Exploring Islamic Public Administration: Ethnographic and Socio-Legal Approaches

This article aims to present and develop methodological tools and analytical insights for the empirical study of Islamic Public Administration (PA). To achieve this, it reviews some of the most common theoretical and analytical approaches in ethnography and socio-legal studies and highlights their relevance and contributions to research on Islamic PA. Specifically, it demonstrates how to (a) conduct ethnographic fieldwork on Islamic PA institutions and (b) analyze, conceptualize, and write about this type of ethnographic fieldwork within PA research. Theoretically, the article draws on socio-legal theories to construct a conceptual framework for analyzing living Islamic administrative traditions within local communities. The central argument is that employing ethnographic and socio-legal methods enables us to view Islamic PA as a living tradition, expressed through the mundane, everyday administrative practices and traditions found in various Muslim contexts. To substantiate this argument, the article presents empirical material from the author’s ethnographic study of Mahalla institutions in Uzbekistan, illustrating how to conduct and write about Islamic PA research in practice. By doing so, this chapter aims to illuminate theoretical and methodological aspects of ethnographic fieldwork, with the hope of inspiring new empirically oriented studies on Islamic PA.