Politics of Piety is a groundbreaking analysis of Islamist cultural politics through the ethnography of a thriving, grassroots women's piety movement in the mosques of Cairo, Egypt. Unlike those organized Islamist activities that seek to seize or transform the state, this is a moral reform movement whose orthodox practices are commonly viewed as inconsequential to Egypt's political landscape. Saba Mahmood's compelling exposition of these practices challenges this assumption by showing how the ethical and the political are indelibly linked within the context of such movements. Not only is this book a sensitive ethnography of a critical but largely ignored dimension of the Islamic revival, it is also an unflinching critique of the secular-liberal principles by which some people hold such movements to account. The book addresses three central questions: How do movements of moral reform help us rethink the normative liberal account of politics? How does the adherence of women to the patriarchal norms at the core of such movements parochialize key assumptions within feminist theory about freedom, agency, authority, and the human subject? How does a consideration of debates about embodied religious rituals among Islamists and their secular critics help us understand the conceptual relationship between bodily form and political imaginaries? Politics of Piety is essential reading for anyone interested in issues at the nexus of ethics and politics, embodiment and gender, and liberalism and postcolonialism.

This is the first book which examines the nature and significance of a feminist critique in anthropology. It offers a clear introduction to, and balanced assessment of, the theoretical and practical issues raised by the development of a feminist anthropology.

Henrietta Moore situates the development of a feminist approach in anthropology within the context of the discipline, examining the ways in which women have been studied in anthropology - as well as the ways in which the study of gender has influenced the development of the discipline anthropology. She considers the application of feminist work to key areas of anthropological research, and addresses the question of what social anthropology has to contribute to contemporary feminism.

Throughout the book Henrietta Moore's analysis is informed by her own extensive fieldwork in Africa and by her concern to develop anthropological theory and method by means of feminist critique. This book will be of particular value to students in anthropology, women's studies and the social sciences.