Research page Samuli Schielke
1 Curriculum Vitae / 2 Research projects / 3 Films / 4 Publications / 5 Resources / 6 Contact
Born in Helsinki, Finland on August 16, 1972. ///// M.A. in Islamic studies, philosophy and political science, University of Bonn, Germany 2000. ///// 2001 - 2005, PhD student at the International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World (ISIM) in Leiden, Netherlands. ///// PhD in social sciences, University of Amsterdam, 2006. ///// 2006 - 2007, postdoc researcher at the Department of Anthropology and African Studies and the collaborative research centre (SFB 295) "Cultural and Linguistic Contacts", sub-project "Saintly Places and Saint Veneration in Egypt and Ethiopia" at the University of Mainz, Germany. ///// 2008, post-doctoral researcher at the University of Joensuu (Finland) and ISIM in the project ""What makes a good Muslims: Contested notions of religious subjectivity in the age of Global Islam"" funded by the Academy of Finland ///// from 1 January 2009, research fellow at the Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO), Berlin ///// from 1 June 2010, leading the junior research group "In search for Europe: Considering the Possible in Africa and the Middle East" at the ZMO, funded by the German Ministry of Research and Education. ///// Also teaching photography and anthropology in the M.A. programme in Visual and Media Anthropology at the Free University of Berlin ///// Check the photography section of this site.
Imaginary cosmopolitans? Engaging the world in between Egypt and Europe
One of the most ambiguous outcomes of globalisation has been the emergence of a large class of people, most of them in third world countries, who consume images and subscribe to ideologies of global currency, and locate themselves in complex multiple identities of religion, consumerism, nationalism, football and music fan culture, etc., without having access to the mobility nor the means of class distinction that have often been associated with the notion of cosmopolitanism. Their experience of engaging the world in face of very limited possibilities of physical movement contains many of the fluidities and ambiguities of a cosmopolitan experience but takes place primarily on an imaginary or virtual level, for example in dreams and plans of migration, in football fan culture, and in the consumption music, film, and fashion. The fieldwork of this project has its starting point in northern Egypt, but since many of the subjects of the research not only aim to but eventually do manage to migrate to different locations, the project also follows their changing experiences and expectations when virtual engagement with the world is amended by the actual experience of migration. This project, which draws upon the cooperation with Daniela Swarowsky in the documentary film project Messages from Paradise, is based at and funded by ZMO in Berlin and started in 2009.
Contradictions and margins of the Islamic revival in Egypt
So much has been written in the recent years on Muslims who consciously and consequently aim to be pious, moral, and disciplined, that the vast majority of Muslims who - like most of mankind - are sometimes but not always pious, at times immoral, and often undisciplined, have remained in the shadow of an image of Islam as a perfectionist project of self-discipline. No doubt, many Muslims around the world expect Islam to be the solution to all kinds of problems. But what do when Islam is not the solution? To understand the complex logic of religious and moral experience, this project takes this inherent imperfection and ambiguity of people’s lives as the starting point, and attempts to account for the different views and experiences they articulate, the models of action and subjectivity they have access to, and the reshaping and reimagination of different traditions and aspirations in daily life. Funded by the Academy of Finland, this project was based at ISIM and the University of Joensuu in 2008 and continues since 2009 at the ZMO.
Messages from Paradise #1, Egypt:Austria, About the Permanent Longing for Elsewhere. With Daniela Swarowsky. 44 min. Austria and the Netherlands, 2010.
The Other Side. With Mukhtar Saad Shehata. 9 min. Egypt and the Netherlands, 2010.
"You'll be late for the revolution!" An anthropologist's diary of the Egyptian Revolution 2011 Blog, in the public domain!
"Second Thoughts about the Anthropology of Islam,
or how to make Sense of Grand Schemes in Everyday Life. "
ZMO working papers, Vol. 2 (2010).
Online document
"Ambivalent Commitments: Troubles of Morality, Religiosity and Aspiration among Young Egyptians,"
Journal of Religion in Africa Vol. 39 (2009): 2, pp. 158-185.
Online document
"Being good in Ramadan: Ambivalence, fragmentation and the moral self in the lives of young Egyptians,"
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute Vol. 15 (2009):
Special issue 1 (Islam, Politics, Anthropology), pp. S24-S40.
Link to journal homepage (subscription required)
.
"Policing Ambiguity: Muslim saints-day festivals and
the moral geography of public space in Egypt,"
American Ethnologist Vol. 35 (2008): 4, pp. 539–552.
Link to journal homepage (subscription required)
.
"Boredom and Despair in Rural Egypt"
Contemporary Islam Vol. 28
(2008): 2, pp. 251-270.
Online document
Georg Stauth and Samuli Schielke (eds.): Dimensions of Locality:
Muslim Saints and Their Places (Yearbook of the Sociology of Islam; 8),
Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2008.
Buy the book.
Read the introduction(PDF document).
"Mystic States, Motherly Virtues, Female Participation and Leadership in an Egyptian Sufi Milieu"
Journal for Islamic Studies (Capetown) Vol. 28
(2008), pp. 94-126.
