Abstract

This thesis examines the lives of women in the madrasa world of Bangladesh by focusing on moral reasoning as the process through which agency is exercised. The thesis develops the concept of atmospheric agency, a term I use to describe how women reason within intersecting institutional, familial, economic, digital, psychological, and affective conditions, which together I term “atmosphere.” Drawing on digital ethnographic research across Qawmi, Aliya, and madrasa-school settings, as well as digital religious spaces, the study traces how women reason within distinct yet overlapping moral worlds. In conservative Qawmi madrasas, life unfolds within a segregated atmosphere structured by a cycle of constraints that shapes women’s engagement with study, work, and aspirations, while reformist Aliya and madrasa-school contexts involve more flexible forms of segregation. Digital religious spaces further illustrate these dynamics as they enable new forms of learning, authority, regulation, and critique. The thesis shows that both action and non-action can be agentive outcomes of moral reasoning within the particular atmosphere of a woman’s life. It demonstrates how movement toward stricter religiosity is itself agentive, and that within conservative settings, women can push against dominant norms. In doing so, women’s moral reasoning becomes a means through which they shape and transform the atmospheres in which they live. The thesis thus offers a new framework for understanding the actions of religiously practicing women.