Marriage “sharia style”: everyday practices of Islamic morality in England

The growing visibility of Islam in the public spaces of Western societies is often interpreted in the media as a sign of Muslim radicalisation. This article questions this postulate by examining the flourishing Muslim marriage industry in the UK. It argues that these ‘halal’ services, increasingly popular among the young generation of British Muslims, reflect the semantic shifting of categories away from the repertoire of Islamic jurisprudence to cultural and identity labels visible in public space. Informed by long-term ethnographic fieldwork in the British field of Islamic law, this article examines a Muslim speed-dating event, which took place in central London in 2013. It investigates how Islamic morality is maintained and negotiated in everyday social interactions rather than cultivated via discipline and the pursuit of virtuous dispositions. Using Goffman’s “frame analysis” and his interpretation of the social as a space of “performances” as well as recent anthropological reflections on “ordinary ethics” (Lambek) and “everyday Islam” (Schielke, Osella and Soares), it examines the potential for such practices to define the contours of a new public culture where difference is celebrated as a form of distinction

Cultures of conflict:Protests, violent repression, and community values

What are the cultural origins of societal conflicts that revolve around democratization, women’s rights, and modern libertarian values? We propose that deep-seated differences in community-based collective values (at the micro-level) may be related to why people support anti-government protest and why they support repression of such protests (at the macro-level). The hypothesis was examined among residents of Turkey (N = 500). Cultural values, measured at the individual level and community level with the community collectivism scale, correlated with political orientation and emotions, as well as with subsequent support for anti-governmental protest or its repression. The main conclusions are that both support for protest and support for repression are related to the cultural values people hold and their subsequent political orientations and emotions. Micro-level cultural values in local communities may thus play a role in explaining macro-level socio-political divides

Students' difficulties, conceptions and attitudes towards learning algebra : an intervention study to improve teaching and learning

The skills necessary to identify and analyse errors and misconceptions made by students are needed by teachers of all levels especially at the lower secondary school level in Malaysia. If students are to be successful in tackling mathematical problems later in their schooling, the one prerequisite is the mastery of basic concepts in algebra. Despite the best efforts of the teachers, students still develop algebra misconceptions. Is it possible to reduce or eliminate these misconceptions? The research involved a survey of 14 year-old students in Form 2 (Grade 8) in the Penampang district of Sabah, East Malaysia. The focus of this study lies in students’ difficulties, conceptions and attitudes towards learning algebra in the framework of conceptual change. A possible way to help students overcome their learning difficulties and misconceptions is by implementing diagnostic teaching involving conflict to foster conceptual change. The study involved evaluating the efficacy of a conceptual change instructional programme involving cognitive conflict in (1) facilitating Form 2 students’ understanding of algebra concepts, and (2) assessing changes in students’ attitudes towards learning mathematics, in a mixed quantitativequalitative research design.A 24-item Algebra Diagnostic Test and a 20-item Test of Mathematics-Related Attitudes (TOMRA) questionnaire were administered as a pretest and a posttest to 39 students in each of a heterogeneous high-achieving class and a below-average achieving class. In addition 9 students were purposefully selected to participate in the interview.The results of the study indicated that students’ difficulties and misconceptions from both classes fell into five broad areas: (1) basic understanding of letters and their place in mathematics, (2) manipulation of these letters or variables, (3) use of rules of manipulation to solve equations, (4) use of knowledge of algebraic structure and syntax to form equations, and (5) generalisation of rule for repetitive patterns or sequences of shapes.The results also showed that there was significant improvement in students’ achievement in mathematics. Further, students’ attitude towards inquiry of mathematics lessons showed significant positive improvement. Enjoyment remained high even though enjoyment of mathematics lesson showed no change. Also, changes in students’ understanding (from unintelligible to intelligible, intelligible to plausible, plausible to fruitful) illustrated the extent of changes in their conceptions.Different pedagogies can affect how conceptual change and challenge of misconceptions occurs. Therefore, knowledge of the origin of different types of misconceptions can be useful in selecting more effective pedagogical techniques for challenging particular misconceptions. Also, for teachers to create an effective learning experience they should be aware of and acknowledge students’ prior knowledge acquired from academic settings and from everyday previous personal experiences. Since all learning involves transfer from prior knowledge and previous experiences, an awareness and understanding of a student’s initial conceptual framework and/or topic can be used to formulate more effective teaching strategies. If this idea is taken a step further, it could be said that, because misconceptions comprise part of a conceptual framework, then understanding origins of misconceptions would further facilitate development of effective teaching strategies.Further research is needed to help teachers to understand how students experience conflict, how students feel when they experience conflict, and how these experiences are related to their final responses because cognitive conflict has both constructive and destructive potential. Thus, by being able to interpret, recognise and manage cognitive conflict, a teacher can then successfully interpret his/her students’ cognitive conflict and be able to make conceptual change more likely or help students to have meaningful learning experiences in secondary school algebra

Persistent Activist Communication in Occupy Gezi

We revisit the notion of activist persistence against the backdrop of protest communication on Twitter. We take an event-based approach and examine Occupy Gezi, a series of protests that occurred in Turkey in the early summer of 2013. By cross-referencing survey data with longitudinal Twitter data and in-depth interviews, we investigate the relationship between biographical availability, relational and organisational ties, social and personal costs to persistent activism online and on-location. Contrary to expectations, we find no clear-cut relationship between those factors and sustained commitment to participation in the occupation. We show that persistent activist communication did not feed into enduring organisational structures despite the continuous online activity observed during and beyond the peak of the Gezi occupation. The article concludes with reflections on the organisational ramifications of persistent communication and its significance in a political context posing high risks to participation in dissident politics

We can have the cake and eat it too: leisure and spirituality at ‘veiled’ hotels in Turkey

This paper uses ethnographic methods to inquire how new forms of consumption arise as a result of bridging Islamic spirituality with leisure in the newly growing tesettür hotels in Turkey, which have become a magnet of popular and academic attention. We aim to offer a multi-layered analysis of the leisure and consumption practices of Muslim women in the context of the new Islamic hospitality industry by looking at the interactions between spiritual Islam and modern capitalism. We focus on the consumption process of the female customers of these hotels as part of defining and redefining their newly developing identity that is Islamic and spiritual; as well as modern and luxurious. The study responds to the call of Gökarıksel and Secor to analyse new Islamic patterns of consumption and leisure by building on their perspectives bridging neoliberal capitalism and resurgence of Islamic identities. We call for a critical and contextual perspective to understand the dynamic emergence of new forms of Islamic lifestyles and capitalism; emphasising a future agenda of further research that is sensitive to the complexities of desires and leisure activities of veiled Muslim women in diverse countries