Abstract

The presentation will introduce how media production plays a major role in the articulation of Islamic reform agenda in contemporary Niger. It will focus on the Islamic discotheque and how young Muslims appropriate this media infrastructure to convey a religious discourse and construct their authority. It will highlight the twin processes through which the Islamic discotheque contributes to the materiality of Islamic reform and the emergence of youth as socio-religious shifters. The dynamism of the media culture that emerges within this context, it will be shown, rests on the connection young Muslims make between a moral economy that seeks to reshape the moral horizon of the society, and a market economy that illustrates the economic dimensions of the reform enterprise. Thus, more than epiphenomena, the forms of mediation that arise with the Islamic discotheque might have a structural effect on the religious field in general.