ANTH 425 Power and Change
11 October 2011
Identity politics: Micro and macro politics of race, class, gender
Read Abu-Lughod, Lila (2010) "The Active Social Life of’ ‘Muslim Women's Rights’: A Plea for Ethnography, Not Polemic, with Cases from Egypt and Palestine." Journal of Middle East Women's Studies, 6(1): 1-45 Project Muse.
- when and why did identity politics arise in Western societies?
- note Abu-Lughod is not interested in "Muslim women’s rights" but in how they have been promoted by specific institutions, in specific forms, at a specific point in history
- Abu-Lughod asks, basically, who benefits and how from current trends in promoting Muslim women’s rights
- Egypt: government, islamicization, commercialization
- Palestine: narrowing of MWR to "cultural" context and avoiding impact of Israeli occupation
- Egyptian village: take on new discourse of rights, but they also have a long-standing understanding of their rights within their context; these are now entwined.