"... the quality of each of these essays is excellent, and the book warrants extensive reading by political scientists, sociologists, and all scholars of the contemporary Middle East. -- American Journal of Sociology "This book's ethnographic material offers much to surprise and challenge assumptions about gender, Islam and social change in Egypt." -- MESA Bulletin "Taken together, these articles leave the reader with an excellent understanding of the realities of contemporary Egypt and a sense of the vitality and energy that permeates Cairo." -- Digest of Middle East Studies The essays presented here, based on extensive ethnographic research, focus on the Egyptian household as the key institution for understanding the dynamics of political, economic, and social change. Economic liberalization has had particular, often ambivalent consequences for low-income groups, especially women, and for gender relations.

In the early 1990s international population policy faced a crisis--it was being attacked from the left and the right, from inside and outside, for a range of failings--of ethics, fact, method, and vision. The 1994 International Conference on Population and Development, held in Cairo, provided a new policy consensus that helped to overcome this crisis. Starting from the question of how the transition from "population control" to "women's empowerment" was formulated as an international consensus, The Cairo Consensus maps the discourses, technical practices, and institutional practices that made this transition possible and stable. Demographic surveys in particular emerge as a crucial, though often overlooked, mechanism for policy production and stability. Using detailed empirical material, including over 30 interviews, combined with cutting edge social and political theory, Saul Halfon offers a new look at population policy that will interest scholars of science and technology, international studies, women's studies, development studies, and post-colonial theory.

This all-new edition of the classic Arab Society: Social Science Perspectives, containing thirty new articles by leading scholars, examines Arab society in the 1990s. Articles by scholars from many countries explore such subjects as Arab unity and identity; demographic processes; the roles of men, women, and family; rural social change; political developments; and religious change. For students, scholars, and general readers alike, Arab Society offers up-to-date analysis and discussion of the social, political, and economic transformations that face the region today.

The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences (AJISS), established in 1984, is a quarterly, double blind peer-reviewed and interdisciplinary journal, published by the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), and distributed worldwide. The journal showcases a wide variety of scholarly research on all facets of Islam and the Muslim world including subjects such as anthropology, history, philosophy and metaphysics, politics, psychology, religious law, and traditional Islam.

These essays illustrate the various ways in which women fall short of being vested with the rights and privileges that would define them as fully enfranchised citizens. They offer an in-depth examination of national legislation on personal status, penal law, labor law, nationality, and social security law. Others include indicators such as female education and employment, and many comment on the types of mobilization and activism engaged in by Middle Eastern women themselves to press for an expansion of their citizenship rights. Along with its sister volume, Citizenship and State in the Middle East, Applications and Approaches, also by Syracuse University Press, this book represents a pioneering approach to the Middle East from a citizenship perspective. The contributors raise a number of important and controversial issues that merit serious consideration.

This comprehensive handbook attempts to summarize the state of gender studies not only by examining the crucial research of the past decade, but by encouraging thinking about how the questions central to studying gender have themselves changed. Building on the work started by the contributors to this volume's predecessor (Analyzing Gender, Sage 1987), editors Myra Marx Ferree, Judith Lorber, and Beth B. Hess reflect on the advances of gender scholarship during the past decade with its emphasis on all levels of social structure from the most macro to the most individual. Revisioning Gender is a step toward constructing a new analytical approach for the social sciences, one that calls into question disciplinary boundaries and the specific agendas entailed therein.

Working into the middle class -- "Crisis of supply in every household" -- 'Provocative consumption' -- 'Parasites' -- The resurgence of middle-class Islam.

Family remains the most powerful social idiom and one of the most powerful social structures throughout the Arab world. To engender love of nation among its citizens, national movements portray the nation as a family. To motivate loyalty, political leaders frame themselves as fathers, mothers, brothers, or sisters to their clients, parties, or the citizenry. To stimulate production, economic actors evoke the sense of duty and mutual commitment of family obligation. To sanctify their edicts, clerics wrap religion in the moralities of family and family in the moralities of religion. Social and political movements, from the most secular to the most religious, pull on the tender strings of family love to recruit and bind their members to each other. To call someone family is to offer them almost the highest possible intimacy, loyalty, rights, reciprocities, and dignity. In recognizing the significance of the concept of family, this state-of-the-art literature review captures the major theories, methods, and case studies carried out on Arab families over the past century. The book offers a country-by-country critical assessment of the available scholarship on Arab families. Sixteen chapters focus on specific countries or groups of countries; seven chapters offer examinations of the literature on key topical issues. Joseph’s volume provides an indispensable resource to researchers and students, and advances Arab family studies as a critical independent field of scholarship.

This rich ethnographic study describes the nearly impossible challenge of the daily existence of women in the poor neighbourhoods of Cairo. When these women fall ill they often put the blame on beings from an invisible world that invaded their body (possession), and they seek the help of traditional healers in the Zar ceremony or Koran healing. This book examines in detail the links between cosmology, power and gender. It tackles questions such as ‘what is possession, what is being said with it, and what does society have to do with it?’. The author, who lived a long time in various poor areas of Cairo, attended many sessions of Koran healing and participated in the Zar ceremony. She observed and interviewed many possessed women, as well as healers and other ‘demon specialists’.

With a particular emphasis on definitions, continuities, and change, this edited volume examines the historical role and function of haya' – or feelings of shame, modesty, and honor – in Islamic theology and law, and explores contemporary Muslims' engagements with the concept. The book explores various conceptions of haya' and the practices associated with the concept in both Muslim majority and minority contexts. The empirically rich contributions reveal how haya' is socially constructed in varying social and cultural environments across the globe. From medieval Islam to the modern day, this book demonstrates the importance of haya' and its temporal and spatial transformations.