Ethical Self-Cultivation Amongst Black Muslim Youth (WGF - Dissertation Fieldwork Grant)

Summary

This resource is an application for the Dissertation Fieldwork Grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation.

This dissertation explores the ethical self-cultivation of black Muslim youth in Philadelphia. Anthropologist Saba Mahmood describes ethical self-cultivation as a "specific sets of procedures, techniques, and exercises through which highly specific ethical-moral subjects come to be formed" (Mahmood, 2005, p.120). I consider this process as well as how it becomes racialized and gendered in the everyday lives of black Muslim youth. I suggest that this process of cultivating an Islamic self is mediated by the moral assemblage the youth encounter and must navigate. Zigon defines a moral assemblage as "a moral system [that] is not a totality that exists by itself but is rather constructed through the unique combinations of local moral and ethical beliefs" (Zigon, 2010, p.6). I explore how black Muslim youth negotiate divergent influences within this moral assemblage. More specifically, I ask: How does the process of ethical self-cultivation, achieved through specific techniques and practices within this moral assemblage, produce the kinds of ethical-moral subjects that black Muslim youth aspire to become as they strive towards their future imagined selves within secular and sacred educational spaces? How do processes of racialization and gender influence how these youth come to understand and produce themselves as ethical, educated subjects?

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• WGF - Support for Research Projects   •
• Wenner-Gren Foundation

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Contact(s): Wenner-Gren Foundation

Notes

Rights & Attribution: This resource is an application from the Wenner-Gren Foundation and has been approved by the grantee solely for pedagogical purposes. Please do not cite, circulate, or duplicate any part of these documents without the express written consent of the author.

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