ITKI 6205 Anthropology of Islam

    This course is devoted to the history of development, theoretical and methodological principles, the main trends and problems of the Anthropology of Islam. The emergence of the Anthropology of Islam marks the transition from a descriptive ethnology, the subject of which was mainly premodern forms of social organization and relations in Muslim societies, which largely shared Orientalist stereotypes, to the modern anthropological study of Islam as a living tradition that unites oral and written discourses, religious practices and social bounds manifested in a variety of local forms.
    Students will be also introduced to the methods of applied research of Muslim communities, organizing and conducting interviews and participant observations, as well as interpretation of field research data, in particular emic and etic approaches, grounded theory (situational analysis) methodology, and extended case method.