hi all,
hope you had a good weekend. For Tuesday, please do C6 reading. After you complete the Crystal reading from C5 (which shoudl have been completed before the midterm), I would like you to start with Taraki and Tucker from C6 then make your way towards teh rest (the pieces are mostly short).
see you soon.
bassam
(c5) Politics, the State, and Authoritarian Rule (2 Sessions)
- Jill Crystal, “Authoritarianism and its Adversaries in the Arab World,” in World Politics, 46 (January 1994), pp. 262-289. [CW]
Questions & Issues to Consider: Is authoritarian rule unique to the Middle East? What produces authoritarian rule? What sustains it? How does authoritarian rule affect state-opposition dynamics? Is there a relationship between levels/kinds of authoritarianism and extremist opposition? What are the bases of conflict in the Middle East?
(c6) Social Dynamics: Family and Women, Community, Ethnicity and Class
Readings:
- Lisa Taraki, Chapter 11, “The Role of Women,” in Deborah J. Gerner and Jillian Schwedler, eds., Understanding the Contemporary Middle East (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2004). [Text]
- Judith Tucker, ed., Arab Women: Old Boundaries, New Frontiers, Ch. X, "The Arab Family in History," pp. 195-207. [CW]
- Lila Abu-Lughod, “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others,” American Anthropologist, Sep. 2002; 104, 3. [CW]
- Maya Mikdashi, "How Not to Study Gender in the Middle East," Jadaliyya, March 2012. [CW]
Questions & Issues to Consider: What is the relationship between societal development and the role of the family? What is the relationship between the role of the family in the society and gender roles? What are the bases of political action in the Middle East (e.g., communal, sectarian, religious, class, political, economic, cultural)? In studying the Middle East, why does the question of the “veil” become an all-too-important issue when other issues are clearly more significant? Should we take liberal discourse on feminism at face value (e.g., “we invaded Afghanistan partly to liberate their women”)?