A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the reqirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (anthropology) in the Univeristy of Michigan 2002"--title page. / Dissertation: Dissertation (Ph.D.)--University of Michigan. " This ia an authorized facsimile, made from the microfilm master copy of the original dissertation or master thesis--UMI.

This thesis constitutes a case study of how an Islamic institution in London is produced as an object of knowledge. It develops an argument by Maussen about mosques in Western Europe, which suggests that they ‘do not have a self-evident, clear and constant meaning’. On the basis of a literature review, he points to how academics have shaped ‘the processes of the production of meaning’ regarding these mosques, something that has political consequences for knowledge. This thesis builds on his work by shifting the research focus to a specific example of an Islamic institution, and including a broader group of actors involved in its production as an object of knowledge. For this research, I undertook an ethnographic study of the institution, holding a junior position within the leadership as a way of learning about its everyday life. This material is complemented by other forms of data, such as research literature, archival sources, media accounts, Council documentation, Parliamentary proceedings, maps, images, and photographs. The thesis has three ‘threads’, which fall into six chapters. The ‘public sphere’ thread comprises three chapters, which look at the institution’s representation by and engagement with three sets of actors: researchers, state representatives, and journalists. A ‘community’ chapter explores local productions of meaning: specifically, how the community’s internal complexity shapes understandings of the institution. Finally, the ‘history’ thread comprises two explorations: perspectives on the meaning of its foundational moment, and its relationship with the history of its built environment. Each of the chapters offers a way of reading the institution, while there are also matters of internal heterogeneity, and further temporal and material complexities in its construction as an object of knowledge. The thesis conclusion proposes the metaphor of ‘palimpsest’ to describe the resultant complexity of meaning in play.

The present work explores my practice as a photojournalist researching anthropological issues in the Muslim world. I use the Hawzas, the Muslim Shi’a seminaries, as my case study to invite a visually informed approach to the human sciences, and promote a practical usage of aesthetics. Because of the dramatic disproportion between socio-cultural relevance and under-representation, the Hawzas offer an extremely valuable opportunity to research issues of Orientalism and Orientalist visual archives. By questioning my own fieldwork practice alongside the visual signification of the Hawzas, I reconnect the pre-production to the post-production phase, and encompass within it a shared outlook issues of both the Real and the represented. I posit the photograph within wider multimedia and multi-audience practices as a stand-alone communicative device and part of a montage to assess its communicative features in relation to the verbal as a caption, and to the visual, in montage. Through this, I distinguish a phenomenological framework of analysis to urge a radical rethinking of personal and social agencies, and suggest the notion of communicative hubs for today’s globalised identities. I evince the extent to which the digital is reshaping forms of visual-led and multimedia production, knowledge distribution and media consumption to finally contextualise the photograph as ‘semantics without ontology.’ I conclude by advocating my ideas of the ‘Meta- Image’ and ‘Public Cultures 2.0’ as two integrated formats for visual-led communication, digital media practice, social engagement and public impact as specifically addressing Muslim cultures.

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