Sonic Relations
Devotion and Community in Turkey's Eastern Borderlands
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Indiana University Press
Published:5th May '26
Should be back in stock very soon
Sonic Relations explores how sound shapes religious life and community among Twelver Shi'i Muslims in eastern Turkey and beyond, examining the powerful role of devotional recitation in cultivating relationships not only among people, but also with the unseen. These sonic practices are central to Muslim devotional life, and through media and public ritual performance, they also shape how identity is expressed in broader social and political spheres.
Attending to a range of sonic forms and events, such as public processions, ritual lamentations, and the circulation of audiovisual recordings, Stefan Williamson Fa offers a new relational perspective on Islam, foregrounding affiliations with more-than-human figures and civic life. Whether communal, devotional, or transnational, Twelvers' relationships with their communities and with the unseen enable them to cultivate the self through sounding and listening. Grounded in detailed ethnographic material collected in Turkey's eastern borderlands and via transnational networks in Iran, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Germany, Williamson Fa tells a compelling story about the human and more-than-human relations Twelver Shias seek to cultivate amid the Republic of Turkey's changing society and politics.
Through vivid ethnographic vignettes, analysis, and audiovisual examples, Sonic Relations offers an intimate look at how Twelver Shii Muslims forge bonds of love, faith, and community within Turkey and across borders. It invites readers to rethink religion, not as belief alone, but as a sensory, relational, and deeply embodied experience.
"What I really appreciate about this monograph is the richness of the ethnography. . . . The intricate detailed accounts of the Twelver rituals, recitations, festivals, and media worlds are vivid and provide a welcome, lively look at this community and their religious orientations."—Kim Shively, author of Islam in Modern Turkey
"Stefan Williamson Fa's important book explores one of the salient questions in the emerging field of sensory Islamic studies: what is the role of sound in shaping the devotional, relational, and affective worlds through which Shi'i life is lived? Grounded in a brilliant ethnographic analysis of sonic and listening practices in Eastern Anatolia, while also oriented toward translocal and transnational Shi'i worlds, Sonic Relations shows that sound functions as the affective medium through which devotional, communal, and transnational relations emerge. This is an indispensable work for anyone seeking to understand the sensory and relational dimensions of Shi'i devotional culture in everyday ritual life."—Babak Rahimi, editor of Performing Iran: Culture, Performance, Theatre
"An insightful and original analysis of the sonic infrastructure of Shi'a life in northeastern Turkey. Drawing on a wonderfully rich ethnographic archive, Williamson Fa deftly explores the sensory world of Shi'a ritual, the sounds, images, tastes, and smells by which Shi'a Muslims weave together their own lives with both the Family of the Prophet and the family of the nation. His nuanced analysis of how the intersubjective potentialities of sound enable this minority religious group to navigate the tensions and fissures of their precarious position within the Turkish religious and national landscape is an immense contribution to scholarly discussions of contemporary Islam. A remarkable scholarly achievement!"—Charles Hirschkind, author of The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and Islamic Counterpublics
"Williamson Fa's monograph provides a meticulous anthropological study of Turkey's Twelver Shiis. By foregrounding the role of sound in creating religious subjectivities and socialities, it equally makes a significant contribution to the Anthropology of Islam more widely."—Oliver Scharbrodt, author of Muhammad 'Abduh: Modern Islam and the Culture of Ambiguity
ISBN: 9780253075727
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
234 pages