The French government's 2004 decision to ban Islamic headscarves and other religious signs from public schools puzzled many observers, both because it seemed to infringe needlessly on religious freedom, and because it was hailed by many in France as an answer to a surprisingly wide range of social ills, from violence against females in poor suburbs to anti-Semitism. Why the French Don't Like Headscarves explains why headscarves on schoolgirls caused such a furor, and why the furor yielded this law. Making sense of the dramatic debate from his perspective as an American anthropologist in France at the time, John Bowen writes about everyday life and public events while also presenting interviews with officials and intellectuals, and analyzing French television programs and other media. Bowen argues that the focus on headscarves came from a century-old sensitivity to the public presence of religion in schools, feared links between public expressions of Islamic identity and radical Islam, and a media-driven frenzy that built support for a headscarf ban during 2003-2004. Although the defense of laïcité (secularity) was cited as the law's major justification, politicians, intellectuals, and the media linked the scarves to more concrete social anxieties--about "communalism," political Islam, and violence toward women. Written in engaging, jargon-free prose, Why the French Don't Like Headscarves is the first comprehensive and objective analysis of this subject, in any language, and it speaks to tensions between assimilation and diversity that extend well beyond France's borders.
In this rich account of a Muslim society in highland Sumatra, Indonesia, John Bowen describes how men and women debate among themselves ideas of what Islam is and should be--as it pertains to all areas of their lives, from work to worship. Whereas many previous anthropological studies have concentrated on the purely local aspects of culture, this book captures and analyzes the tension between the local and universal in everyday life. Current religious differences among the Gayo stem from debates between traditionalist and modernist scholars that began in the 1930s, and reveal themselves in the ways Gayo discuss and perform worship, sacrifice, healing, and rites of birth and death, all within an Islamic framework. Bowen considers the power these debates accord to language, especially in arguments over spells, rites of farming, hunting, and healing. Moreover, he traces in these debates a general conception of transacting with spirits that has shaped Gayo practices of sacrifice, worship, and aiding the dead. Bowen concludes by examining the development of competing religious ideas in the highlands, the alternative ritual forms and ideas they have pro-mulgated, and the implications of this phenomenon for the emergence of an Islamic public sphere. -- "History of Religions
In this powerful but accessible new study John Bowen draws on a full range of work in social anthropology to present Islam in ways that emphasise its constitutive practices, from praying and learning to judging and political organising. Starting at the heart of Islam revelation and learning in Arabic lands Bowen shows how Muslims have adapted Islamic texts and traditions to ideas and conditions in the societies in which they live. Returning to key case studies in Indonesia, Africa, Pakistan and Western Europe to explore each major domain of Islamic religious and social life, Bowen also considers the theoretical advances in social anthropology that have come out of the study of Islam. A New Anthropology of Islam is essential reading for all those interested in the study of Islam and for those following new developments in the discipline of anthropology.
The third edition of this widely popular book offers a unique perspective on how people engage in everyday religious practices, such as prayer, sacrifice, pilgrimage, and dress, as well as investigates major issues of gender, nation-states, and laws with respect to religion. No other book examines the full spectrum of religions from small-scale societies to full-blown "world religious movements." The in-depth treatment of Islam and Christianity is of particular interest to students, and is easily expanded to include field projects directly related to material covered in the text. As one reviewer writes, "In our post 9/11 era, it is great to have a book whose author has done fieldwork in Indonesia and is so knowledgeable about Islam. " The third edition includes new material on the anthropology of war, expanded coverage of American religions and an exploration of how non-practitioners of organized religion turn to alternative beliefs, such as health food, tarot cards and psychics.
In John Bowen's The Birdcage Peter Ash and Norah Palmer have been living together for nine years. Having never seen the point in getting married they are the epitome of a modern successful career-oriented couple; Peter is the compere for a series of 'art' films and Norah is the Script Editor for the Drama Department of a commercial television company. Why then when holidaying in Venice does Peter decide to break up their long-lasting relationship? What happens to their order and sense of self when he succeeds? By turns wildly funny and frightening The Birdcage is a novel about the end of a love affair, the repercussions and the emotional fallout. A host of brilliantly created characters people the book, including Bunty Bates the policewoman, and Edward Laverick, a playwright who finds himself the object of a hunt. Bowen creates a world that his readers can relate to and analyses the social and psychological end of a relationship. At times comical and tragic The Birdcage remains an original and exciting novel 44 years after its first publication in 1964.
In Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim-majority country, Muslims struggle to reconcile radically different sets of social norms and laws, including those derived from Islam, local social norms, and contemporary ideas about gender equality and law. John Bowen explores this struggle through archival and ethnographic research and interviews with national figures.
In this book, an anthropologist analyzes political and cultural change among the Gayo, a Muslim people numbering about 200,000 who live in the highlands of northern Sumatra. John R.Bowen, who has lived among the Gayo shows how their successive absorption into both colonial and post-colonial states has led them to revise their ritual speaking, sung poetry, and historical narrative.
This first book-length critical examination of the life and work of Marjorie Bowen (1885-1952) reveals a major English writer whose prodigious output included stories of history, romance, and the supernatural. As Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Michael Dirda writes in his Foreword, Bowen may be "the finest British woman writer of the uncanny of the last century," a view that echoes the high regard of cultural historian Edward Wagenknecht, who called her "a literary phenomenon," one whose best work places her alongside such contemporaries as Edith Wharton and Daphne du Maurier. Publicly acclaimed--known only by a series of pseudonyms (including "Marjorie Bowen")--but privately inscrutable, she was and is a mysterious and complex character. Drawing for the first time upon archival resources and the cooperation of the Bowen Estate, this book reveals a woman who saw herself as a rationalist and serious historian, but also as a mystic and "dark enchantress of dread." Above all, through a lifetime of domestic storms and creative ecstasy, Bowen worked tirelessly as both a professional writer and a consummate artist, always seeking, as she once confessed, "to find beauty in dark places.
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