Resumen de Emplacing Islam. Saint veneration in rural Turkey
While Islam is abstractly directed towards God, who supersedes place and time, this paper explores the socially situated politics of remembering and enacting cultural Islamic traditions through saint veneration. Based on a decade of ethnographic research, this paper explores the gendered and contested nature of saint veneration in rural and urban Turkey. By considering the politics of place and state in Turkey, this paper explores how Muslims practice Islam through cultural rituals that contextualize gendered interpretations of devotion in place. Because these practices are placed in time and space, filtered through national constructions of orthodoxy and spiritual efficacy, women hedge awkwardly against the possibility that their forms of devotion may not be acceptable. Yet, as I explore in this paper, rural women are sharply critical of Islamic rituals that ignore their spiritual needs.
