FAMILY GENDER & LAW IN GLOBALIZING Format: Hardcover

The essays in this collection examine issues of family, gender, and law in the Middle East and South Asia. In particular, authors address the impact of colonialism on law and family and gender relations; the role of religious politics in writing family law and the implications for gender relations; and the tension between international standards emerging from UN conferenc­es and conventions and various nationalist projects. Employing the frame of globalization, the authors highlight how local and global forces interact and influence the experience and actions of people who the law.
In making a comparison between two quite similar and culturally linked non-western regions, contributors avoid positing "the West" as a modern telos. Drawing upon the fields of anthropology, history, sociology, and law, this volume offers a wide ranging exploration of the complicated history of jurisprudence with regard to family and gender.

Kenneth M. Cuno is associate professor of history at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has published articles in numerous journals including the International Journal of Middle East Studies, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, and Islamic Law and Society. He is the author of The Pasha’s Peasants: Land, Society, and Economy in Lower Egypt, 1740–1850.

Manisha Desai is the director of Women’s Studies at the University of Connecticut. She is the author of Rethinking Globalization: Gender and the Politics of Possibilities, coeditor of Women’s Activism and Globalization: Linking Local Struggles to Transnational Politics, and editor of Women’s Issues in Asia and Oceania.