Bourdieu and Bengali Islam. A spatial temporal discussion of the adoption and social utility of Islam for British Sylheti Bangladeshi Muslim Workers in (Tower Hamlets) East London (eBook)

Seminar paper from the year 2017 in the subject Sociology - Religion, London Metropolitan University (Working Lives Research Institute), course: Dprof Researching Work, language: English, abstract: This work explores the spiritual thought and bodily work that has been an integral part of Islamic faith. The discussion in the work aims to examine the Islamic process of spiritual conversion and bodily work that began for the Bangladeshis with migration and human capital investments defined by Arabic power that would provide the basis of identity and social organization.

The discussion asserts the argument that the Islamic faith, through the reproductions of kin networks, as well as the operation of a specific set of social practices and social action suffused with Islamic representations, was reproduced by the Bengali workers, replicated through migration within the predominance of the family to transform the urban space of the London borough Tower Hamlets into an sub-Islamic field with religious citizens with religious agency and identities.

A social constructionist approach was undertaken for the study which aimed to provide an additional insight into a number of keys areas with a distinct focus on faith and how faith as a social lexical marker affected the first and second generation of the Bangladeshi’s experiences and views pertaining to social solidarity and work. The research aimed to explore the mutually constituted relationship of the Bangladeshi people of Tower Hamlets, the social structures, the spheres of Tower Hamlets, the hybrid actors, their networks, their habitus and the reproduction of the distinctly ethnic and islamicized field and capitals in social life.