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

Abstract

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Saint Petersburg between 2015 and 2016, this article puts work on postsocialist precarity in conversation with scholarship on piety and interspecies care in Muslim contexts to explore how Aliya, a low‐income Slavic convert to Islam, responded to social and economic hardships by tending to stray dogs. In doing so, she did not turn away, turn inwards, or turn political in the conventional sense of the word. Instead, she engaged in what I term ‘embracing precarity’, which I define as a response to uncertainty, grounded in Islamic spirituality, ethics, and care. By embracing canine tactility – often in departure from cultural norms concerning stray dogs in Islam and at the risk of deepening her own vulnerability – Aliya embarked on a path towards God with nonhuman others. The emergent relatedness between her and the dogs illustrates how striving for an ethical Muslim life amid uncertainty may open one up to experimentation, improvisation, and becoming with precarious others in a pursuit of a relationship with God and a favourable afterlife.

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

“…Many of them did not have secure housing and had to rent apartments while perpetually searching for more affordable options. Their husbands also lacked secure employment and were forced to look for supplemental income or alternative employment (on other dimensions of precarity, see Rabinovich, 2023).…”