Online document
"Hegemonic encounters: Criticism of saints-day festivals
and the formation of modern Islam in late 19th and early
20th-century Egypt" Die Welt des Islams Vol. 47
(2007), number 3-4, pp. 319-355.
Online document
Snacks and Saints: Mawlid Festivals and the Politics of Festivity,
Piety and Modernity in Contemporary Egypt. PhD thesis, University of Amsterdam,
Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, 2006. Unpublished -
to obtain a copy, please send me an e-mail.
Review article of Charles Lindholm: The Middle East: Tradition and Change,
2nd ed., Oxford: Blackwell, 2002,
in The Muslim World Book Review, Vol. 26 (2006), number 3, pp. 70-72.
Online document
"Sakralisierung des Alltags und Banalisierung des Heiligen: Religion und Konsum in Ägypten"
Working Papers of the Department of Anthropology and African Studies of the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz Vol. 69.
Online document
"On Snacks and Saints: When Discourses of Order and Rationality Enter the Egyptian Mawlid"
Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions vol. 135 (2006), pp. 117-140.
(This is a revised version of the article first published in the edited volume
Archeology of Sainthood.)
Online document
"Maulid-Feste: Kontinuität und soziale Funktion im modernen Ägypten"
Der Islam Vol. 83, Number 1 (June 2006), pp. 187-189.
(Please note that this article was written in 2001 and does not represent my point of view at the time of publication)
Link journal homepage (subscription required)
"Mawlids & Modernists: Dangers of Fun" ISIM Review 17 (Spring 2006), pp. 6-7.
Online document
Review article of Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen, Histoire d'un pélerinage légendaire en Islam:
Le mouled de Tantâ du XIIIe siècle a nos jours, Paris: Aubier, 2004, Die Welt des Islams
Vol. 46, Number 1, 2006, pp. 105-107.
Online document
Review articles of Mark Sedgwick, Saints and Sons: The making and Remaking of the
Rashidi Ahmadi Order, 1799-2000, Leiden: Brill, 2000;
and of Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strathern: Contesting Rituals:
Islam and Practices of Identity-Making, Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2005,
both in Muslim World Book Review, Vol. 26, Issue 2 (Winter 2006).
"Damit es ein bisschen Ordnung gibt: Der Einzug von Ordnung und Rationalität in
ägyptischen Mawlid-Festen - Min ajl ba'd al-nizam: intiqal al-nizam wa al-‘aqlaniyya ila
ihtifalat al-mawalid al-misriya" (German and Arabic abstracts of the below-mentioned
"Snacks and Saints" article) in West-östlicher Seiltanz: Deutsch-Arabischer Kulturtausch
im Schnittpunkt Kairo, Alexander Haridi (ed.), Bonn: Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, Trio, 2005.
Link to German text /
Link to Arabic text "On Snacks and Saints:
When Discourses of Order and Rationality Enter the Egyptian Mawlid" in: Georg Stauth (ed.),
On Archaeology of Sainthood and Local Spirituality in Islam.
Past and Present Crossroads of Events and Ideas
(Yearbook of the Sociology of Islam, Vol. 5), Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2004,
pp. 173-194. Not available online.
Buy the book
"Habitus of the Authentic, Order of the Rational:
Contesting Saints Festivals in Contemporary Egypt"
Critique. Critical Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 12 (Fall 2003),
Nr. 2, pp. 155-172.
Link to journal homepage (subscription required)
" Review article of Marco Schöller:
"Methode und Wahrheit in der Islamwissenschaft" (in German), DAVO-Nachrichten
15 (Juni 2002), pp. 114-115.
Online document "Pious
Fun at Saints Festivals in Modern Egypt", ISIM Newsletter
7 (2001), p. 23.
Online document "Johdatus
yleiseen sikailuun. Sikailuteoreettinen perspektiivi filosofiaan
sekä politiikkaan narratiivisen struktuurin kreatiivisen destruktion
kontekstissa" (A travesty of the history of philosophy and political
theory. Deconstructs just about everything. In Finnish. Sorry.) In cooperation
with Harri Juntunen. Originally published 1997 and 1998 in various Finnish
student magazines. Online
document Practical introductions for students of Arabic into scientific
transcription of Arabic, Arabic and Orientalist standard literature, dictionnaries, quoting, and writing papers. Originally written for a tutorial course for first-year students of Arabic and Islamic studies in Bonn, 2000. All in German. In cooperation with Jasmin Khosravie, Philipp Reichmuth and Tibor Haunit. The same page contains also useful links on transcription software for Windows and Macintosh applications. Here's the link. OI-Beyrut,
Courier Beyrut and Times Beyrut Roman: True type fonts for the scientific
transcription of Arabic, Persian and Ottoman Turkish in Windows
applications. OI-Beyrut has a very beautiful typeface. Click here to download
the fonts, and here for an introduction how to use them (PDF file, 74 KB) (in
German, but it will make sense even if you know no German). Gedenke:
Gregorian, Islamic, Coptic and Jewish calendar calculator. Freeware.
German user interface. Link to download
page. Ulli Meybohms HTML editor.
Free, text-based and good. German user interface.
Link to download page.