The article authored by Lila Abu-Lughod explores Egypt from 1978 to 1980 in to the world of the Awlad 'Ali Bedouins, more specifically the worlds apart the men and women live in. The author aims to make a compelling argument that not all Muslim people, especially women, share the same ideology or methodology. She aims to provide the truth about the social morals, values, and lifestyles in general through her two year immersion with the Bedouin women located in the Egyptian Western Desert. Two Worlds Apart One of Abu-Lughod’s frequent topic is the value that the Bedouin people put on kinship. Throughout the article she references kinship as one of the most important determining factors for a woman’s status within the tribes. If the woman is older she may have a higher status among the group, yet if the woman is younger and marries a man with higher status, she is then also in a higher status. The social breakdown of men and women here is not so black and white. The author wants to expose just how much the women prefer their men away, and the freedom this lifestyle provides. Although some younger or lower status men are allowed with the female groups, men are …show more content…
It is mentioned in the article that women are and should be happy to have six wonderful children. The article also explains the importance of elder women and men within the tribes, thus further suggesting these people are in fact become more sedentary. The high childbearing rate, low mortality along with men having more than one wife in some cases, demonstrates the kind of people that are not constantly on the move and pregnancy can be supported more often. This also brings to mind the subject of the Amish people discussed in class. Although vastly different geographical location and livelihood, the multiple wifes and high child birth rates gives a sense of comparison of what the Bedouin people are moving
It is important to note that Elizabeth Warnock Fernea herself is a brilliant writer, and her piece of Guests of the Sheik offers a very in debt analysis of an Iraqi village that would not be seen from most outsiders. How while Fernea concedes the fact that she is not an anthropologist she was married to one and the first two years of their marriage they lived in an Iraqi village called El Nahra. Since she lived in a village that has hardly any social contact between men and women, Fernea is able to give us a beautiful account of what the women’s life style, roles, and other aspects of a women’s life in an Iraqi village. While women are not treated incredibly badly there lifestyle was a lot different than the one an American woman would live. One of the primary directions of Fernea’s study are to show how the author could be credible in ultimately idealizing her culture and peoples in this ethnography. She uses her Self authority to convince the reader of that and her interactions with other women. The
Elizabeth Fernea entered El Nahra, Iraq as an innocent bystander. However, through her stay in the small Muslim village, she gained cultural insight to be passed on about not only El Nahra, but all foreign culture. As Fernea entered the village, she was viewed with a critical eye, ?It seemed to me that many times the women were talking about me, and not in a particularly friendly manner'; (70). The women of El Nahra could not understand why she was not with her entire family, and just her husband Bob. The women did not recognize her American lifestyle as proper. Conversely, BJ, as named by the village, and Bob did not view the El Nahra lifestyle as particularly proper either. They were viewing each other through their own cultural lenses. However, through their constant interaction, both sides began to recognize some benefits each culture possessed. It takes time, immersed in a particular community to understand the cultural ethos and eventually the community as a whole. Through Elizabeth Fernea?s ethnography on Iraq?s El Nahra village, we learn that all cultures have unique and equally important aspects.
... hers. These children, especially sons, are who secure a more stable status for her in her husband’s kin, since she might still be considered an outsider long after she married. “The position of women and attitudes about the bonds created by marriage give the clearest index of the ideological dominance of agnation in social identity and relationships in Bedouin society”. Polygyny, that is a husband taking more than one wife, is accepted by the Awlad ‘Ali, and they see everything that is advantageous to life about it. The co-wives are part of the fundamental aid-systems, raising each other children together.
Writing Women's Worlds is some stories on the Bedouin Egyptian people. In this book, thwe writer Lia Adu-Lughod's stories differ from the conventional ones. While reading, we discover the customs and values of the Bedouin people.
The fate and struggles of these characters address the tragedy of the under representation of women’s experiences, and a fatal flaw of societies which do not grant women equal status. Sexuality, privileging of males in terms of status law (and women’s control over their own choices in marriage), inheritance rights, restrictions on female mobility, lack of representation of women’s experiences, violence against women, the intersection between nationalist/ resistance struggles and women’s rights, tensions between modernization and cultural preservation, the haunting specter of (and the need to divorce their goals from those associated with) colonial or Westernizing forces, etc. are all issues represented in this book, that are major concerns of Middle Eastern feminist scholars and movements today.
It revolves around the issues of gender oppression, sexual assault, and importance of social status. Alifa Rifaat manages to express her opinions towards these themes by writing about a typical Egyptian marriage. She puts in focus the strong influence that a patriarchal society has. She also manages to prove how important social status is in society. The uses of literally elements such as theme and irony help express this view. It shows that in a typical Egyptian society women are commonly oppressed by all males in society
There also would not be as large of a population as based on Diamonds’ statement, “ nomadic hunter-gatherers have to keep their children spaced at four year intervals by infanticide and other means,” (Diamond). While certainly not advocating any form of infanticide, if a woman only has...
