| Abstract: |
This article studies uses of Instagram by members of Indonesia’s Hijabers’
Community. It shows how hijabers employ Instagram as a stage for performing
middle-classness, but also for dakwah (“the call, invitation or challenge to
Islam”), which they consider one of their primary tasks as Muslims. By
enfolding the taking and sharing of images of Muslimah bodies on Instagram
into this Quranic imperative, the hijabers shape an Islamic-themed bodily
esthetic for middle class women, and at the same time present this bodily
esthetic as a form of Islamic knowledge. The article extends work on
influencer culture on Instagram, which has considered how and whether women
exert control over their bodies in post-feminist performances of female
entrepreneurship and consumer choice on social media. In it, we argue that
examining the “enframement” of hijaberness on Instagram show it to be both a
Muslim variant of post-feminist performances on social media, and a female
variant of electronically-mediated Muslim preaching. That is, hijabers’
performances of veiled femininity structure and are structured by two distinct
fields - a dynamic global digital culture and a changing field of Islamic
communication – and point to a “composite habitus,” similar to that identified
by Waltorp. |