Pietaskscapes of halal living: subjectivity, striving, and space-making in Muslim Russia

Abstract

Drawing on ethnographic research in Tatarstan (Russia) and through an engagement with Foucauldian, phenomenological, and ecological social theories, this paper advances the concept of piety taskscape, or “pietaskscape”, to indicate the granular, organically emerging meshwork of settings and locations where Muslim pietists carry out self-fashioning. This concept aspires to grasp the nexus of ethical action, space-making, and experience, in concrete human environments such as the post-Soviet city. Such a concept may prove a valuable contribution to scholarly conversations about religion and space by placing subjectivity, performativity, teleology, and materiality in resonance with each other. It will be argued that, compared to alternative approaches, this framework affords greater analytical insight into the spatiality of Muslim piety beyond the scholarly box of Islamic “sites”.