Mixed Blessings: Islam, Gender, and Revival in a Nigerian Town

FAIN: FA-50293-04

Adeline Marie Masquelier
Administrators of the Tulane Educational Fund, The (New Orleans, LA 70118-5698)

I propose to write a book examining how current Islamic revivals in Dogondoutchi, a Mawri town of rural Niger, have created new understandings of Islam and of people's place in it. My book, Mixed Blessings: Islam, Gender, and Revival in a Nigerian Town, will explore 1) how at a time of growing awareness about alternative interpretations of Qur'anic scriptures, Islam functions as the privileged vehicle for the invention and sustenance of new traditions and the definitions of moral communities; 2) how Mawri women have become ever more central to the moral imagination in recently Islamized Dogondoutchi; 3) how women themselves actively participate in ongoing debates about Muslim womanhood, at times resisting emerging re-definitions of women's rights and roles allegedly based on closer readings of the Qur'an. Based on 24 months of ethnographic and archival research, the book will document how emerging Islamic ideologies of gender, power, and domesticity have enabled female residents to securely anchor their religious identity as guardians of moral and spiritual values while simultaneously limiting women's powers of autonomy and self-expression.

Associated Products