Ethno-religious socialisation, national culture and the social construction of British Muslim identity

Riyaz Timol

doi:10.1007/s11562-020-00454-y

Abstract

This paper interfaces a specific theory of socialisation, derived from Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s influential book The Social Construction of Reality, with the empirical story of Muslim settlement in Britain. It makes a key distinction between the primary socialisation experiences of immigrants, which unfolded in their countries of origin, and that of their diaspora-born offspring whose identity is forged between an inherited ethno-religious culture and the wider British collective conscience. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork conducted with the Islamic revivalist movement Tablighi Jama’at, the paper explores the cultural embodiments of religion as it evolves over generations through an examination of identity markers such as language, dress and food. The analysis triangulates Berger and Luckmann’s concepts of primary and secondary socialisation with a tripartite model of British Muslim identity developed by Ron Geaves. It further argues, in light of Kwame Gyekye’s theory of nation-building, that recent government efforts to promulgate a set of fundamental British values in schools represent an essentially Durkheimian attempt to supply the ‘social glue’ that binds citizens together. While the article acknowledges the increasing salience of religion for many British-born Muslims, it argues for the ongoing influence of ethnicity and nationality in determining their lived experience.

Highlights

In their influential treatise on the sociology of knowledge, Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann (1966) postulate a triangular dynamic in which human social experience is mediated with reference to three distinct processes
Drawing on this theoretical model, this paper proposes a framework for understanding the social construction of British Muslim identity
While the salience of religion has clearly been foregrounded for many second-generation British Muslims— those affiliated with revivalist movements such as the Tablighi Jama’at—I would argue that their lived experiences continue to be mediated by a confluence of ethnic ancestry as well as the socio-cultural contexts in which their secondary socialisations occur

Summary

Introduction

In their influential treatise on the sociology of knowledge, Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann (1966) postulate a triangular dynamic in which human social experience is mediated with reference to three distinct processes. They are objectivated as they sediment into institutions and traditions which reify over time into entities sui generis—constellations of monolithic meaning that impose themselves upon groups of human actors; though, crucially, they remain dependent upon those same human actors for their ongoing production They are internalised through ongoing processes of socialisation in which the taken-forgranted suppositions of the culture in question penetrate the subjective consciousness of new generations of children or newcomers to the social order who, in the case of thoroughly socialised individuals, can imagine no other way of being. Though the above theoretical system was developed in reference to a generic sociology of knowledge, Berger (1967) later applied it to religion, transforming the ‘symbolic universe’ advanced in his work with Luckmann into The Sacred Canopy Drawing on this theoretical model, this paper proposes a framework for understanding the social construction of British Muslim identity. The paper concludes that British Muslim identity should best be viewed as a cultural mélange or disorderly bricolage that draws simultaneously from multiple sources and which manifests differently under the pressure of different situations

Primary socialisation and Muslim nurture

Secondary socialisation and the contemporary British collective conscience

Diaspora religiosity as a cultural mélange

Findings

Conclusion