Diasporas: Transnational Religions and Identity
Code
722001029
Academic unit
Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas
Department
Sociologia
Credits
10
Weekly hours
3 letivas + 1 tutorial
Teaching language
Portuguese
Objectives
a) To introduce an anthropology of identity processes by exploring the concepts of identity in its individual and colective dimensions, of identity representations and strategies, showing that they unfold in contexts of comparisons that are tensional, inter-personal, micro and macro-group as well as international;
b) To reflect about the national and transnational dimensions of the identity strategies, placing them within the framework of the world-system and focusing on the processes of hybridism inherent to \"frontier\" or semiperipheral identities;
c) To analyze the historical processes that structured religious identities amidst transnational networks, taking the Portuguese colonial policies towards Islam as a case study.
Prerequisites
None.
Subject matter
- Identity representations and strategies: towards an anthropology of ethno-identity processes.
- The Portuguese identity and its imaginary insertion in the world-system: an example of a \"frontier\" or semiperipheral identity.
- Islam and the Portuguese colonial policies of governance of Muslim communities: confrontation between the transnational networks of Islam´s formation and the strategies developed by a semiperipheral empire.
- The new Islamic presence in Europe and Portugal: dynamics and discourses of a migratory and post-colonial phenomenon; the impact of Portuguese colonial policies on the original formation of Muslims´ diaspora in Portugal.
Bibliography
Bastos, José, Bastos, Susana (2010) What we are talking about when we talk about identities?, in C. Westin, J.
Bastos, J. Dahinden e P. Góis (orgs.), Identity Processes and Dynamics in Multi-Ethnic Europe. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press, 313-358.
Hall, S. (1996) Introduction: Who Needs \"Identity\"? in Stuart Hall e Paul du Gay (orgs.), Questions of Cultural Identity, Londres, Sage, 1-17.
Machaqueiro, Mário (2013) Foes or Allies? Portuguese Colonial Policies towards Islam in Mozambique and Guinea, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 41 (4) DOI:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03086534.2013.835983.
Vakil, A. (2003) Questões inacabadas: colonialismo, Islão e portugalidade, in M. C. Ribeiro e A. P. Ferreira (orgs.), Fantasmas e Fantasias Imperiais no Imaginário Português Contemporâneo, Porto, Campo das Letras, 255-294.
Veer, van der, P., (org.) (1995) Nation and Migration. The Politics of the South Asian Diaspora. Filadélfia, University of Pennsylvania Press.
Teaching method
The curricular unit is organized in two paralel stages: an expositive time conducted by the teacher (60%), resorting to text analysis and presentations in \"powerpoint\", and a time when the students present and discuss a set of subjects related to the objectives of the discipline (40%).
Evaluation method
Students will be evaluated on the basis of an oral presentation of a text chosen among the bibliography or the texts supporting the classes (40% of the mark), a final work based on the themes explored throughout the unit (50% of the mark) and the students´ assiduity as well as their active participation in the classes (10% of the mark).