This week our featured Fellow is Anna Mansson McGinty. Professor Mansson McGinty is on the Geography and Women’s and Gender Studies faculty at UWM, where her work focuses on Muslim identity and its relationship to geography—or perhaps even “placeness” more broadly, since her work is largely ethnographic, blending techniques of field work with analysis of the social function of place.
Anna, thanks for taking a moment to talk with me. Your approach to the social implications of geography is fascinating. I’ve just finished reading your 2015 article “Palestinian, Arab, American, Muslim: ‘Looping Effects’ of Categories and Meaning,” and I’m struck (and a little awed) by how many different styles of inquiry you pull together: there’s discussion of the value of phenomenological—rather than poststructural—approaches, a case-study-style qualitative portion, and a reflective tone overall that uses Ian Hacking’s “Looping Effects” theory as a conceptual frame. Could you tell our readers a bit more about your focus on Muslim identity and how you came to adopt such a broad range of analytical techniques? Are there other geographers or social scholars whose work particularly influenced you?
Thanks for taking the time reading my piece and for your questions, Mark. I should begin by stating that I see myself as an ethnographer influenced by the disciplines of geography, anthropology, and women’s and gender studies. I was trained as an anthropologist at the Department of European Ethnology at Lund University in Sweden and at the Anthropology Department at UC-Santa Cruz as a visiting graduate student, and I’m grateful for my academic trajectory which later allowed me to immerse myself in geographic and feminist thought.
British and Australian geographers in particular have made important contributions to the study of Muslim geographies and identities in the West; curiously enough, much less geographical research has been done on Muslim identities within the U.S. Much of the work in Britain by feminist geographers such as Claire Dwyer and Peter Hopkins and Kevin Dunn in Australia has been ethnographic, and I have found much inspiration from their work on gender identity, place, and Islamophobia.
My interest in gender and Islam guided much of the research of my first book, Becoming Muslim, which explores Western women’s conversion to Islam with a focus on identity formation and the conversion narrative. This interest of mine has been further explored since I came to UW-Milwaukee in 2003. One project of mine has looked at local expressions of Islamic feminism within Muslim women’s community activism, exploring the relationship between gender identity, faith, and activism.
The 2015 article that you refer to was a fun one to write. While working on it I approached it as a reflection piece that addresses theoretical and methodological ideas, as well as some concerns of mine pertaining to the scholarly knowledge production of “Muslim geographies and identities,” which I myself inevitably participate in.
While moving within and between three different disciplines there is one salient epistemological and theoretical focus that influences my inquiries, a focus that draws on phenomenological anthropology. I have always been intellectually drawn to the dynamic relationship between, to put it simply, the personal (emotional, experiential, and embodied) and the social and discursive, which are intimately intertwined, yet not identical. Philosopher Ian Hacking’s notions of “looping effects” and people as “moving targets,” and his interest in the relationship between “names” and “the named,” inspired me to write about the looping effects of meaning; namely, we cannot assume the meanings and significance of any identity category and its varying meaning a priori. By drawing on two in-depth interviews with a young woman, Dalia, I discuss the shifting meanings of categories in her personal life, in this particular case categories such as “Muslim,” “Palestinian,” and “Arab” which are place-based, linked to emotionally laden experiences and memories. The meaning-making of Dalia demonstrates the ways in which people react to and at times resist the categories placed on them. Taking this discussion to other matters, the scholarly work of social scientists, I also discuss my concerns that scholars, encouraged to challenge anti-Muslim discourses and the construction of the “Muslim Other,” may rely on and perpetuate the very same identity category of “Muslim.” Much of the work on Muslim geographies, including my own, places its discussion about Muslim lives and identities within the backdrop of Islamophobia. So in the piece, I pose the question, “Could it be that our scholarly accounts of Islamophobia and Muslims’ experiences of discrimination overshadow other salient identities and discourses, and consequently reify the category of Muslim?”
Can you give us any early hints at what we might hear about in your presentation in April, or is it too early still?
In my presentation at the CIE conference I plan to talk about my ongoing project on Muslim American youth in Milwaukee and their experiences of belonging and discrimination, the relationship between identity and place, and in the intersections of gender and religion. Recent work by feminist geographers has called for closer attention to the intimate, embodied and material practices in everyday lives to better understand larger geopolitical events and movement. In a similar vein, I would like to pay some analytical attention to what we as scholars, sometimes hastily, refer to as “everyday lives,” and why this focus is important when looking at Muslims’ experiences. Linked to this would be my ongoing discussion about “Islamophobia,” which is a concept and phenomenon that I think we need to use with caution since it has become quite a broad term encompassing different scales, referencing everything from systemic racism, perpetuated by state rhetoric and media representations, to lived experiences of racism and discrimination. Interestingly, some narratives of Muslim youth about their lives in Milwaukee reflect acute awareness of anti-Muslim discourses but less direct personal experiences of such in their day-to-day lives. This highlights the importance of research on the varying expressions of Islamophobia on different scales, but also of ethnographic research exploring the impact of anti-Muslim rhetoric on Muslims’ sense of belonging and alienation, as well as the mutually constitutive relationship between discourses and personal experiences.
I’m guessing a “perfect” text about Muslim identity in the West doesn’t exist, but if you had to pick one text to recommend to people who were interested in the topic and just beginning to learn about it, what text would that be?
That is indeed a difficult question. If we were to look to Geography, Richard Phillips has edited a nice anthology on Muslims in the West called Muslim Spaces of Hope: Geographies of Possibilities in Britain and the West.
Coming from two departments (Geography and Women’s and Gender Studies), your work speaks to the tremendous potential of interdisciplinary scholarship at the professor/researcher level, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on interdisciplinary study and scholarship at the undergraduate or graduate levels.
That’s a great question, and I’ll point to a couple of things. My own experience of navigating multiple disciplines has allowed me a lot of freedom; I have not been pigeonholed into one field. Women’s and Gender Studies is an interdisciplinary discipline in itself, and I often hear from students that they find this very stimulating. I think it can only enhance critical inquiries as it rests on discussions across disciplinary fields. I think we have seen an increase in interdisciplinary programs as well. I’m not only thinking about Global Studies, but programs such as Sustainable Peacekeeping and Cultures and Communities. At the same time, however, I’m wondering if there is not more cross-disciplinary discussions between departments today overall. While getting an undergraduate and graduate degree implies proving that you’re well versed in a particular canon of work and disciplinary thinking, and in the case of a graduate degree, proving that you can publish in particular journals specific for the field, I do think there are more overlapping discussions and inclusions of work of scholars from other disciplines in syllabi and graduate theses.
Thanks for taking the time to talk with us Anna, and I’m very excited to hear how your research goes. As always, I’d also like to remind our readers keep an eye on Intersections in the near future for more interviews with our Global Studies Fellows, opportunities to see them present at our colloquia, and information about the CIE conference on Diversities, April 20-21sr.