Ambivalent Commitments: Troubles of Morality, Religiosity and Aspiration among Young Egyptians

Abstract

In contrast to a line of studies that inquire how Muslims try to solve the problem of living piously in a society dominated by materialist tendencies and secular rationality, in this article I turn the question around and problematize the will to live piously and the focus on selfdiscipline. In everyday lives of young men from the Nile Delta region, the Islamic revivalist project of creating comprehensive moral and civic virtues uneasily coexists with other less total aims and ideals, notably community and family bonds, romantic love, success and selfrealization. I attempt to take these contradictions seriously and dwell on the ways people live them and their attempts to make sense of their lives. In particular, I look at the ways people employ the normative registers of religion, love and aspiration in their lives, the promises each of these ideals entail and the options that are available should any of these promises fail.

Contemporary Youth Research in Arab Mediterranean Countries: Mixing Qualitative and Quantitative Research

“…In these works, several authors, in accordance with the ethnographic context, remark that youths in this area spend their leisure time talking with friends in the cafes, sharing computers and reinforcing their primary ties in backstreets or in the neighbourhood (Schielke, 2009;Sánchez García, 2009). Reciprocity, class solidarity and communitarianism are the fundamental mechanisms of youth groups based on residence.…”

“…In recent years, coming from different disciplines within the social sciences, several scholars maintain a critical standpoint toward the construction of youth as a category in scholarly and political discourses and projects. They demand attention on youth material culture, negotiation of youth space, gender relations, economic and political participation, and youth's social construction of reality (Assaad and Roudi-Fahimi, 2007;Meneley 2007, Schielke 2009, Konig, 2009, Peterson 2010, Sukarieh & Tannok 2008SalehiIsfahani, and Dhillon, 2008;Haenni, 2010;Al-Momani, 2011;Ibrahim and Hunt-Hendrix 2011;Roudi, 2011;Deeb & Harb 2012;Swedenberg, 2012, Singerman, 2013. In this sense, The Arab Spring and interest in the young population provide a unique opportunity to apply discoveries and perspectives on youth in Arab Mediterranean societies.…”

“…In Arab societies, tensions between several distinct cultural, modern and indigenous codes are involved in the construction and definition of the private and public spheres. The given description of the social space reveals a multiplicity of references and social ambiguity in which the social universe of the research takes place (Schielke, 2009). …”

Inner and Outer Ways: Sufism and Subjectivity in Egypt and beyond

“…At the same time, as a growing number of scholars have recently argued, this effort to reveal the specific rationale of Islamist commitment and praxis may come at the expense of a description of the complexity and singularity of people's subjectivities and life-worlds (Gregg 2007;Pandolfo 2007;Zigon 2007;Schielke 2009aSchielke , 2009bSchielke , 2010Osella & Soares 2009;Mittermaier 2010;ethnos, vol. 78:4, 2013 (pp.…”

“…In order to counter the risk of essentializing the 'culture of virtue' as a new cultural paradigm for the analysis of Muslim majority societies, some authors have lately argued that self-fashioning and religious discipline are just one part of individuals' lives and subjectivities. They have discussed the much too coherent image of individuals' commitments to projects of self-reform, showing how people are shaped by different discursive regimes of identity and thus continuously enact multiple selves (Ewing 1997) and make use of competing discursive registers (Schielke 2009a(Schielke , 2009b. Yet other studies have kept their attention directed towards religious vocabularies and theological discourses focusing, nonetheless, on their intimate relation with people's individual expectations and the existential stakes brought about by the predicaments of political discourses, social constraints, and everyday life (Marsden 2005;Pandolfo 2007;Mittermaier 2010;Hafez 2011;Schielke & Debevec 2012).…”