| This dissertation examines the spiritual economy in Nioro du Sahel, an important Islamic religious center in the West African state of Mali, tracing the development of the plurality of Islamic discourses and practices as well as their inscription in broader social, political and economic contexts throughout the twentieth century. The central premise of this study is that within specific communities of Muslims, different conceptions of Islam not only vary over time but frequently coexist. Drawing on 21 months of field and archival research in Mali, Senegal, and France, I utilize oral histories, ethnography, locally produced religious texts, and colonial archival sources to analyze the development of Islamic discourses and practices within the context of French colonialism and within the post-colonial state. Conceived as a historical ethnography, it focuses particularly on the town's two rival Sufi orders, the Tijaniyya and the Hamawiyya, whose influence permeates nearly all areas of the town's social life, and those anti-Sufis who contest their legitimacy, charting the elaboration of their parallel and, sometimes, rival discourses and their interaction over time. It also examines the development of the public sphere of Islam within the post-colonial secular state and the implications of such a sphere for this religious center. The dissertation contributes to the anthropological understanding of religion and modernity and, more specifically, how what it means to be a Muslim has changed in the twentieth century. It enhances our understanding of the evolution of Islamic discourses and practices, particularly Sufism and anti-Sufism, and contributes to the study of shifts in spiritual power and authority and the complex relationship of these to political economic power in a Muslim society during colonialism and in the post-colonial period. |
