Research Overview
In an age of global religious revival, morality has emerged as a central feature of discourse in many public spheres. In societies experiencing rapid dislocating social changes, women are both objects and subjects in moral debates. Broadly speaking, my research seeks to comprehend the social, cultural, and political consequences of transformations such as modernity. I am especially interested in how transnational shifts affect women and possibilities for egalitarian social change. How is religion implicated in diverse formulations of the modern? And what are the uses and consequences of moral visions in the public sphere, especially for women? I explore these questions about gender, religion, and modernity through international ethnographic fieldwork.
Ph.D. Dissertation
"Mobilizing Piety: Women, Islam, and the Public Sphere in Indonesia"
My dissertation draws on 16 months of participant observation with Muslim and secular women’s groups in Jakarta. It investigates how Islam matters for women’s engagement in the public sphere, and provides insight into how religion’s relevance for culture and politics more generally . As a democratizing country with the world’s largest Muslim population, Indonesia is a vital place for such sociological inquiry, and a key site for understanding the post-9/11 era.
While Islam is often viewed as antithetical to women’s empowerment, "Mobilizing Piety," illustrates how the recent Islamic revival in Indonesia influences a range of women’s rights activism, from feminists to liberal Muslim groups to Islamists. Furthering current debates about religion and the public sphere, the dissertation's central argument is that knowledge of religion helps women activists to become legitimate actors in the public sphere. As Islam becomes entrenched in the Indonesian public sphere, the use of religious discourses permits some women activists to make credible arguments for women’s empowerment and equality, while others advocate for a more Islamic state.
The activists in my study represent distinct strategies of mobilizing religious knowledge as a means of entry to the public sphere. These engagements are tied to different relationships with globally-inspired Islamic teachings about gender, different adaptations of transnational feminist discourses on women’s rights and equality, as well as contrasting conceptions of the relationship between religion and state. Because these women activists’ use of Islamic discourses provides them with public legitimacy and the potential to mobilize across class lines, their different political imaginations all have the potential to shape national discourses and policies.
Book Project: Women, Islam, and the Public Sphere in Indonesia
I am currently revising my dissertation to publish as a book on women, Islam, and the public sphere in Indonesia. This book will draw on additional fieldwork conducted in 2008. It explores how Indonesian women activists develop moral worldviews that intertwine Islam, feminism, and nationalism. I examine how they deploy distinctive moral visions in the public sphere, and consider the broader consequences of such engagements, especially for women’s equality.