Social Codicology: The Multiple Lives of Texts in Muslim Societies (original) (raw)

Abstract

This three-day joint workshop will take place in Rabat, Morocco, and focusses on the social and material aspects of manuscripts in Muslim Societies. The main objective of the conference is to go beyond the dominant focus on the reading of texts, manuscripts, and script. Instead, we propose that books and other written materials have many more uses than just reading, purposes which might often be even more important in the social practices of texts. We strongly encourage interest in these other aspects of the social life of texts, looking at them as objects and commodities. Starting from the idea that texts in their material, read and recited forms have social lives and hence biographies, we would like to promote in this workshop the idea of social codicology, an interdisciplinary approach that combines philological methods, such as codicology and paleography, with ethnographic approaches, such as participant observation and the conducting of interviews. This interdisciplinary approach encourages the study of book copying, consuming, collecting, storing, venerating, discarding and preserving, both in historical and contemporary societies. The workshop proceedings will be published in a special edited volume on Social Codicology in the peer reviewed book series Studies in Islam and Society (Brill Publishers). Practical note: All participants, except for the keynote speakers, have at most thirty minutes for a presentation, followed by a discussion of fifteen minutes.