Ali Shobeiri
Muhammad Adlin Sila
Place: Towards a Geophilosophy of Photography
Being Muslim in Indonesia
By examining photography through geography and philosophy, this book makes evident that place is not the content of a definite representation. To do this, it breaks down the participatory elements of photography into six tropes: the photographer, the camera, the photograph, the image, the spectator, and the genre. Afterwards, through a rigorous theoretical analysis of each of these themes vis-à-vis the notion of place, it shows how they manifest inactive, contingent, unlocalizable, liminal, evental, agential and exigent features. In doing so, it establishes a ‘geophilosophy of photography’, which regards place as that which resists being restricted to where it is (the photographer), to what it is (the camera), to where it goes (the photograph), to what it encloses (the photographic image), to how and when (the spectator), and to what it represents (the genre).
How Muslims in Indonesia consider their religious practices, politics and culture as Islamic is described in this volume. By examining the various ways Bima Muslims constitute their Islamic identities and agencies through rituals and festivals, this book argues that religious practice is still vigorous in present Bima. It explores the reproduction of religious meanings among various local Muslims and the differences between social groups. Islam is represented as divided between the traditionalist Muslims and the reformist Muslims, between the royal family and the ordinary Muslims, and between Muslim clerics and lay people. Consequently, there is no single picture of Islam. As Bima Muslims construe their Islam in response to their surroundings, what it means to be a Muslim is constantly being negotiated. The complexity of religious life has been a result of the duality of socio-political settings in Bima which stems from the early period of the Islamization of Bima to the present.
In this lively and highly original book, Ali Shobeiri documents the many ways in which photography is all about place. Offering acute observations on everything from the photographer to the photographic image, and from the camera to the spectator, Shobeiri sets forth all the ways, major and minor, in which photography is (in his words) ‘comprised of places.’ Proceeding from the basic premise that places are not just locations or sites but are vibrant ways of being in space and time, he demonstrates that photography presents to us the many transmogrifications of places as they are perceived, remembered, and transformed in their ‘processual, omnilocal, mutating, and lived manifestations.’ Lucidly written, this breakthrough book allows us to see that the scope and import of photography is far more extensive than we have ever imagined – and that place, the central thread of this captivating and convincing text, has been given new life through photography. The result is nothing short of the creation of a new and unique field of inquiry: ‘the geophilosophy of photography’.
Religiosity, Politics and Cultural Diversity in Bima
BEING MUSLIM IN INDONESIA Religiosity, Politics and Cultural Diversity in Bima Muhammad Adlin Sila
All in all, this is the best book on Islam in everyday life in Bima, which I know of. – Nico Kaptein, Leiden University.
One of the aims of the book is to show how villagers have continued to maintain a large degree of local social cohesion in the performance of a variety of rituals despite the over-arching presence of a global conflict in the Islamic world between traditionalist mysticism and scripturalist rationalism. Ali Shobeiri is Assistant Professor of Visual Art Theories in the Departments of Art History and Media Studies at Leiden University. He is co-editor of Animation and Memory (2020).
– Thomas Gibson, University of Rochester.
MEDIA / ART / POLITICS
DEBATES ON ISLAM & SOCIETY
Publication date January 2021 NUR 652 ISBN 9789087283582 epdf 9789400604001 Language English Price € 32.50 £ 29.50 $ 39.50 Format Paperback illustrated 156 x 234 mm Page extent 182 pages Cover design Ieva Verikaite Imprint LUP Academic
Publication date June 2021 NUR 717 ISBN 9789087283629 epdf 9789400604063 Language English Price € 59.50 £ 52.- $ 72.Format Paperback illustrated 156 x 234 mm Page extent 250 pages Cover design Tarek Atrissi Imprint LUP Academic
Muhammad Adlin Sila is currently working at Indonesia’s Ministry of Religious Affairs (MoRA) and is a lecturer at the State Islamic University of Syarif Hidayatullah, Jakarta. His research focuses mainly on social anthropology and religious studies.
– Edward S. Casey, Stony Brook University.
Shobeiri’s notion of ‘geophilosophy’ is an important contribution to the field. Its merits are twofold: on the one hand, it thoroughly brings together three disciplines in a very organic and convincing way; on the other hand, it also offers an excellent synthesis of the existing research on ‘place’, which serves as an echo chamber to the authors and concepts that are creatively appropriated in this work. – Jan Baetens, KU Leuven.
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