Prof. Janet McIntosh (ANTH) was recently awarded the 2010 Clifford Geertz prize for the Anthropology of Religion for her book, The Edge of Islam: Power, Personhood, and Ethno-religious Boundaries on the Kenya Coast, according to BrandeisNOW.McIntosh's book explores the ethnic and religious tensions of the Swahili and Giriama peoples of Kenya while discussing how each group specifically relates to the practice of Islam.

McIntosh said in an interview with the Justice that she was inspired to write this book because "Islam is all over the news right now and I think it's too easy for people to imagine that there is just one Islam. Something I focused on was the idea that there are many Islams, and Islam can mean very different things to people of different cultural backgrounds."

According to the BrandeisNow article, the Clifford Geertz prize is given to an "outstanding work in the field" of anthropological study. The prize is given each year by the Society for the Anthropology of Religion.

Members of the award's selection committee award the prize to what book they feel is the best in the anthropology of religion for that year, Misty Bastian of Franklin and Marshall College, one of the individuals directly involved in awarding the Geertz Prize, wrote in an e-mail to the Justice.

According to its website, the Society for the Anthropology of Religion is a section of the American Anthropological Association that seeks to facilitate the research and teaching of the anthropology of religion.

"The Selection Committee chose McIntosh's study both for its theoretical rigor and for its 'thick description' of religious, moral life in a place where people move between indigenous practice and Islam in Kenya," Bastian wrote.

A particular focal point of McIntosh's book centers on how each group interprets the self, and in turn, its understanding and practice of Islam.

"The Swahili and the Giriama [communities], have very different ideas of what a person should be and what a person is. And so one thing I really explored in the book is that these different models of personhood really inform their different versions of Islam," she wrote.

In an interview with the Justice, McIntosh said she is currently working on a second book that explores the adaptation of white Kenyans who are the descendants of colonial settlers.