An Imagined Geography by JoAnn D'Alisera

Author:JoAnn D'Alisera [D'Alisera, JoAnn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Anthropology, General
ISBN: 9780812201727
Google: ic6rFjjKXkkC
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: 2013-04-19T03:20:58+00:00

For many of these men, their taxis have become an important frame of reference through which their religious identity can be expressed and validated. The flow of religious identity into the workplace is still a fairly uncommon practice in America, and ignorance of basic Muslim ritual remains widespread. “Sunday is for religion,” the manager of a local convenience store told one informant who had asked for Fridays off to attend the required communal prayer, typically bracketing off the public, secular workspace from the American-defined private realm of religion. In their resistance to such bounded categories of meaning, these taxi drivers blur the lines that seem so deeply etched into the American psyche. For them, their taxis come to embody an emergent Muslim identity set within and against a series of conflicting cultural discourses.

Moreover, in their resistance to dominant American understandings of the place of religion, these taxi drivers have come to view themselves as the disseminators of Islam. This is illustrated by the ways they decorate—inscribe—their taxis with religious markers, by their proffering of religious pamphlets to perfect strangers, on-the-job da‘wa, and services they render fellow Muslims, such as giving free transport to the Islamic Center.

On their way to Friday communal prayer, many taxi drivers look for fellow congregants heading down Massachusetts Avenue, and offer them rides. Muslims who have been in the area for a time know this, so they wait on corners or near bus stops hoping to spot a passing Muslim-driven taxi. One Friday, when I was waiting at a bus stop about ten blocks from the Center, Mustafa drove by, pulled over, and offered me a lift. As I hopped in the front seat, several other men and women who were on their way to the mosque squeezed into the back. Mustafa pulled up in front of the Center to let his passengers off before parking down the block. Everyone hopped out of the cab except me. I would accompany Mustafa and walk back with him. A young Kuwaiti man, new to the community, reached for his wallet and offered to pay. Mustafa laughed, and we explained the situation to him. Again—and in a far more positive way than the story that opens this chapter—Mustafa’s taxi had become a vehicle to enact piety. Identity had been inscribed onto place through action as well as by means of decorative symbols.

This active inscription of identity is also illustrated by the relationship that Sierra Leonean taxi drivers have with Sierra Leonean food vendors, most of whom are women. The women, too, often tell tales of dissatisfaction with working for Americans. Like other transnational women elsewhere in North America (see Colen 1986, 1990; Romero 1992), many had previously worked in nursing homes or as child care providers in the homes of upper-middle class families. My food vendor informants often explained that they preferred the confinement of their own hot dog stand to working in someone else’s home, where they were often prohibited from practicing their religion. One informant, who had

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