Synopses & Reviews
Lila Abu-Lughod draws on anthropological and feminist insights to construct a critical ethnography of a small Awlad 'Ali Bedouin community in Egypt. She explores how the telling of stories of everyday life challenges the power of anthropological theory to render adequately the lives of others and the way feminist theory appropriates Third World women.
Synopsis
For over a decade beginning in 1978, Lila Abu-Lughod lived, on and off, in the small Awlad 'Ali Bedouin community in Egypt. She witnessed striking changes, both cultural and economic, and she recorded the stories of the women. This edition is updated with a new preface by the author. She argues for the special urgency in today's polarized world of using knowledge of the particular lives of others to counter general images of "the Muslim woman" and to bring nuance and substance to feminist debates about culture and rights.
About the Author
Lila Abu-Lughod is Professor of Anthropology and Gender Studies at Columbia University. She is the author of Veiled Sentiments (UC Press) and Dramas of Nationhood: The Politics of Television in Egypt. She is the editor of Remaking Women: Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East and the coeditor, most recently, of Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory.