Discussion

The proceedings of the Arab Regional Women’s Studies Workshop held at the American University in Cairo in May 1997. Among the theoretical and practical issues discussed are: the importance of introducing gender studies in order to achieve social equality in the Arab World, rethinking political and research priorities in order to give more attention to gender issues, and comparing gender programs in some Arab countries.https://fount.aucegypt.edu/faculty_book_chapters/1964/thumbnail.jp

Research Priorities for the Study of Urbanization and Development

The symposium on Social Research for Development was held on May 5-11, 1981, in Cairo, Egypt; by the Social Research Center (SRC) of The American University in Cairo (AUC). The Symposium was supported by funds from Battelle Human Affairs Research Center, Ford Foundation, International Development Re­search Center {IDRC}, and the Population Council. The theme of the Symposium was selected in respons.e to the increased con­cerns of social scientists, policymakers and funding agencies about the current status and new directions of social science research, its role in the pro­cess of social and economic development, and its contribution to policy-rele­vant issues. The Symposium, therefore, aimed at providing a valuable opportu­nity for the invaed participants to exchange ideas and views on social research findings, methodologies, priorities, strategies, and funding as they relate to policy issues of various aspects of social and economic developmenthttps://fount.aucegypt.edu/faculty_book_chapters/1829/thumbnail.jp

Introduction: Gender, Rights and Religion at the Crossroads

The introduction to this IDS Bulletin captures why this is the moment for re?engaging with the politics of gender and religion in a securitised post?9/11 context in which ‘Muslim communities’ have emerged as a political category in their own right. The article traces and exposes how religion has been deployed by international actors, donors, states, feminists, development practitioners, and human rights activists in engaging with gender issues. It analyses both the underlying motives for promoting a ‘religionised’ form of engagement with gender issues by these actors and how it is reflected in their policy and practice. It argues that various forms of instrumentalisation of religion, gender and human rights need to be examined against the backdrop of volatile political context, the rise of identity politics and increased economic inequality and deprivation. In particular, the article questions what an instrumentalised approach to religion means for negotiating the terms of engagement for addressing women's rights as well as how it impacts their day to day realities

Du réalisateur au spectateur : la politique des feuilletons égyptiens

En 1980, circulait au Caire une plaisanterie typique du mépris que vouent les citadins au paysan de Haute-Égypte : un Sa‘îdi (Égyptien de Haute-Égypte) vient au Caire et veut acheter un téléviseur. Il se rend dans un magasin d'électro-ménager et demande : « Combien vaut ce téléviseur dans la vitrine ? » Furieux, le propriétaire lui crie : « Sors d'ici, stupide Sa'îdi ! ». II s'en va et, ayant revêtu la robe blanche et la coiffe des Saoudiens, retourne au magasin : « Combien vaut ce téléviseur..

Love, Lebanese Style: Towards an either/and analytical framework of kinship

My article draws on a yearlong fieldwork conducted in Lebanon and builds on the existing literature on love and marriage in the Arab world in order to reiterate the unison of the imaginary with the material when thinking through romantic love. In addition, it prioritizes positive interpretations of kin relations by highlighting the equally important inclusive and relational qualities that external kin relations conduce. By doing so, it adds an important layer to our understanding of the role and scope of kin relations vis-à-vis the couple. Kin approval ought not be seen as either/or divisive/conditional. For many couples, kin relations constitute an arena where they can disseminate their affective bond. Such analysis is three-fold. In addition to embracing the multiple subjectivity of my interlocutors, it moves beyond the strict political economy approach that informs marriage studies in the Middle East and dismantles monolithic perceptions of Middle Eastern kin networks

From Islamic Feminism to a Muslim Holistic Feminism

This article looks at the trajectory from secular feminism to Islamic feminism to Muslim holistic feminism, examining the changing meanings of ‘the secular’ and ‘the religious’ and the ways they intersect in the different modes of feminism. It contrasts the open, inclusive nature that typifies the secular feminisms Muslim and non?Muslims created in the twentieth century in contexts of anti?colonial struggle and early nation?state building with the communalism of the new Muslim holistic feminism now emerging in global space at a time when religious identity is fore?fronted and there is an international preoccupation with Muslim women's rights. The article argues that the communalisation of women's rights activism or the privileging of Muslim women's rights occurring at the global level and being exported to local terrain can be divisive and threatening national unity

The ordinary city trap

The paper is a critique of a critique, it explains why the most salient and influential critiques of the neo-Marxist world city and global city concepts, made by those arguing to further postcolonialize urban studies through such suppositions that all cities are ‘ordinary’, are misguided. First, it is explained how the charges of economism and ethnocentrism against the world city and global city concepts are ignoratio elenchi: they do not even begin to address or critique their neo-Marxist argument that, across the difference and diversity of the world’s cities, a few major cities have the necessary economic specialization and therefore extraordinary function of commanding and controlling neoliberal globalization. Second, the error made by advocates of ordinary cities of supposing that world-systems analysis and the world city concept are forms of developmentalism is understood as the source for a wider postcolonial mistake of conflating the neo-Marxist world city and global city literatures with the very neoliberal practices toward urban development that they have long attempted to disclose and counter. Finally, the charges against the world city and global city concepts as paradigmatic, peripheralizing, and normative are also rebutted, not only to highlight how those critiques are consequentialist and dependent on the respective charges of economism, ethnocentrism, and developmentalism having veracity, but to demonstrate how an acceptance of the ordinary cities argument for an idiographic, provincial, nominalist, and comparative approach to urban studies, as an alternative to the two neo-Marxist concepts, is only to fall into the trap of making the mistake of confusing evidence of absence for absence of evidence