Dr Morgan Clarke
Associate Professor in Social Anthropology
Fellow of Keble College
Arabic-speaking Middle East, Islam, law, (bio)ethics, kinship, modernity.
Morgan Clarke is an anthropologist of the Arabic-speaking Middle East with a particular interest in contemporary Islam, especially Islamic law and its relationship to positive law, secular ethics and the civil state. His fieldwork to date has been in Lebanon (2003-4, 2007-8). His doctoral work (Oxford, 2006) focused on Islamic bioethics, concerning assisted reproduction in particular, and was published as Islam and New Kinship: Reproductive Technology and the Shariah in Lebanon (Berghahn, 2009). His next major project studied Lebanon’s sharia (family law) courts, the topic of his second book, Islam and Law in Lebanon: Sharia Within and Without the State (CUP, 2018). He continues to be interested in the social life of the sharia and Islamic religious authority more generally
Contact
Email: morgan.clarke@anthro.ox.ac.uk
Telephone: +44 (0)1865 612364
Morgan will be on leave from January to September 2018 and therefore the Middle East option course will not run in 2017-18.
Morgan Clarke's latest book, Islam and Law in Lebanon: Sharia Within and Without the State (CUP, 2018), was developed through postdoctoral work at Cambridge (British Academy PDF, 2006-9) and Manchester (Simon Research Fellowship, 2009-11), and is an ethnography of sharia discourse in Lebanon, focusing on the sharia (family law) courts and their relationship to non-state Islamic institutions. That involved fieldwork in both Sunni and Shi‘i contexts, including mosques, Sufi circles and the offices of major religious authorities, most notably Lebanon’s late Ayatollah Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah. With regard to the latter, Clarke has an enduring interest in Shi‘i Islam, the subject of a number of his journal articles and a recent special issue of the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies (45, 1; 2018) on ‘De-Centring Shi‘i Islam’, co-edited with Mirjam Künkler.
As well as contributing to the anthropology of Islam and the Middle East, Morgan’s research engages with both the anthropology of law and the new anthropology of ethics. He welcomes applications for doctoral research and other collaborations in any of those areas.
2018 Islam and law in Lebanon: sharia within and without the state. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
2016 After the Ayatollah: routinisation and succession in the marja‘iyya of Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah. Die Welt des Islams 56(2): 153-186.
2015 Legalism and the care of the self: shari‘ah discourse in contemporary Lebanon. In Paul Dresch and Judith Scheele (eds.), Legalism: rules and categories. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2014 Cough sweets and angels: the ordinary ethics of the extraordinary in Sufi practice in Lebanon. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 20(3): 407-425.
2013 Integrity and commitment in the anthropology of Islam. In Magnus Marsden and Kostas Retsikas (eds.), Articulating Islam: anthropological approaches to Muslim worlds. New York: Springer.
2012 The judge as tragic hero: judicial ethics in Lebanon’s shari‘a courts. American Ethnologist 39(1): 106-121.
2011 (Co-authored with Marcia Inhorn.) Mutuality and immediacy between marja‘ and muqallid: evidence from male IVF patients in Shi‘i Lebanon. International Journal of Middle East Studies 43(3): 409-427.
2010 Neo-calligraphy: religious authority and media technology in contemporary Shiite Islam. Comparative Studies in Society and History 52(2): 351-383.
2009 Islam and new kinship: reproductive technology and the shariah in Lebanon. New York: Berghahn Books.
-
Islam and Law in Lebanon Sharia within and without the State
2018|BookA dynamic account of the sharia in Lebanon as both state law and as personal ethics.Law -
De-centring Shii Islam
2018|Journal article|BRITISH JOURNAL OF MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES -
Making a centre in the periphery: the legitimation of Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah's Beirut Marjaiyya
2018|Journal article|BRITISH JOURNAL OF MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES -
Comment
2016|Journal article|Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute -
Donor Human Milk for Muslim Infants in the United Kingdom
2016|Journal article|Archives of Disease in Childhood -
Donor human milk for Muslim infants in the UK.
2016|Journal article|Archives of disease in childhood. Fetal and neonatal edition -
After the Ayatollah: Institutionalisation and Succession in the marja'iyya of Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Fadl Allāh
2016|Journal article|Welt des Islams© 2016 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. This paper deals with the death of a high religious authority, the Twelver Shi'i marja'al-taqlīd, or "Grand Ayatollah", Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Fald Allāh. The emphasis given to following a living authority within the Twelver Shi'i tradition makes their passing a moment of crisis, all the more so in the case of a figure who made "contemporaneity" a cornerstone of his distinctive appeal. I examine not only the events surrounding Fald Allāh's death but also its aftermath, in particular the question of the "succession" to his legacy. In an unorthodox move that maintains his reputation for controversy, Fald Allāh's organisation has continued to operate as an independent foundation in his name without falling under the aegis of a living authority. This serves as an illuminating case study of issues of succession and institutionalisation within the Twelver Shi'i tradition and beyond. -
'Islamic bioethics' in tra nsnational perspective
2015|Chapter|Assisted Reproductive Technologies in the Third Phase: Global Encounters and Emerging Moral Worlds -
Legalism and the care of the self: shari'ah discourse in contemporary Lebanon
2015|Chapter|Legalism: rules and categories -
The Social Politics of Islamic Bioethics
2015|Journal article|WELT DES ISLAMS
More
