Convertitis and the Struggle with Liminality for Female Converts to Islam in Australia
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3784413 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Karen Turner (0000-0001-5278-6779, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 186 |
| Pages | 71-91 |
| Publication date | 2019-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Archives de sciences sociales des religions (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0335-5985 • E-ISSN: 1777-5825 |
| Publisher | OpenEdition (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.4000/assr.45642 |
| OpenAlex | W2954242339 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
| References cited | 31 |
Drawing on ethnography among female converts to Islam who attended lessons at their local mosque in Melbourne, Australia, this article explores how new female converts navigate tensions between the secular and the religious, as they become Muslim. Conversion, for these women, is a series of interactions between religion, culture, gender and ethnicity, which work through, on and in their bodies. Through a framework of embodiment, I explore their struggle with certain aspects of the faith, which manifests in a phenomenon they refer to, jokingly, as convertitis. Convertitis, I argue, is a kind of "radical awkwardness": an embodied reaction to liminality between normative models of Muslim/non-Muslim and Islam/the West which are upheld by symbolic and institutional power relations. Thus, in an attempt to better understand these women's experiences of conversion, I explore their relationship with eating pork, listening to music, drinking alcohol and having a pet dog, to detail how perceived threats to their fledgling identity are managed through the adoption of literal and rational interpretations of Islam. By doing so, I aim to delineate the encounter between and co-existence of different sensory regimes, bodily nuances and moral registers that characterise the experience of conversion
Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · Ethnography · Faith · Identity (music · Islam · Liminality · Normative · Political science · Power (physics · Religious conversion · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Gender Studies · History · Law · Religion and Society Interactions · Religion, Society, and Development
The Rites of Passage
Geographies of Exclusion
The Making of a Salafi Muslim Woman
Introduction. Gender and Conversion to Islam in the West
Second Thoughts About the Anthropology of Islam, or How to Make Sense of Grand Schemes in Everyday Life
Politics of Piety
The Logic of Practice
In Honor of Fadime
Conversion to Islam
Contesting Islam through the 2012 Sydney Protests
The conversion process in stages
The masjid is for men
Religious Authority and Autonomy Intertwined
Convert Alert
John Howard's ‘Values’ and Australian Identity
Praying Where They Don't Belong
Conversion and ReligiousHabitus
The Illusion of Wholeness
The intimate and the stranger
Muslims in manchester
Embodying the Faith
The Ritual Process
Embodiment as a Paradigm for Anthropology
Veils and wooden clogs don't go together
| Citations per year | 1.2 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2021 - 2024 (4) |
| Highly cited | No |