Pietaskscapes of halal living: subjectivity, striving, and space-making in Muslim Russia

Abstract

Drawing on ethnographic research in Tatarstan (Russia) and through an engagement with Foucauldian, phenomenological, and ecological social theories, this paper advances the concept of piety taskscape, or "pietaskscape", to indicate the granular, organically emerging meshwork of settings and locations where Muslim pietists carry out self-fashioning. This concept aspires to grasp the nexus of ethical action, space-making, and experience, in concrete human environments such as the post-Soviet city. Such a concept may prove a valuable contribution to scholarly conversations about religion and space by placing subjectivity, performativity, teleology, and materiality in resonance with each other. It will be argued that, compared to alternative approaches, this framework affords greater analytical insight into the spatiality of Muslim piety beyond the scholarly box of Islamic "sites".

Emancipating ethics: an autonomist reading of Islamic forms of life in Russia

“…But in the study of religious life after real socialism, the term 'revival' risks proving misleading as it invites a framing of contemporary religious-ethical developments in terms of a 're-emergence' of 'traditional' faiths. While long-term continuities may of course be identified, many aspects of religious life in post-Soviet Tatarstan differ from what historical sources suggest about pre-revolutionary and Soviet times (Benussi 2021a). In particular, post-Soviet pious milieus flourish without relying on the civilizational institutes of pre-revolutionary Islamicate Eurasia -the range of pedagogical, juridical, administrative, and pastoral apparatuses that regulated the Muslim domain before Soviet-led modernization -and attract followers from across customary ethnoconfessional boundaries.…”

“…At the time of my visit (2014-15), the halal milieu had a very tense relationship with the Russian state, which was bent on policing and surveilling domestic grassroots Islam. State apparatuses, including security agencies, official Islamic organizations, and media actors, share a dim view of this pious milieu, which, despite its quietism, is perceived as a jarring, unruly element in society (Benussi 2020). Large portions of the secular public, too, regard observant Muslims with apprehension.…”

“…On the other hand, Muslim economic actors remain subjected to the constraints of the dominant form of organization, and cannot entirely elude the norms and power relations undergirding their postsocialist market environment. To make a profit, pious entrepreneurs must adhere to market logic, while avoiding taxation, protection, and/or wheel-greasing is often impossible (Benussi 2021a). That said, the transformative effect of Islamic ethics on economic practice at the community level cannot be underestimated (Kaliszewska 2020).…”

“…This is particularly relevant to my case study. Consider the often-antipathetic relationship between pietists and the official Islamic bureaucracy: it would be distortive to characterize the sovereign-themitical order within and against which the halal milieu moves as simply secular, humanist, and so on, for both Russian and Tatarstani state apparatuses, as well as the Tatar moral mainstream, are infused with religion (Benussi 2020;Karpov 2010).…”

“…The interplay of attenuated forms of life, normalized difference, may even be encouraged by mature governmental regimes ('Empire tolerates all transgressions, provided they remain soft' , Tiqqun 2010: 141). The proliferation of official Islamic bureaucracies and state-approved Islamic discourses in post-Soviet Russia (Benussi 2020) is an example of biopolitical apparatuses aimed at harnessing and attenuating the ethical intensity of piety movements in a bid to recruit Muslims into a 'managed civil society' framework under which pietists are given economic rights and business opportunities but not full civil rights.…”