In the book, Women in the Middle East, a Saudi Arabian proverb states, "A girl possesses nothing but a veil and a tomb" (Harik and Marston 83). The key words, "veil" and "tomb" lend evidence to the fact that many Middle Eastern women lack identity symbolized by the “veil” and lack the right of ownership except for their veil and the tomb. This statement further enforces the notion that many women in the Middle East are expected to serve and tolerate the oppression of the men in their lives throughout their lives on this earth. Moreover, it confirms that many of these women do not get the opportunity to obtain education, join the work force, and even participate in the political affairs of the country. This arrangement further helps the Middle Eastern men to view women as their properties, servants, or even as slaves. Ultimately, there are three main reasons why Middle Eastern men engage in the act of oppressing their women.
The Arab world is traditionally and originally a male-dominated culture, where male authority is the norm throughout most Arab countries. Subsequently, even with the introduction of Islam and the acknowledgement of women’s rights coming about in the early 20th century, as will later be described, there still remain those traditional components that affect male-female interactions and relationships in Arab societies. Gender and gender inequality are present in Arab societies still today and are at the forefront of Arab societies. Aspects of gender inequality, for the most part, appear with respect to those of employment and education opportunities, political rights, and justices in marriage. As a starting point, one can stress that there is a general view, on a large global scale that Arab society is one where gender issues and gender relations exist despite the recent protests/riots.
Ibnouf, Fatma Osman. “Women And The Arab Spring.” Women & Environments International Magazine 92/93(2013): 18-21. MasterFILE Elite.Web.31 Mar. 2014.
The Women of the Middle East have played substantial roles for their corresponding countries since the advent of colonialism in the region. Middle Eastern women have worked in all types of fields including medicine, education, agriculture, government, private sector, and even defense. They have kept roofs over their family’s heads while their husbands were away in wars, or even in foreign countries to work in jobs that they could not find in their own countries. The roles of women in the countries of Yemen and Oman are no exception, but while they still find ways to contribute to their country, they care constantly stereotyped, discriminated, and ridiculed by men who are known and unknown to them. This paper will discuss the individual contributions of the women living in Yemen and Oman, and will discuss in further state laws and cultural norms that are affecting the women living in these countries today.
This essay concerns itself with exploring the Islamic and political orientation of Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966), an Egyptian civil servant turned political and religious activist, inspired by fundamentalist Islam. To gain an understanding of what influenced and formulated Qutb’s ideas it has been necessary to provide some background information relating the history of modern day Egypt and the emergence of reformist and fundamentalist Islam, from the 19th century until Qutb’s time. The essay also seeks to give some biographical information in order to provide a fuller picture of Qutb the man.
“Religion is an incredibly sensitive issue in Egypt, with many Christians and Muslims refusing to accept people leaving their congregation”(9). The article “Egypt: The forbidden love of interfaith romances” by Ali Gamal shows the challenges that inter-faithful relationships in Egypt have attend to; specifically, focusing on struggles faced in attempt to be with their significant other. Specifically, as the Egyptian law extremely restrictive towards inter faithful couples they are unable to marry in Egypt without both partners being Muslim. To illustrate how strong Egypt implements their marriage law, Gamal describes a couple Abeer and Mohammad, whom have been married for 24 years after she was forced to switch from Catholic to Muslim; although,
Alienation is a concept that is universal to all people of all cultures in the world and throughout all time periods. These feelings of alienation, in some form or another, have affected every human begin that has ever taken a breath and will until the race is extinct. It is these feelings of alienation that influence so many of our activities, our thoughts, and the way we shape our lives and the manner in which we form our societies. It is these reactions to alienation that have played such a large role in the shaping of cultures and societies and for this reason it is important to study the alienation that is being discussed here. It is necessary to choose a group first of all and for our purpose here it will be women in the Arab culture. This is a very diverse culture and therefore we cannot deal with any specific society too in depth and so therefore we will look at examples provided from Arab women’s novels as well as look at the culture as a whole and over a large geographic region. We will be primarily concerned with the sources of alienation that bring these feelings and/or situations of alienation about and focusing on a socioanalytic evaluation of these sources. Also important in this discourse are the situations of the present that we will examine by looking at a few examples from the Arab women’s novels, but also the in-depth analyses of the situations and experiences. Finally, we will look at what these situations and analyses mean for the future of Arab women and the circumstances they may be provided with in years to come and how they might deal with new forms of alienation and at the same time different forms of dealienation or situations of being able to enter parts of society and the world that they have not been able to for numbers of years, and in some cases parts they have never experienced—historically speaking. In short, the purpose of this discourse is to understand the alienation that is a part of the lives of Arab women. This is not supposed to be a definitive analysis, but rather the introduction
The Harvard researchers concluded that the villagers were not so ignorant after all. Family size had always been controlled with crude methods such as abstinence and self-induced abortion. Increasing prosperity caused people to want smaller families, because there was less need for children to work in the fields or support parents in their old age. Once that happened, birth rates went down. Modern contraceptives helped them go down more easily and quickly.