Aesthetics of Muslim public and community formations in Cape Town: observations of an anthropologist

Alhourani, Ala Rabiha

doi:10.1080/23323256.2015.1052825

Cited by 5 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…17. This is evident not only in Bellville CBD (Alhourani 2015) but also in the suburb of Mayfair in Johannesburg (see Jinnah 2010).…”

mentioning

confidence: 89%

“…12 In addition to these two factors, Somalis' shared feelings of fear amplified their sense of solidarity and form a collective identity that partially transcends their difference. (Alhourani 2015). 13 Somali individuals claim multiple overlapping and intersecting belongings, which include their respective diverse cultural backgrounds and clan affiliations, an imagined Somali community in Cape Town, an imagined Muslim community in Cape Town, the transnational Somali community and the transnational Muslim community (Alhourani 2015).…”

Section: Somalis In Bellville Cbdmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…(Alhourani 2015). 13 Somali individuals claim multiple overlapping and intersecting belongings, which include their respective diverse cultural backgrounds and clan affiliations, an imagined Somali community in Cape Town, an imagined Muslim community in Cape Town, the transnational Somali community and the transnational Muslim community (Alhourani 2015). 14 These senses of belonging can be understood as a tactical form of making and unmaking of difference performed by Somalis in their various positions within the multicultural context of post-apartheid Cape Town.…”

Section: Somalis In Bellville Cbdmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Performative ethnography: difference and conviviality of everyday multiculturalism in Bellville (Cape Town)

Alhourani

2017

Journal of African Cultural Studies

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The paper explores the benefits of performative ethnography as a methodological intervention. The intervention discussed in this paper utilizes the persuasive power of aesthetics and performance to attain participation amongst a broad spectrum of research interlocutors and to challenge my own power and positionality in the fieldwork, whilst rendering me invisible as a participant observer. The performative ethnography discussed in this paper took place in the central business district (CBD) of Bellville, in the Cape Town area in South Africa, and consists of two performances, curated by the author, that took place at the same time. One is a painting performance through which Somali participants were invited to express their emotional experiences of living in Cape Town, and their memories, nostalgia and attachment to their land of origin. The painting performance revealed Somali diversity, multiple belongings and a politics of making cultural difference. The second performance was staged to overlap, in ways unanticipated by the participants, and consisted of a South African minstrel troupe walking through Bellville CBD, attaining a moment of conviviality through the unmaking of cultural difference. Beneath this methodological intervention is an exploration of the politics of difference and the conviviality of Bellville CBD's everyday multiculturalism.

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“…17. This is evident not only in Bellville CBD (Alhourani 2015) but also in the suburb of Mayfair in Johannesburg (see Jinnah 2010).…”

mentioning

confidence: 89%

Section: Somalis In Bellville Cbdmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Somalis In Bellville Cbdmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Performative ethnography: difference and conviviality of everyday multiculturalism in Bellville (Cape Town)

Alhourani

2017

Journal of African Cultural Studies

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“…African migrants arriving in Durban, where most Indian Sunnis belong to the Hanafi school of Islamic jurisprudence, typically adhere to the Maliki and Shafi'i schools. Amidst this plurality, diverse Muslim residents experience a sense of belonging to a single ‘Muslim public’, sharing certain aesthetic sensibilities and gestural routines that mediate and project a form of Muslim mutuality (Alhourani 2015: 115). Importantly, however, this sense of mutuality is still punctuated by dynamics of ethnic and racial distinction embedded in South Africa's social landscape (Sadouni 2019: 119, 156).…”

Section: Ambivalent Sites Of Mutualitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In doing so, he not only disrupts the sense of ‘ownership’ over Islam that many in Durban attribute to the Indian population, but also grounds his own claim to belonging to the city (as a constitutive part of the African continent). Indeed, this reflects a wider trend in South Africa in recent decades as African migrants, together with black South Africans, have increasingly asserted claims to an authentic Muslim identity, often cultivating new sites of Islamic expression and authority (Alhourani 2015; Kaarsholm 2011; Sadouni 2019). Ally's experience of being marginalized by Indian Muslims speaks to these frictions within the Muslim community, together with broader dynamics of racial and ethnic exclusion.…”

Section: Ambivalent Sites Of Mutualitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Disarming the xenophobic everyday: Muslim migrants and the horizons of urban mutuality in Durban

Kirby¹,

Sibanda²,

Charway³

2021

Africa

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This article explores the everyday lives that African migrants in Durban, South Africa share with other residents of the city. In conversation with Obvious Katsaura's work on ‘ethno-mutualism’, we use the example of ordinary greeting practices to show how Durban's urban everyday has been hijacked by xenophobic sensibilities. By demonstrating how the act of excluding migrants from these practices threatens to render the quotidian city uninhabitable for them, we shed light on the importance of mundane forms of social interaction for building a sense of identity and belonging. We then consider several ways in which African migrants develop and participate in Muslim forms of sociality that assist them in ‘disarming’ the urban everyday: from providing a platform for building solidarity with fellow migrants to mediating a ‘sense of welcome’ from the established Indian South African community. Elaborating on this, we delineate how forms of reciprocity emerge through the interactions between migrant and Indian Muslims that reproduce the ambient life of the city as a shared habitat, opening up new possibilities for entanglement. As such, our analysis contributes to emerging conversations about urban mutuality and migrant religious practices in the everyday lives of African cities.

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“How will God hear us?”: Sonic and linguistic difference among Kinshasa’s Églises des Noirs

Luyckfasseel

2023

Africa

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This article studies how anti-Christian, ‘traditionally African’ organizations, locally known as Églises des Noirs, navigate religious competition in the Congolese capital through sonic and linguistic strategies. It focuses on the understudied Mpadist community, a ‘dissident’ branch of the better known Kimbanguist church. Mpadists mobilize diverging appreciations and meanings of sound and language to set themselves apart from the dominant Lingalaphone Pentecostal loudness of the city. In doing so, they pursue a delicate balance between Kongo traditionalism, the source of their spiritual legitimacy, rooted in colonial prophetic movements, and tactics of ‘modern’ community making in order to remain competitive within Kinshasa’s prolific religious setting. The article argues that ideologies of sound and language should be analysed within the same nexus, for they operate and are operationalized in similar ways. It therefore proposes to expand the sociolinguistic notion of indexicality to incorporate elements of the volume and modalities of sound making. The article also shows that sonic and linguistic ideologies are bound by context. In Kinshasa’s ‘low-fi’ soundscape, the indexical values of the languages Kikongo and Lingala, and of unamplified and amplified sound production, share similar features, yet they are evaluated differently in rural ‘hi-fi’ sonic environments.

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Aesthetics of Muslim public and community formations in Cape Town: observations of an anthropologist

Cited by 5 publications

References 23 publications

Performative ethnography: difference and conviviality of everyday multiculturalism in Bellville (Cape Town)

Performative ethnography: difference and conviviality of everyday multiculturalism in Bellville (Cape Town)

Disarming the xenophobic everyday: Muslim migrants and the horizons of urban mutuality in Durban

“How will God hear us?”: Sonic and linguistic difference among Kinshasa’s Églises des Noirs

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