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Hardcover
Published: 22nd March 2001
ISBN: 9780253339171
Number Of Pages: 360
For Ages: 22+ years old
"I know of no one who has taken such an ambitious swath of time and done such a good job of showing the continuity and change across those one hundred years.... a splendid achievement, the result of decades of research and reflection." -- David Robinson
Controlling Knowledge examines the history of West African Muslim society in the Republic of Mali, formerly the Soudan FranAais, in the 20th century. Focusing on the transformation of Muslim institutions -- especially modernized Muslim schools (mA(c)dersas) and voluntary organizations -- over the past hundred years, Louis Brenner uncovers the social and political processes that have produced new forms, definitions, and expressions of Islam that are patently different from those that prevailed a century earlier. Brenner's study shows that Muslim society in Mali is religiously pluralistic and that it has developed different ways of relating religious obligations to prevailing social and political conditions. Although they were heavily influenced by French and Middle Eastern models, Brenner demonstrates that it was in opposition to French colonial authority that the first mA(c)dersas and voluntary associations appeared. The complex array of power relations within which these institutions evolved, under French colonial rule and in the postcolonial secularist state, is revealed in this thoughtful book. Controlling Knowledge makes a major contribution to our understanding of Muslim history in Mali and West Africa, both in recent decades and over the long term.
| Acknowledgements | |
| Abbreviations | |
| Introduction: Defining the Terms of Analysis | p. 1 |
| Knowledge and Power in Pre-Colonial Muslim Societies | p. 17 |
| Muslim schooling and the esoteric episteme | p. 17 |
| Legitimacy, knowledge and power | p. 21 |
| Medersas, French and Islamic | p. 39 |
| The French medersas | p. 41 |
| The Origins of the Islamic Medersa Movement | p. 54 |
| -Bamako | p. 55 |
| -Kayes | p. 65 |
| -Segu | p. 74 |
| Reform and Counter-Reform: the Politics of Muslim Schooling in the 1950s | p. 85 |
| The social and political context of reform | p. 88 |
| The politics of counter-reform | p. 102 |
| Discourses of Knowledge, Power and Identity | p. 131 |
| Muslim doctrinal politics: a discourse about ignorance and truth | p. 133 |
| The French, the Africans and the Muslims: a discourse about the Other | p. 152 |
| Identity as a transformative system | p. 165 |
| Power Relations in the Postcolony | p. 169 |
| Knowledge and power in the Republic of Mali | p. 173 |
| Islamic resurgence and the materialization of Islam | p. 194 |
| The Dynamics of Medersa Schooling | p. 209 |
| The expansion of the medersa network | p. 209 |
| The socio-economic roots of medersa schooling: changing religious subjectivities | p. 219 |
| The social constituencies of the medersas | p. 228 |
| -Founders, directors and teachers | p. 228 |
| -Parents | p. 232 |
| -Students and youth | p. 240 |
| Islam, the State and the Ideology of Development: The Politics of Muslim Schooling in the 1980s | p. 257 |
| The domestication of the medersas | p. 260 |
| The invisibility of the medersas: discursive patterns in the public arena | p. 273 |
| The exclusion of the medersas: the 4eme Project Education | p. 280 |
| 'Governing men as things': development as a resource of extraversion | p. 287 |
| Reprise: Reassessing the Terms of Analysis | p. 294 |
| Bibliography | p. 309 |
| Index | p. 333 |
| Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved. |
ISBN: 9780253339171
ISBN-10: 0253339170
Audience:
General
For Ages: 22+ years old
For Grades: 17+
Format:
Hardcover
Language:
English
Number Of Pages: 360
Published: 22nd March 2001
Publisher: INDIANA UNIV PR
Country of Publication: US
Dimensions (cm): 21.59 x 13.97
x 2.54
Weight (kg): 0.5
Earn 140 Qantas Points
on this Book
