Ethnography as sohbet. The challenges of conducting collaborative ethnographic research with Uyghur Sufis in exile

Guest lecture by Professor Rachel Harris, SOAS, London.

Abstract

This talk is part of a wider project which aims to bring a critical and reflexive lens to the methodologies of ethnographic interviews with displaced Muslims. Here, I reflect on a series of interviews with Uyghur Sufis living in exile in Dubai, Mecca and Istanbul. Their approach to our ethnographic encounters was rooted in their traditions of sohbet (religious teaching) and helqe sohbet (gatherings for zikr and sung poetry). These modes of communication involve particular styles of speech and embodiment, citation of traditions of spiritual poetry, and vivid accounts of the sounds, rhythms, and ‘spiritual joy’ (rohi ghuzur) produced in their gatherings. I draw on discussions of “genres of listening” (Kapchan 2017), and the ways that they orient the listener in particular affective directions, performing different aesthetic and political work. How should an ethnographer listen to sohbet, and what is the place of the ethnographer within the transnational communities of affect created through the circulation of helqe sohbet?