The religious field in a Russian Muslim village: A Bourdieusian perspective on Islam

Abstract

Research on Islam in Russia has been growing in recent years. Despite the variety of perspectives adopted by scholars in the field, attention has focused mostly on responses to emerging globalised trends of Islamic orthodoxy in traditionally Muslim areas which had historically cultivated their own understandings of Islamic religious tradition strongly intertwined with local life. Most scholars of Russian Islam argue that the split among Russian Muslims between the followers of (global) ‘orthodoxy’ and (local) ‘traditions’ lies along generational lines. However, the sociological microdynamic of this process is still under-researched. This paper presents the results of an in-depth ethnographic study of a Muslim community in one of the Tatar villages of the multi-ethnic Volga region. It argues that the generational perspective is not sufficient to explain the split between ‘orthodox’ and ‘traditional’ Muslims. By employing Pierre Bourdieu’s approach to social reality and the religious field, the paper examines how a conflict arises on the base of competing discourses on Islamic norms and practices, but goes far beyond it, and concerns social, economic and symbolic spheres of the villagers’ lives. It shows that not only generational but also other social characteristics based on various forms of capital need to be taken into account to explain the split between orthodox-oriented Muslims and the followers of local Islam.