Everyday Uses of Islamic Justice: Gender, Legal Interpenetrations and Non-Secular Modernity in Shari’a Practices in England
Julie Billaud received a European PhD in Socio-Legal Studies from the University of Sussex, Brighton (UK), and École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, in May 2010. Her dissertation, "Malalay's Sisters: Women's Public Visibility in 'Post-war/Reconstruction' Afghanistan" is based on a 12-month ethnographic fieldwork conducted among various groups of women (MPs, female students, social activists) in Kabul in 2007. Through an analysis of their bodily practices and public performances and an engagement with the complex history of Afghanistan under consecutive waves of foreign domination, the thesis is an anthropological exploration of the conditions of possibility of a feminine political expression through the subversive repetition of cultural and religious norms instead of a break up with these norms. In 2009/10, Billaud joined the European research project EuroPublicIslam: Islam in the Making of the European Public Sphere directed by Professor Nilüfer Göle, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, to conduct sociological research into the place of sharia'h law in the British legal system.
Everyday Uses of Islamic Justice: Gender, Legal Interpenetrations and Non-Secular Modernity in Shari’a Practices in England
As a Rechtskulturen fellow, Billaud will build on this preliminary research to investigate more closely the everyday use and practice of Islamic law among various pious actors interacting in a London-based sharia'h council. The study proposes to move the issue of sharia'h in Europe away from the migration/integration paradigms by using a dialectical approach emphasizing the values, subjectivities and standards of behavior that are produced through routine interactions occurring in these “semi-public” spaces. This focus on everyday practices will reveal how contemporary cultural and religious diversity challenges legal practice, how legal practice responds to that challenge and how practice is changing in the encounter with the cultural diversity occasioned. More generally, Billaud's research interests include: non-Western modernities, gender, Islam, culture, rights and the public sphere.
