Pious Muslim self-cultivation functions as a rigorous attentional discipline.
Evidence
Mahmood’s ethnography of vernacular Islam (2012) is a case in point. Its ethnographic and theoretical focus on cultivating a pious ethical self, we suggest, makes it a landmark anthropological study of attention. Mahmood, like Luhrmann, explores in rich ethnographic detail how people willfully subject themselves to rigorous attentional disciplines in a manner that calls to mind Foucault’s genealogy of self-relational technologies (or indeed, using our term, techniques) in the history of Christianity (Holbraad & Pedersen 2017, Keane 2007). — Annual Review of Anthropology contributors (⚠ verify author line), The Political Economy of Attention, 57
Categorization
- XREF: Connects directly to the reading purpose on attention/surveillance; also parallels Luhrmann’s prayer research and the broader virtue-ethics turn in anthropology. — connects to: Pious Muslims distinguish virtue-forming practice from mere identity signaling — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival…, 370; Islamic spiritual discipline aims to align human desire with divine law — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular:…, 1205
- DEFINE: Frames ‘attentional techniques/disciplines’ as a core concept extending to non-Western religious practice.
Related
Broader Connections
- Islamic spiritual discipline aims to align human desire with divine law
#expands(0.88) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 1205 - Pious Muslims distinguish virtue-forming practice from mere identity signaling
#expands(0.82) — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 370