The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and Islamic Counterpublics

Charles Hirschkind

September, 2006
Cloth, 288 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-231-13818-5
$32.50 / £19.00

"A very timely ethnography of Islam in general and Egypt in specific." —
Kambiz Kamrani, Anthropology.net
/>"A sensitive listener, Hirschkind writes in a way that conveys the inner life of
counterpublics in Egypt...an indispensable book." — William E. Connolly,
Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Political Science, Johns Hopkins University, and author of
Pluralism

"The
relevance of this analytic project to readers both within and outside the academy cannot be
underestimated." — Ilan Pappe, Arab Studies
Journal

"Hirschkind touches on some of
the most charged issues of our time. He writes with both sympathy and analytic clarity. But where
others bog down in reductive notions such as 'belief,' 'fundamentalism,' and 'modernity,'
Hirschkind attends to the concrete forms of the Islamic revival. By concentrating on the
circulation of sermon forms—including the practices of listening to
them—Hirschkind has written a book that will be essential reading for anyone
interested in religion, secularism, media, and the public sphere." — Michael
Warner, Board of Governors Professor of English, Rutgers University, and author of
Publics and Counterpublics
/>"Charles Hirschkind has drawn on a growing body of literature on the senses, and on the
theory of rhetoric and political theory, to present the reader with a complex and fascinating
analysis. At one level this is a highly original account of the role of cassette sermons in
contemporary Egypt, in which their content is related with unusual sensitivity to their embodied
reception as well as to the learned tradition of Islam. At another level it is a powerful
argument for relating the work of moral and religious cultivation of the self to larger questions
about the politics of the public sphere in Muslim-majority countries. No one who is interested in
understanding that heterogeneous movement beyond familiar clichés can ignore the argument
presented by this beautiful study." — Talal Asad, Distinguished Professor of
Anthropology, CUNY Graduate Center, and author of Formations of the Secular:
Christianity, Islam, Modernity

"A
sensitive listener, Hirschkind writes in a way that conveys the inner life of counterpublics in
Egypt to those of us who could not otherwise hear their voices. This is an indispensable book."
— William E. Connolly, Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Political Science, Johns
Hopkins University, and author of Pluralism />

Related Subjects

Series

Cultures of History

About the Author

Charles Hirschkind is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the coeditor, with David Scott, of Powers of the Secular Modern (Stanford 2005) and has published numerous articles on religious practice, media technologies, and emergent forms of political community in the Middle East.

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