United States to highlight how these relationships inform the politics and ethical complexity of human-centred ecologies. This collaborative effort offers two different case studies to broaden the notions of materiality while critiquing the relationality bound between subjects and objects instead of exploring the emergent properties of their relationship. Our ethnographies are a form of hands-on anthropology that outlines the third entity that emerges from the subject-object relationship and configures the material ecology of everyday lives. Our discussion contributes to the complexities of politics of everyday life and to the challenges of our contemporary era by highlighting the importance of details of everyday lives and how we craft relationships with nonhuman people
Abstract:
When we observe protest marches, striking workers on picket lines, and insurgent movements in the world today, a litany of objects routinely fill our field of vision. Some such objects are ubiquitous the world over, like flags, banners, and placards. Others are situationally unique: Who could have anticipated the historical importance of a flower placed in the barrel of a gun, a flaming torch, a sea of umbrellas, a motorist's yellow vest, a feather headdress, an AK-47, or a knitted pink hat? This book explores the "stuff" at the heart of protests, revolutions, civil wars, and other contentious political events, with particular focus on those objects that have or acquire symbolic importance. In the context of "contentious politics" (disruptive political episodes where people try to change societies without going through institutions), certain objects can divide and unite social groups, tell stories, make declarations, spark controversy, and even trigger violent upheavals.
Abstract:
Warcraft, crafting weapons, and weapon-handling have considerable literary, intellectual, and religious history among Muslim communities. Accordingly, Muslims have formed traditions, practices, laws, and locally situated meanings around weaponry since the advent of Islam. In this chapter, I explore the materiality of weaponry as they shape religious and cultural expressions such as masculinity and how their materiality intervenes in the emergence of political subjectivities. Following weapons, as objects with a considerable presence in Muslim societies, and dedicated believers, with an interest in armed resistance, I explain the material ecology that expresses religiosity and reveals sociocultural attitudes toward violence and life at large.