No One Home: The Global Circuits of Senegalese Muslims and the Politics of Social Production

FAIN: FT-53310-05

Beth Anne Buggenhagen
Trustees of Indiana University (Rochester, NY 14627-0001)

The proposed ethnographic research project will analyze the global circuits of Senegalese Muslims in relation to processes of domestic social production at home, such as gendered and generational struggles and bonds, life cycles and ritual and religious practices and the impact of emergent neoliberal reforms. I am requesting research and travel expenses for field based research in Brooklyn and Harlem, New York, necessary to substantially revise the introduction and two chapters of the book length monograph in relation to the events of September 11, 2001 and the impact on Senegalese Muslim migrants.

Associated Products

Muslim Families in Global Senegal (Book)
Title: Muslim Families in Global Senegal
Author: Beth Buggenhagen
Abstract: Senegalese Murid migrants have circulated cargo and currency through official and unofficial networks in Africa and the world. Muslim Families in Global Senegal focuses on trade and the transmission of enduring social value though cloth, videos of life-cycle rituals, and religious offerings. Highlighting women's participation in these networks and the financial strategies they rely on, Beth Buggenhagen reveals the deep connections between economic profits and ritual and social authority. Buggenhagen discovers that these strategies are not responses to a dispersed community in crisis, but rather produce new roles, wealth, and worth for Senegalese women in all parts of the globe.
Year: 2012
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/939927191
Primary URL Description: worldcat
Access Model: paperback and ebook
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 978-0-253-223
Copy sent to NEH?: No

Hard Work, Hard Times: Global Volatility and African Subjectivities (Book)
Title: Hard Work, Hard Times: Global Volatility and African Subjectivities
Author: Anne Maria Makhulu, Beth Buggenhagen, Stephen Jackson
Abstract: he description of Africa as a continent in perpetual crisis, ubiquitous in the popular media and in policy and development circles, is at once obvious and obfuscating. This collection by leading ethnographers moves beyond the rhetoric of African crisis to theorize people's everyday practices under volatile conditions not of their own making. From Ghanaian hiplife music to the U.S. "diversity lottery" in Togo, from politicos in Côte d'Ivoire to squatters in South Africa, the essays in Hard Work, Hard Times uncover the imaginative ways in which African subjects make and remake themselves and their worlds, and thus make do, get by, get over, and sometimes thrive.
Year: 2010
Primary URL: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/24b027x0
Primary URL Description: University of California Press escholarship open access link
Access Model: paperback and open access ebook
Publisher: University of California Press
Type: Edited Volume
ISBN: 9780520098749
Copy sent to NEH?: No

Are births just "women's business"? : gift exchange, value, and global volatility in Muslim Senegal (Article)
Title: Are births just "women's business"? : gift exchange, value, and global volatility in Muslim Senegal
Author: Beth Buggenhagen
Abstract: Through global circuits of wage labor and capital, the Murid way has become an economic force in the Senegalese postcolony amid conditions of protracted global volatility. In this article, I analyze women's actions within these global circuits. Women create value by giving gifts during the celebration of births and marriages, gifts that are the product of and the motivating force behind Murid global trade. Female ritual activities, on which male honor rests, draw women into conflict with the Murid clergy, which views women's actions as customary and not part of its modern, austere, and global vision of Islam in Senegal.
Year: 2011
Access Model: subscription only
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: American Ethnologist
Publisher: Wiley

Fashioning piety : women's dress, money, and faith among Senegalese Muslims in New York City. (Article)
Title: Fashioning piety : women's dress, money, and faith among Senegalese Muslims in New York City.
Author: Beth Buggenhagen
Abstract: Many Senegalese women migrate to make a living and build themselves up. The distance enables them to resist daily demands on their income and makes it possible for them to save and to invest in long term projects such as home building, their children's education, and family and religious celebrations. Yet, social criticism often blames women for the problems of marriage: such as the high divorce rate, infidelity, and financial squabbling between spouses. In this paper, I focus on the religious aspects of women's migration; I argue that Murid women deflect criticism of their wealth earned abroad by investing in the signs and symbols of a Muslim Sufi congregation. By visiting (ziyara), dressing up (sañse), and donating generously to shaykhs (addiya), Murid women display their wealth, convey the strength of their social networks, and construct themselves as candidates for salvation. Murid women engage in the global economy and preserve their distinctively Murid vision of the world and their place in it. Is it possible to understand their global engagement as a form of cosmopolitanism, as a practice and a form of consciousness, which is rooted in history and which is universal? The restructuring of the Senegalese state under neoliberal reform and its aftermath in the 1990s and into 2000 has made Muslim global networks important to livelihoods at home and yet, Muslim networks have come under scrutiny globally as the U.S. led Global War on Terror lingers on.
Year: 2012
Access Model: subscription only
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: City and Society
Publisher: Wiley

Islam and the Media of Devotion in and out of Senegal (Article)
Title: Islam and the Media of Devotion in and out of Senegal
Author: Beth Buggenhagen
Abstract: Few devotees of the Muridiyya, a Sufi congregation that emerged in colonial Senegal at the turn of the 20th century, have the opportunity to glimpse or touch their spiritual masters. Exalted Murid figures rarely leave their compounds in rural Tuba, and access to them is restricted to high-ranking initiates such as Muslim scholars, government officials, and business leaders. Ordinary disciples are more likely to view religious figures in the variety of media circulating in and out of Senegal. The desire for and appreciation of mediation to facilitate proper practice and proximity to the divine distinguish Murid adepts from their Sunni counterparts. The electronic mediation of devotional practices produces feelings of nearness to spiritual leaders for disciples in Senegal and abroad. Through visual practices related to electronic media, devotees receive religious merit and grace that lead to spiritual and material enrichment and create their spiritual community.
Year: 2010
Access Model: subscription only
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Visual Anthropology Review
Publisher: Wiley

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