Congrès Mondial des Études sur le Moyen-Orient et l'Afrique du Nord

Barcelone du 19 au 24 Juillet 2010

· NOT_DEFINED institution: PAIS, University of Warwick (UK)

· NOT_DEFINED organizer: Nicola Pratt

· NOT_DEFINED sponsor: the Association for Middle East Women’s Studies (AMEWS)

· NOT_DEFINED language: English

· NOT_DEFINED description: The issue of gender identities in the Middle East is once again being instrumentalized as part of global and Middle Eastern geo-political struggles. From US rhetoric claiming to support Middle East women’s ‘empowerment’ to the rise of Islamist movements and their particular emphasis on gender propriety, imagery of women and definitions of gender relations are demarcating the battle lines in the so-called war against terror. Against this backdrop, it becomes urgent for academics to challenge this polarization in the conceptualisation of gender identities and gender relations within the Middle East and to draw attention to the multiplicity and historicity of gender in the region.

This multi-disciplinary symposium will outline transformations in gender identities and relations within a diversity of spheres—from political discourses to popular culture—and in a variety of Middle Eastern geographic locations, including diasporic spaces, over different historical periods. The emphasis will be on examining the concrete political, economic and social processes that give rise to changing conceptualisations of gender in the Middle East, understanding gender not only in terms of women/femininities but also in terms of men/masculinities and in recognising the intersectionality of gender identities.

This symposium will bring together a wide range of disciplines in order to fully appreciate the many dimensions of this theme. It will contribute to increased understandings of the historically-constructed nature of gender within the Middle East and, in this way, to challenging mainstream views (in the West and the Middle East) about the exceptionalism of gender relations in this region in global comparison.

Some of the questions addressed by this symposium include:
•In which contexts do we see transformations of gender identities/roles/relations?
•In which contexts do we see the reproduction of particular gender identities/roles/relations?
•How and why do gender identities/roles/relations change?
•Do gender identities/roles necessarily change with gender relations?
•What is the effect of changing gender identities/roles/relations?
•What is the role of women and/or men, including those acting collectively, in changing gender identities/roles/relations?
•What is the role of the state in constructing new gender identities and structuring new gender relations?
•What is the role of ideology or religion in shaping gender identities/roles/relations?
•What is the role of socio-economic transformations in shaping gender identities/roles/relations?
•What is the role of war, occupation and/or migration in shaping gender identities/roles/relations?

This panel examines the different contexts in which men or women perform particular gender identities, either individually or collectively. It considers how these gender identities are performed—what enables and what constrains these performances? It explores the implications of these performances for the transformation of gender relations. In this way, it investigates the possibilities of gendered agency and transformations in gender identities and relations in the Middle East.

Chair: Nadje Al-Ali, SOAS, University of London

Discussant: Nicola Pratt, University of Warwick


Paper Presenter: Sarah Grosso, London School of Economics. “Gender Role Play in a Tunisian Divorce Court”
On independence in 1956, Tunisia introduced a new family law, which banned polygamy and granted women equal rights to divorce. It is commonly perceived that this was a considerable step towards achieving gender equality and redefining gender relations. It has been suggested, however, that inequalities persist as marital duties are defined according to “custom and habit” (article 23, Personal Status Code), perpetuating the patriarchal values the reform was supposed to eradicate (Chekir, 2000). As marriage is not clearly defined in the law, its definition is left to social norms. When marriages fail, couples lean on these stereotypes based on traditional gender roles to legitimise their demand for divorce.
This research explores how this divorce law translates into practice, based on 20 months of ethnographic fieldwork in a lower middle-class neighbourhood and in a family court in Greater Tunis. How do the courts interpret the concept of marital duties? How do men and women act out their gender roles to negotiate more favourable divorce settlement? How do these “performances” reflect the way marriage is perceived in social norms?
Drawing on the observation of 50 reconciliation sessions and interviews with litigants, lawyers and judges, this paper examines the dominant social ideals of “husband” and “wife”. During these sessions, in which the judge attempts to reconcile the divorcing couple, litigants strive to perform as a “good” husband or wife consistent with traditional gender roles in order to appeal to the judge.
These performances, which find legitimacy in article 23, are further reinforced by legal sanctions elsewhere in the PSC relating to specific marital duties, especially the husband’s obligation to provide for his family. Reflecting social ideals rather than reality, the gender roles represented are increasingly difficult to live up to, given social and economic changes; the resulting tensions are often present in the divorce court.
This research demonstrates that gender inequalities persist in divorce in practice and that this inequality is in part made possible by the use of the phrase “custom and habit” (article 23, PSC). Inequality is not, however, an inevitable consequence; article 23 provides scope for interpretation and space for the practice of law to respond to the shift in lived gender relations and the social reality of marriage. Inequality is, therefore, most strongly rooted in the articles relating to specific marital duties, which constrain the court to making particular judgements and echo the gender roles deeply entrenched in social norms.

Paper Presenter: Gustavo Barbosa, London School of Economics. “Becoming a man in Shatila, Lebanon”
This paper investigates the extent to which acting as a ‘male-provider’ is still an avenue open for coming-of-age and display of gender-belonging for the shebab (‘lads’) of the Shatila Palestinian Refugee Camp, in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon. The literature on Palestinians prior to 1948 suggests that a man would come-of-age by marrying at the appropriate age and having a son. When it comes to the saga of the Palestinian diaspora in Lebanon, acting as a fidayiin (‘fighter’) worked, throughout the 1970s, as an alternative mechanism for coming-of-age and display of gender-belonging. The central question of this paper is how the shebab today come-of-age and display their gender-belonging, when the Lebanese legislation, through what I name ‘institutional violence’, bars their free access to the labour market, forcing them to postpone marriage plans, and participation in the Palestinian Resistance Movement, in its military version, is not an option anymore.
Through a plethora of investigative techniques – participant observation; questionnaires; focus groups and open-ended interviews – I have registered the differences between the fidayiin and their offspring as far as their coming-of-age and gender-display are concerned. While the fidayiin were pure agency – understood as ‘resistance to domination’ – and display their coming-of-age and gender-belonging through what they identify as the fight to return to their homeland, their offspring have a far more nuanced relation to Palestine and articulate their coming-of-age and gender-belonging through different mechanisms: by building a house and marrying.
Effectively, by observing how the shebab do their gender, it is not only the full historicity and changeability in time and space of ‘masculinity’ that come to the fore, but also the scholar concepts of agency and gender that can be, respectively, transformed and undone. As a matter of fact, the tendency in studies of the Middle East to define gender strictly in terms of power and relations of domination fails to grasp the experiences of those, like the Shatila shebab, with very limited access to elements of power. It is not that the shebab are emasculated, but rather that defining agency only in terms of ‘resistance to domination’ and gender in terms of ‘relations of power’ alone is rather restrictive.

Paper Presenter: Miriam Stock, Europe University Viadrina, Frankfurt. “Women and public spaces in Tunis”
From a Western perspective, women in Arab societies oftentimes seem to be secondary members of society, particularly for being far less visible in public spaces. One has to ask, however, whether the Western presumption of the public space as an emancipatory space can simply be imposed on Arab societies. On the other hand, the cultural relativist perspective of women and men as equal, while strictly divided into private and public arenas, requires a critical examination, too, - since many urban societies in the Arab region do not persist in mere perpetuation of purely traditional patterns, but are subject to vast global influences. The role of public spaces as a relevant dimension in discussing the role of women, thus, deserves special attention. The urban society in Tunis offers a vivid example for examination: Firstly, Tunisian politics are - though promoted by the dictatorship for strategic purposes -characterized by an equal opportunity policy. Does this policy influence women’s behaviour in public spaces? Secondly, the city’s particular history is reflected in a diversity of public spaces, in which women are visible to different extents. Public spaces in this context refer to various material places of encounter, accessible to both men and women, where confrontation and interaction amongst strangers are possible. Moreover, such arenas are generally characterized by social heterogeneity. Public spaces cannot exist per se, but are defined by their occupants’ interactions. They are, hence, socially constructed. In the contemporary Tunis, these arenas are, oftentimes, consumable spaces. This perspective, thus, challenges the supposition that the commercialization of certain arenas leads to the privatization of formerly public spaces. Shopping malls and supermarkets fall - just like street cafés or traditional markets - under the general definition of public spaces. In today’s Tunis it is particularly those arenas, where women negotiate their social position. This examination is based on qualitative interviews with women from different residential areas of Tunis. It reveals how women, through consuming various public spaces, repeatedly apply both discourses – Orient and Occident – in order to position themselves and to define their own roles. In public spaces perceived as “oriental”, women experience subordination, whereas public spaces perceived as “occidental” are associated with a stronger sense of equality. The women do, however, not necessarily experience their sense of subordination in certain public arenas as a drawback, as Western feminist studies tend to presume, but as part of their socio-cultural identity. Also the long forbidden veil, for instance, may represent an “identitarian vehicle”. The city’s fragmentation practically provides women with a daily combination of various lifestyles. The constant change in clothing styles, depending on which social arena the woman enters, is just one simple example. Which of these two lifestyles is more dominant, and whether each of them is associated with a sense of oppression or freedom, also depends on the woman’s age, educational background and socialization. In any case, the quotidian balance between Orient and Occident is a crucial part of many Tunisian women’s identity finding.