W&M Featured Events
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[PAST EVENT] Second Annual Vinson Sutlive Lecture in Historical Anthropology: Dr. Enseng Ho
April 6, 2016
5:30pm - 7pm
Second Annual Vinson Sutlive Lecture in Historical Anthropology
Title:
"A Moral Economy of Jihad: Pure Castes, Hybrid Law and Creole Society in Indian Ocean Malabar"
Abstract:
In Malabar, a thriving Indian Ocean society tied to other places in the 16th century, caste purity and Islamic legal categories subsisted in a sea of cross-cultural relations. While the plural was not expressly valorized, vital interdependence between purity and pluralism came into view in surprising moments. The onset of European colonialism was one such instance. One response, a call to jihad from within the diasporic Muslim merchant community targeted by the Portuguese, based its legal arguments on ethnography of castes and outcastes, situating Muslims within a local moral economy of interdependent purities. Here, anthropology and history come together to reveal collusions between Hindu and Muslim within a call to jihad.
Title:
"A Moral Economy of Jihad: Pure Castes, Hybrid Law and Creole Society in Indian Ocean Malabar"
Abstract:
In Malabar, a thriving Indian Ocean society tied to other places in the 16th century, caste purity and Islamic legal categories subsisted in a sea of cross-cultural relations. While the plural was not expressly valorized, vital interdependence between purity and pluralism came into view in surprising moments. The onset of European colonialism was one such instance. One response, a call to jihad from within the diasporic Muslim merchant community targeted by the Portuguese, based its legal arguments on ethnography of castes and outcastes, situating Muslims within a local moral economy of interdependent purities. Here, anthropology and history come together to reveal collusions between Hindu and Muslim within a call to jihad.