Research Interests

My current research focuses on comparative social studies of Islam across the world. My own ethnographic studies take place in Indonesia, France, and England, but I work with students and colleagues with field sites across Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. In particular, I analyze how Muslims (judges and scholars, public figures, ordinary people) work across plural sources of norms and values, including diverse interpretations of the Islamic tradition, law codes and decisions, and local social norms.

Selected Publications

Europe

Forthcoming, “Sanctity and shariah: Two Islamic modes of resolving disputes in today’s England”, in Bertram Turner, Keebet von Benda-Beckmann, and Franz von Benda-Beckmann, eds. Religion in Disputes, Palgrave Macmillan.

2011 “How the French State Justifies Controlling Muslim Bodies: From Harm-based to Values-based Reasoning.” Social Research, Summer  2011, 78:2, 1-24. [pdf]

2011 “How Could English Courts Recognize Shariah?”, St. Thomas Law Review, 7 (3): 411-35. [pdf]

2011 “Europeans Against Multiculturalism”, Boston Review, July/August 2011.

2011 “The Republic and the Veil”, in Edward Berenson, Vincent Duclert, and Christophe Prochasson, eds., The French Republic: A Transatlantic History, pp. 272-77. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

2009 Can Islam Be French? Pluralism and Pragmatism in a Secularist State.  Princeton: Princeton University Press.

2009 "Private Arrangements: 'Recognizing sharî'a' in England", Boston Review,  March/April.

2007 Why the French Don't Like Headscarves: Islam, the State, and Public Space.  Princeton: Princeton University Press. 

Indonesia 

Forthcoming, “Contours of Sharî`a in Indonesia”, in Alfred Stepan and Mirjam Künkler, eds., Indonesia, Islam, and Democracy, Columbia University Press.

2008 "Intellectual Pilgrimages and Local Norms in Fashioning Indonesian Islam", Revue d'Etudes sur le Monde Musulman et la Méditerranée, 123: 37-54. [pdf]

2005 "Normative Pluralism in Indonesia: Regions, Religions, and Ethnicities," in Will Kymlicka and Boagang He, eds., Multiculturalism in Asia: Theoretical Perspectives, pp. 152-69. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [pdf]

2005 "Fairness and Law in an Indonesian Court", in M. Khalid Masud, David S. Powers, and Ruud Peters, eds., Dispensing Justice in Muslim Courts: Qadis, Procedures and Judgments, pp. 117-41. Leiden: Brill. [pdf]

2004 "The Development of Southeast Asian Studies in the United States", in David L. Szanton, ed., The Politics of Knowledge: Area Studies and the Disciplines, pp. 386-425. Berkeley: University of California Press. 

2003 Islam, Law and Equality in Indonesia: An Anthropology of Public Reasoning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (awarded the 2004 Herbert Jacobs Prize by the Law and Society Association for the "outstanding book" of 2003). 

Religion and Comparative Studies

2012 A New Anthropology of Islam. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
(A 20% discount is available at: http://www.cambridge.org/us/knowledge/discountpromotion/?site_locale=en_US&code=Bowen12)

2012 Blaming Islam. Cambridge: MIT Press.

2011 "Islamic Adaptations to Western Europe and North America: The Importance of Contrastive Analyses", American Behavioral Scientist, 55: 1601-1615. [pdf]

2010 “Secularism: Conceptual Genealogy or Political Dilemma?” Comparative Studies in Society and History 52 (3): 680-94. [pdf]

2010  Religions in Practice: An Approach to the Anthropology of Religion, 5th revised edition. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

2006 "Anti-Americanism as Schemas and Diacritics across Indonesia and France," in Peter Katzenstein and Robert Keohane, eds., Anti-Americanisms in World Politics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. [pdf]

Courses

Religion and Society (L48 3293)
Social Theory and Anthropology (L48 472)
Religion, Law, and Pluralism (L48 4464)