David Strohl

Cultural Anthropology

Regional focus: India, Mumbai (Bombay).

Topical interests: Muslim Societies, Personhood, Historical Anthropology, and Anthropology of History.

I do anthropology because it provides a means for examining how our relationships with others structure the ways that we live in the world and impinge upon who we can be. My dissertation focuses on Mumbai's (Bombay) Ismaili Khoja community, a largely prosperous community of merchants who follow the Ismaili branch of Shi'a Islam. The Khojas are uniquely positioned in Mumbai, because on the one hand, as Muslims they are the subjects of discourses that demonize all Muslims as anti-national. On the other hand, as members of an Ismaili minority within the already minority Muslim population in India, they are subject to "reformist" discourses that question their commitment to Islam. I examine how Khojas negotiate these discourses by encouraging social practices that "represent the self" in ways that obscure controversial information or reveal facets of their social life that demonstrates their commitment to Islamic principles and to the values of the nation-state.

I am also interested in the variety of ways that people represent the past. This involves evaluating how anthropologists and historians write histories as well as the variety of ways that the people we study represent the past. My work on this subject has led me to analyze a series of 19th century court cases involving the Aga Khan and the Khoja community, where competing parties sought to define the religion of the Khojas through the use of differing historical representations.