power, resistance, and the cult of Muslim saints in a northern Egyptian town

Practice theory is employed to analyze the cult of Muslim saints. Unlike much of the previous work by anthropologists on this topic, the present study has an urban, rather than rural and tribal, ethnographic locus. A major finding is that privileged as well as nonprivileged individuals use the cult for ideological discourse and dramaturgy. This has seminal implications for understanding the relation of power to resistance. An unobtrusive form of power that does not inspire resistance appears to match Bourdieu's concept of “symbolic power.” In contrast with the Weberian and Marxist zero‐sum views of power, symbolic power appears to be a positive‐sum phenomenon. [power, resistance, discourse, practice theory, Muslim saint cult, urban Egypt]