“Work no words”: Voluntarism, subjectivity, and moral economies of exchange among Khoja Ismaili Muslims

Pluralism.org

by Jamal, Zahra Nasiruddin, Ph.D., Harvard University, 2008, 395 pages; AAT 3312399

Abstract (Summary)

Voluntarism in the multi-ethnic, transnational Shia Imami Nizari Ismaili Muslim community provides a window into the complex interactions of religious ethics, the subject, and the state. While most studies argue that voluntarism is a distinctly American phenomenon linked to citizenship, most Ismailis do not see it as necessarily connected to the nation-state and see no conflict between faith and citizenship. For them, service is a 1400 year tradition entailing the balance between the spiritual and material aspects of life.

This dissertation is about one Nizari Ismaili diasporic group called Khoja Ismailis, originally a trading caste from western India that converted from Hinduism to Ismailism around the 11th century. It explores how Khoja Ismailis in Houston, Texas, view and practice seva , or voluntarism, as part of a mediated Islamic moral economy as well as a civic economy, thus binding them with Imam, state, and society. Complicating these moral economies are a hierarchy of service linked to knowledge, class, and symbolic proximity to the Imam, and a hierarchy of gender linked to culturally-based patriarchal logics.

Voluntarism reinforces a historical and transnational pan-Ismaili identity, and it becomes a mode through which pious and civic subjectivities are produced. The Ismaili community’s institutional structures, transnational character, and authority of the Imam shape their voluntarism. This dissertation contributes to literature on philanthropy and voluntarism, moral economies, subjectivity, and native anthropology. It draws on participant-observation, formal and informal interviews, and archival work conducted in Houston, Washington D.C., and New York, United States; Vancouver, Canada; Karachi, Pakistan; Mumbai, Chennai, and Bhuj, India; and Khorog, Tajikistan from 2003-2005.

via ProQuest Dissertations & Theses.