“An abundance of meaning”: Ramadan as an enchantment of society and economy in Syria

Sisterly intimacies: Islam, gift‐giving, and women's relations of care in Russia

“…My analysis of gift-giving among lowincome Muslim women in Russia centers the affective power of giving to move people, eliciting in them a sense of gratitude, mercy, and intimacy. It also enfolds givers and receivers into the circuits of divinely granted blessings and cultivates an ethical mode of caring for other Muslims, partaking in their lives, and becoming perceptive of and attentive to their needs (Anderson, 2011(Anderson, , 2018Henig, 2019Henig, , 2020Schaeublin, 2019). In other words, giving can serve as a conduit for intimacy, affection, and attachment.…”

“…For example, in his study of rural Bosnia, David Henig (2020) analyzes the affective power of favors and giving to frame the relationships of care and generosity between the living, the dead, and the divine. Likewise, Paul Anderson (2018) demonstrates how the circulation of gifts in urban Syria creates a sense of enchantment and affective abundance among wealthy merchants. For Amira Mittermaier (2014, 59), a gift of food at a Sufi khidma in Cairo's City of the Dead implies "trusting in God and being in a continuous relationship with Others."…”

Embracing precarity across species: Muslim ethics and care for stray dogs in Russia

“…For Muslims, caring for others is entwined with the cultivation of an ethical self as part of a community whose members are engaged in material and verbal exchanges oriented towards Allah (Anderson 2011). For instance, mundane acts of gifting a bed to newlyweds, offering vegetables free of charge to less fortunate villagers, or feeding passers‐by in the name of Allah are infused with ‘abundant meanings’ (Anderson 2018; see also Hart 2013; Henig 2020; Mitteremaier 2014). The transcendental significance of these material acts of care lies in transmitting Allah's blessings and moral sentiments associated with them.…”

“…Second, this article contributes to recent scholarship on Islamic piety and ethics that, along with religious practices such as praying and fasting, coheres around caring for others (Hart 2013;Henig 2020). Following Marcel Mauss's work on 'economic theologies' , this body of literature examines how care materializes through giving and produces rewards for givers in this life and the next (Anderson 2018;Mittermaier 2014). In other words, for observant Muslims, tending to those in need becomes a path to God and a favourable afterlife.…”

Economy of Tribulation: Translating Humanitarianism for an Islamic Counterpublic

“…27 Moreover, although an emphasis on divine rewards (thawāb) in scholarship on "pious neoliberalism" plausibly reflects subjects who seek to optimize otherworldly profits, their faith inflected by a market orientation, virtuous actions are necessarily intersubjective-meaning that analysis must also attend how the circulation and distribution of thawāb within this moral economy establishes "accountable flow[s] of moral value" with vectors and logics of their own. 28 In further resonant terms, Amira Mittermaier analytically contrasts two economic theologies at play in contemporary charitable practices in Egypt: a calculative economy of thawāb, by which Muslims collect good deeds like one amasses wealth, maximizing one's rewards through attending to the contexts of virtuous action which can multiply or substitute their merits; and an excessive economy of baraka, by which divine abundance effuses past and interrupts whatever calculations one has made. "The discourse of thawāb demands of believers to keep count; that of baraka reminds them that counting is pointless."…”