Synopses & Reviews
Lila Abu-Lughod lived with a community of Bedouins in the Western Desert of Egypt for nearly two years, studying gender relations and the oral lyric poetry through which women and young men express personal feelings. The poems are haunting, the evocation of emotional life vivid. But her analysis also reveals how deeply implicated poetry and sentiment are in the play of power and the maintenance of a system of social hierarchy. What begins as a puzzle about a single poetic genre becomes a reflection on the politics of sentiment and the relationship between ideology and human experience.
[Note: This 1987 edition is now out of stock. A New Updated Edition is now available.]
Synopsis
"A truly extraordinary bookbeautifully and modestly written, remarkably insightful, consistently compelling."Edward Said, author of Out of Place: A Memoir
About the Author
Lila Abu-Lughod is Professor of Anthropology and Gender Studies at Columbia University. She is the author of Writing Women's Worlds: Bedouin Stories (California, 1993) and editor of Remaking Women: Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East (1998).
Table of Contents
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A NOTE ON TRANSCRIPTIONS
One: Guest and Daughter
PART ONE: THE IDEOLOGY OF BEDOUIN SOCIAL LIFE
Two: Identity in Relationship
Three: Honor and the Virtues of Autonomy
Four: Modesty, Gender, and Sexuality
PART TWO: DISCOURSES ON SENTIMENT
Five: The Poetry of Personal Life
Six: Honor and Poetic Vulnerability
Seven: Modesty and the Poetry of Love
Eight: Ideology and the Politics of Sentiment
APPENDIX: FORMULAS AND THEMES OF THE GHINNAWA
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX