From Malaysia to Dubai: Muslim Pilgrimage and Gender in the context of Consuming practices

• Applicant: Privatdozentin Dr. Viola Thimm
• Subject Area: Social and Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology
• Term: from 2016 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 324628960

Traveling plays a special role in Islam. The spirituality of travel becomes obvious in the big (haj) and the small (umrah) pilgrimage journey to the holy places of Islam in today's Saudi-Arabia as well as in visiting holy graves and shrines (ziarah) even outside the Arabian Peninsula. In Malaysia, a multicultural state with a majority of Muslim Malays, travel agencies offer umrah journeys connected with ziarah, which are understood here as part religious observance and part holiday and leisure. Malay women from Malaysia especially choose Dubai as the destination for ziarah due to the possibilities for going shopping. Previous research is lacking regarding research on Muslim pilgrimage and gender in the context of consuming practices. My research pioneers this project by examining habits of travel and consumption by Muslim Malay women from Malaysia in Dubai on their pilgrimage journey to or from Saudi-Arabia. The following principal questions are posed: With which allocations of meaning do the social actors integrate consuming practices into religious travel? How does consumption relate to religious concepts and practices and how is this relation, in turn, connected to the category of gender? My research builds on two exploratory phases of fieldwork in Malaysia and Dubai (United Arab Emirates, UAE). The data collected until now suggest a working hypothesis that the part of ziarah gets increasingly connected with consumerism and is especially negotiated on the level of bodily representations through dresscodes. I plan to conduct two phases of ethnographic fieldwork via participant observation and by conducting in-depth interviews in Malaysia and Dubai (UAE) to systematically contrast biographical and thematic narrations. My project will contribute significantly to understanding how gendered meanings and practices are redefined or reified in the process of negotiating religious and consuming practices, and thus inform a wider, interdisciplinary debate on mobility and constructions of identity.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants