Cairo is a city obsessed with honor and respectability—and love affairs. Sara, a working-class woman, has an affair with a married man and becomes pregnant, only to be abandoned by him; Ayah and ...Zeid, a respectably engaged couple, argue over whether Ayah’s friend is a prostitute or a virgin; Malak, a European belly dancer who sometimes gets paid for sex, wants to be loved by a man who won’t treat her like a whore just because she’s a dancer; and Alia, a Christian banker who left her abusive husband, is the mistress of a wealthy Muslim man, Haroun, who encourages business by hosting risqué parties for other men and their mistresses. Set in transnational Cairo over two decades, Love, Sex, and Desire in Modern Egypt is an ethnography that explores female respectability, male honor, and Western theories and fantasies about Arab society. L. L. Wynn uses stories of love affairs to interrogate three areas of classic anthropological theory: mimesis, kinship, and gift. She develops a broad picture of how individuals love and desire within a cultural and political system that structures the possibilities of, and penalties for, going against sexual and gender norms. Wynn demonstrates that love is at once a moral horizon, an attribute that “naturally" inheres in particular social relations, a social phenomenon strengthened through cultural concepts of gift and kinship, and an emotion deeply felt and desired by individuals.
Migration is typically seen as a transnational phenomenon, but
it happens within borders, too. Oaxaca in Motion documents
a revealing irony in the latter sort: internal migration often is
global in ...character, motivated by foreign affairs and international
economic integration, and it is no less transformative than its
cross-border analogue.
Iván Sandoval-Cervantes spent nearly two years observing and
interviewing migrants from the rural Oaxacan town of Santa Ana
Zegache. Many women from the area travel to Mexico City to work as
domestics, and men are encouraged to join the Mexican military to
fight the US-instigated "war on drugs" or else leave their fields
to labor in industries serving global supply chains. Placing these
moves in their historical and cultural context, Sandoval-Cervantes
discovers that migrants' experiences dramatically alter their
conceptions of gender, upsetting their traditional notions of
masculinity and femininity. And some migrants bring their revised
views with them when they return home, influencing their families
and community of origin. Comparing Oaxacans moving within Mexico to
those living along the US West Coast, Sandoval-Cervantes clearly
demonstrates the multiplicity of answers to the question, "Who is a
migrant?"
Gender considerations and civil society are both major issues in the current debate about the implementation of EU development policy. This volume provides a new perspective and focus on the ...increasingly important issues of gender equality, democracy and participation to explain how they impact on policy. This book will appeal to those interested in the European Union, in EU external relations, gender issues, civil society, and development.
Far from the battlefront, hundreds of thousands of workers toiled in Bohemian factories over the course of World War I, and their lives were inescapably shaped by the conflict. In particular, they ...faced new and dramatic forms of material hardship that strained social ties and placed in sharp relief the most mundane aspects of daily life, such as when, what, and with whom to eat. This study reconstructs the experience of the Bohemian working class during the Great War through explorations of four basic spheres—food, labor, gender, and protest—that comprise a fascinating case study in early twentieth-century social history.
Throughout the Weimar period the so-called "masculinization of woman" was much more than merely an outsider or subcultural phenomenon; it was central to representations of the changing female ideal, ...and fed into wider debates concerning the health and fertility of the German "race" following the rupture of war. Drawing on recent developments within the history of sexuality, this book sheds new light on representations and discussions of the masculine woman within the Weimar print media from 1918-1933. It traces the connotations and controversies surrounding this figure from her rise to media prominence in the early 1920s until the beginning of the Nazi period, considering questions of race, class, sexuality, and geography. By focusing on styles, bodies and identities that did not conform to societal norms of binary gender or heterosexuality, this book contributes to our understanding of gendered lives and experiences at this pivotal juncture in German history.
Ethnic violence is a widespread concern, but we know very little about
the micro-mechanics of coexistence in the neighborhoods around the world where
inter-group peace is maintained amidst civic ...strife. In this ethnographic study of a
multi-ethnic, middle-class high-rise apartment building in Karachi, Pakistan, Laura
A. Ring argues that peace is the product of a relentless daily labor, much of it
carried out in the zenana, or women's space. Everyday rhythms of life in the
building are shaped by gender, ethnic and rural/urban tensions, national culture,
and competing interpretations of Islam. Women's exchanges between households --
visiting, borrowing, helping -- and management of male anger are forms of creative
labor that regulate and make sense of ethnic differences. Linking psychological
senses of tension with anthropological views of the social significance
of exchange, Ring argues that social-cultural tension is not so much resolved as
borne and sustained by women's practices. Framed by a vivid and highly personal
narrative of the author's interactions with her neighbors, her Pakistani in-laws,
and other residents of the city, Zenana provides a rare glimpse into contemporary
urban life in a Muslim society.
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