Spirituality and Islam

2021 ◽  
pp. 297-313
Author(s):  
Rachel Rinaldo

Many Muslim societies have long histories of mystical, devotional, and esoteric traditions such as Sufism, which are today commonly referred to as “spiritual” traditions. Yet spirituality within Islamic traditions has an uncertain and marginalized status in many contemporary Muslim societies as a result of local, national, and global political struggles over Islam. In Indonesia, where Sufism has had a major historical influence for much of the twentieth century, there has been a strong trend toward scripturalist Islamic modernism. Yet along with Indonesia’s Islamic revival since the 1990s has come a revival of Sufism, particularly among the urban upper middle class. This chapter explores the Sufist revival as a manifestation of spirituality in Indonesia, examining the recent history of Sufism and the evolving relationship between Sufism and other ways of being Muslim, as well as surveying recent scholarship on the social and political contours of the embrace of Sufism by educated urbanites.

Author(s):  
Marek Korczynski

This chapter examines music in the British workplace. It considers whether it is appropriate to see the history of music in the workplace as involving a journey from the organic singing voice (both literal and metaphorical) of workers to broadcast music appropriated by the powerful to become a technique of social control. The chapter charts four key stages in the social history of music in British workplaces. First, it highlights the existence of widespread cultures of singing at work prior to industrialization, and outlines the important meanings these cultures had for workers. Next, it outlines the silencing of the singing voice within the workplace further to industrialization—either from direct employer bans on singing, or from the roar of the industrial noise. The third key stage involves the carefully controlled employer- and state-led reintroduction of music in the workplace in the mid-twentieth century—through the centralized relaying of specific forms of music via broadcast systems in workplaces. The chapter ends with an examination of contemporary musicking in relation to (often worker-led) radio music played in workplaces.


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