Shopping with Allah: Muslim pilgrimage, gender and consumption in a globalized world
We are delighted to announce that our colleague PD Dr. Viola Thimm published her latest book Shopping with Allah: Muslim pilgrimage, gender and consumption in a globalized world with UCL Press. It is now available to download from the UCL Press website. The printed book can be ordered via the UCL website as well.
This ethnography illustrates the ways in which religion is mobilised in package tourism and how spiritual, economic and gendered practices are combined in a form of tourism where the goal is not purely leisure but also ethical and spiritual cultivation. Focusing on the intersection of gender and Islam, it shows how this intersection develops and changes in a pilgrimage-tourism nexus as part of capitalist and halal consumer markets. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates and Oman, it sheds light on how Islam and gender frame Malaysian religious tourism and pilgrimage to the Arabian Peninsula, but it raises many issues that are of great importance beyond these regional contexts.
