Writing Women's Worlds: Bedouin Stories - Hardcover

Abu-Lughod, Lila

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0520079469 ISBN 13: 9780520079465

Publisher: Univ of California Pr, 1993

Synopsis

In 1978 Lila Abu-Lughod climbed out of a dusty van to meet members of a small Awlad 'Ali Bedouin community. The anthropologist was about to join that community to learn from them. Living in this Egyptian Bedouin settlement for extended periods during the following decade, Abu-Lughod took part in family life, with its moments of humour, affection and anger. She witnessed striking changes, both cultural and economic, and she recorded the stories of the women. "Writing Women's Worlds" is Abu-Lughod's telling of those stories; it is also about what happens in bringing the stories to others. Abu-Lughod explores how anthropology typifies cultures, questions the appropriation of Third World women in feminist theory, and unsettles the prevailing popular and scholarly understandings of Muslim Arab society.

About this title

About the Author:

Lila Abu-Lughod is Professor of Anthropology and Gender Studies at Columbia University. She is the author of Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society (California, 1986) and the co-editor, with C. Lutz, of Language and the Politics of Emotion (1990).

From Library Journal:

Abu-Lughod, a Palestinian American anthropologist and author of Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society (Univ. of California Pr., 1986), is well known for her research on Arab women. In this second book based on her fieldwork among the Awlad Ali Bedouin in northwestern Egypt, she hopes to convey in greater depth the richness and complexity of these Bedouin women's lives through their stories, songs, poetry, and essays. Despite editorial comment by Abu-Lughod throughout (a lengthy introduction discusses her approaches to anthropological fieldwork and ethnographic writing), the Bedouin women themselves are the primary voices in the book (translated by the author). Although this is definitely a scholarly anthropological work, the informed reader can also find much of interest. The tales these women tell, which illuminate their relations to the world around them, have a universal appeal. Highly recommended for academic libraries and public libraries with strong Middle East or women's studies collections.
- Ruth K. Baacke, Bellingham P.L., Wash .
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Univ of California Pr
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0520079469
• ISBN 13: 9780520079465
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 266