Gender, religion and the 'developmentalization' of male Muslim imams in Bangladesh

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3878024
AutoresAlmas Zakiuddin (Kwantlen Polytechnic University, autor de correspondencia)
Año2015
Volumen27
Número3
Páginas399-422
Fecha de publicación2015-11-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaCultural Dynamics (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0921-3740 • E-ISSN: 1461-7048
EditorialSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0921374014560762
OpenAlexW2087878268
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas1
Referencias citadas36

In this article, I explore how entanglements between two international development organizations, the state and male Muslim imams or congregational prayer leaders, in Bangladesh from the early 1980s to the present time combine in the 'developmentalization' of thousands of male imams as mobilized, institutionally fixed repositories of male Islamic authority. Following Arturo Escobar's argument that development discourse organizes and manages the South through problematizing specific issues that development apparatuses then proceed to resolve, I suggest that male imams are mobilized in order to satisfy specific contingencies elaborated by, among other things, development itself. Drawing on textual analysis and empirical work with development policymakers and imams in Bangladesh, I analyse the origins, conditions and exigencies under which male imams become partners in development activity, including programmes that target women's reproductive health choices and provide intimate, personal contraceptive care. I adopt a critical feminist development studies perspective, wherein gender concerns and women's issues are a critical consideration of development interventions in the South, to explicate how both gendered resistance and complicity are evident in complex ways within these alliances. My research suggests that although evident in Bangladesh, imam mobilizations are facilitated by linkages at local, national, regional and transnational levels

Complicity · Ethnology · Geography · Islam · Political science · Prayer · Psychological intervention · Sociology · South asia · Gender Studies · Law · Medicine · Microfinance and Financial Inclusion · Psychology · Religion, Society, and Development · Tourism, Volunteerism, and Development