Abstract

This thesis considers the everyday lives of pious Dawoodi Bohra women to understand how these women construct their subjectivity and embed their agency within a religious community to constitute a self that is multilayered and challenges the way religious women’s lives have been understood in scholarship. The thesis analyses the women’s lived experience and understandings of embodiment, gender roles, mothering, and other everyday activities. The role of self-representation on social media in constructing subjectivity is also considered. This thesis argues that the lives of women in conservative religious contexts are not necessarily “encapsulated by narratives of subversion” (Mahmood 2005, 9) and that agency needs to be examined independently of such ideas and and in its specific social and cultural context. The thesis shows how religious women deploy ‘creative conformity’ (Bucar 2011) to negotiate religious and community norms in their everyday lives while remaining within the boundaries of the Dawoodi Bohra community.