I understand Muslim activism within computer-mediated communication (CMC) within the frameworks of knowledge practices and social movement theories (SMTSocial Movement Theory). What do I exactly mean by knowledge practices and SMT? What does this framework imply for my research?

Knowledge practices

The production of meaning has become central to thinking about culture and cultural phenomena in general. The underlying idea is that social acts and practices (re-)produce meaning. To take this thought one step further, meaning is not something fixed, natural and predetermined. Meaning does not have a pre-discursive existenceI use the term “discourse” (and discursive) in the tradition of Michel Foucault. Discursive practices contain language, structures and bodily practices (movement, clothing etc.). Taken altogether they constitute reality or that which is perceived and accepted as real. A good example is the understanding of gender and sexual identity. What is female? What is male? The origin of meaning resides in these practices and social activities. They cannot exist independent (pre-discursive) of them. but is rather generated through practices. Stuart Hall Hall, Stuart (ed. 1997): Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London/ Thousand Oaks/ New Delhi: Sage Publications. 1-11. mentions three general practices that produce meaning:

• Placing something in a framework of interpretation,
• Integrating something in our daily lives and,
• Representing something through symbols and signs.

Following this line of argument, two people belong to the same culture if they interpret the world in roughly the same way and if they assign the same meaning to certain practices, representations and symbols. Cultural production then comes to describe the processes by which meaning is produced, ascribed and transformed. These processes are not only multiple, dynamic and overlapping but furthermore marked by conflict. The power to influence the assignment of meaning is significant since it regulates sociality.

When I talk about knowledge practices, I refer to exactly these meaning-generating practices. Knowledge does not only denote what we learn at school, at university, on our work place etc. Knowledge also includes the area of social knowledgeTerms like habitus (Pierre Bourdieu) and disposition (Michel Foucault) also capture this notion. It includes things we usually learn unknowingly through our direct environments and disciplinary institutions and which we repeat in our daily acts. Social knowledge also describes the social and cultural location of an individual. : What is in which situation appropriate? What is the meaning of symbols and social acts in certain situations? I use the term knowledge here for two reasons: knowledge has an inclination to falsification. It carries a distinction between true and false/ good and bad/ proven and unproven/ allowed and not allowed. Furthermore, many activists use the term themselves when talking about their CMC activities: They usually talk about gaining knowledge (in Dutch “kennis opdoen/vergaren” or in German “Wissen erlangen”). Their CMC activities evolve around the question of what is permissible and what is not according to the model of Muhammad and the salaf al-salih.

To go one step further we have to ask ourselves how knowledge practices are shaped. Social scientists have identified many influences and found many terms. It basically boils down to the objective and subjective contexts wherein these mostly unconscious practices are set. It is how we see ourselves in the world (i.e. our own subjectivity), interaction with other human and, equally important, non-human actors. Non-human actorsFor those interested: check the work of Bruno Latour on interobjective networks and non-human actors. Click for his essay “On Interobjectivity”. are artefacts including every kind of technology interacting with us in our daily lives and practices.

Social Movement Theory (SMT)

Social movement theory was mainly established in connection with research on Civil Rights, environmental and peace movements after the Second World War. More recent research focuses on movements and their networks around the world that are critical of globalization. Especially since the 1990s social movement theories are increasingly applied to “odd” movements like Islamism or Evangelicalism or other “extremist” movements. These movements are usually seen as odd because they do not adhere to the liberal understanding of freedom, emancipation and secularity that is usually ascribed to movements.

Apart from the general bias in favor of so called emancipatory secular activism, established SMT has yet to come to terms with the role of subjectivity and meaning. Besides Political Opportunity Structures and Resource Mobilization social movement researchers resort to frame analysisWikipedia:”Framing theory and frame analysis is a broad theoretical approach that has been used in communication studies, news (Johnson-Cartee, 1995), politics, and social movements among other applications. “Framing is the process by which a communication source, such as a news organization, defines and constructs a political issue or public controversy” (Nelson, Oxley, & Clawson, 1997, p. 221)…” click to continue reading the wikipedia entry on “Frame Analysis” as the third dominant theoretical approach within SMT nowadays. Frame analysis is in charge of ideology and ideas. According to GoffmanGoffman, Erwin (1974): Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. New York: Harper & Row. 21, frames are “schemata[s] of interpretation” through which people “locate, perceive, identify, and label a seemingly infinite number of concrete occurrences…”. “Frame strategists” or moral “entrepreneurs” engaged in framing construct and disperse narratives across the membership and the broader public. Frames are therefore the place of ideological production, for the construction of a framework on how to interpret the world. Frames which guide our perception can mobilize us. If we perceive a situation as no longer acceptable and durable the obstacles for taking action are lowered.

Implications for my research

These questions can, off course, be asked with reference to any form of Muslim activism: What frames or narratives are used? How are they dispersed? Why are some more successful than others? Who are the framers? How do they establish their authority to frame? … and so on. These are indeed important question which I will also investigate within the CMC environments. However, the process of framing has for a long time focused on the formation of collective identities. How these broader movement frames are incorporated by the single activists and become part of her/his subjectivity has only recently become of interest.

Furthermore, the role of the medium is often neglected. Research on the new transnational movements is doing a great deal to cover this gap. They consider technology, including the media, usually as a tool, however not as a non-human actor in its own right. The interaction between human and non-human actors like computer technologies generate different forms of practices and “use genresMaria Bakardjieva develops in her “ethnography of everyday internet use” the concept of “use genres”. According to her, use genres come into being in the interaction between the normal user and technologies. They are embedded in social practices. She has rooted or approach in cognitive psychology (Vygotsky), semiotics (Voloshinov, Bakhtin) and Critical Theory (Feenberg, Foucault). Bakardjieva, Maria (2005). Internet Society. The internet in everyday life. London/ Thousand Oaks/ New Delhi: Sage Publications.“, which can vary form person to person.

In order to understand the activism of Muslims and their knowledge practices within CMC environments a closer look at subjectivitySubjectivity, self and identity are often blurred and used interchangeably. The term subject denotes the whole cultural form in which the individual becomes a social being through practices and discourses. Identity refers to the level of self-interpretation and self-understanding that a subject fosters and includes usually direct and indirect markers of difference to the cultural other. This involves very often notions of collectivity (national identities, class identities, ethnic identities etc.). The concept of the self is similar to the one of identity, does, however not contain collective notions and is rather the product of both conscious and unconscious social processes and dispositions than of self-fashioning alone. Subject and self stand for the result of the process of subjectivation. as another factor influencing knowledge practices is obligatory. This implies a look at the cognitive behaviour or styles of activists. Cognitive behaviour or styles describe the way individuals think, perceive and remember information, and their preferred approach to using or processing such information. I understand cognitive style as closely intertwined with the process of subjectivationSubjectivation is the never-finished process of becoming a subject. through the course of which knowledge is appropriated and translated into social acts.

In conclusion of the above said, my research focuses on concrete practices of Muslim activists inspired by the salafiyyah in computer-mediated environments. The classical tools of ethnographic fieldwork form the basis of my methods. On a theoretical level I will integrate the different theoretical strands of practice theory, Social Movement Theory and subjectivity under consideration of the role of non-human actors into a theoretical framework. It would be great if at the end this could turn into a theoretical contribution applicable to other forms of activism within CMC environments.