Dramas of Nationhood: The Politics of Television in Egypt

How do people come to think of themselves as part of a nation? Dramas of Nationhood identifies a fantastic cultural form that binds together the Egyptian nation—television serials. These melodramatic programs—like soap operas but more closely tied to political and social issues than their Western counterparts—have been shown on television in Egypt for more than thirty years. In this book, Lila Abu-Lughod examines the shifting politics of these serials and the way their contents both reflect and seek to direct the changing course of Islam, gender relations, and everyday life in this Middle Eastern nation. Representing a decade's worth of research, Dramas of Nationhood makes a case for the importance of studying television to answer larger questions about culture, power, and modern self-fashionings. Abu-Lughod explores the elements of developmentalist ideology and the visions of national progress that once dominated Egyptian television—now experiencing a crisis. She discusses the broadcasts in rich detail, from the generic emotional qualities of TV serials and the depictions of authentic national culture, to the debates inflamed by their deliberate strategies for combating religious extremism.

Politics & Social Sciences

Abu-Lughod, Lila

Social Sciences

University of Chicago Press

Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society

Studies the oral lyric poetry of the Bedouins of the Western Desert of Egypt for its reflections on attitudes toward honor, sentiment, Bedouin life, and the place of women in their society

Univ. Of California Pr.

Lila Abu-Lughod lived with a community of Bedouins in the Western Desert of Egypt for nearly two years, studying gender relations and the oral lyric poetry through which women and young men express personal feelings. The poems are haunting, the evocation of emotional life vivid. But her analysis also reveals how deeply implicated poetry and sentiment are in the play of power and the maintenance of a system of social hierarchy. What begins as a puzzle about a single poetic genre becomes a reflection on the politics of sentiment and the relationship between ideology and human experience. [Note: This 1987 edition is now out of stock. A New Updated Edition is now available.]

University of California Press

In 1978 Lila Abu-Lughod climbed out of a dusty van to meet members of a small Awlad 'Ali Bedouin community. The anthropologist was about to join that community to learn from them. Living in this Egyptian Bedouin settlement for extended periods during the following decade, Abu-Lughod took part in family life, with its moments of humour, affection and anger. She witnessed striking changes, both cultural and economic, and she recorded the stories of the women. "Writing Women's Worlds" is Abu-Lughod's telling of those stories; it is also about what happens in bringing the stories to others. Abu-Lughod explores how anthropology typifies cultures, questions the appropriation of Third World women in feminist theory, and unsettles the prevailing popular and scholarly understandings of Muslim Arab society.

Writing Women's Worlds: Bedouin Stories

Anthropology

Lila Abu-Lughod draws on anthropological and feminist insights to construct a critical ethnography of a small Awlad 'Ali Bedouin community in Egypt. She explores how the telling of stories of everyday life challenges the power of anthropological theory to render adequately the lives of others and the way feminist theory appropriates Third World women.

First published in 1986, Lila Abu-Lughod’s Veiled Sentiments has become a classic ethnography in the field of anthropology. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Abu-Lughod lived with a community of Bedouins in the Western Desert of Egypt for nearly two years, studying gender relations, morality, and the oral lyric poetry through which women and young men express personal feelings. The poems are haunting, the evocation of emotional life vivid. But Abu-Lughod’s analysis also reveals how deeply implicated poetry and sentiment are in the play of power and the maintenance of social hierarchy. What begins as a puzzle about a single poetic genre becomes a reflection on the politics of sentiment and the complexity of culture. This thirtieth anniversary edition includes a new afterword that reflects on developments both in anthropology and in the lives of this community of Awlad 'Ali Bedouins, who find themselves increasingly enmeshed in national political and social formations. The afterword ends with a personal meditation on the meaning—for all involved—of the radical experience of anthropological fieldwork and the responsibilities it entails for ethnographers.

Literature & Fiction

Poetry

Frequent reports of honor killings, disfigurement, and sensational abuse have given rise to a consensus in the West, a message propagated by human rights groups and the media: Muslim women need to be rescued. Lila Abu-Lughod boldly challenges this conclusion. An anthropologist who has been writing about Arab women for thirty years, she delves into the predicaments of Muslim women today, questioning whether generalizations about Islamic culture can explain the hardships these women face and asking what motivates particular individuals and institutions to promote their rights.
In recent years Abu-Lughod has struggled to reconcile the popular image of women victimized by Islam with the complex women she has known through her research in various communities in the Muslim world. Here, she renders that divide vivid by presenting detailed vignettes of the lives of ordinary Muslim women, and showing that the problem of gender inequality cannot be laid at the feet of religion alone. Poverty and authoritarianism―conditions not unique to the Islamic world, and produced out of global interconnections that implicate the West―are often more decisive. The standard Western vocabulary of oppression, choice, and freedom is too blunt to describe these women's lives.
Do Muslim Women Need Saving? is an indictment of a mindset that has justified all manner of foreign interference, including military invasion, in the name of rescuing women from Islam―as well as a moving portrait of women's actual experiences, and of the contingencies with which they live.

Do Muslim Women Need Saving?

Harvard University Press

Frequent reports of honor killings, disfigurement, and sensational abuse have given rise to a consensus in the West, a message propagated by human rights groups and the media: Muslim women need to be rescued. Lila Abu-Lughod boldly challenges this conclusion. An anthropologist who has been writing about Arab women for thirty years, she delves into the predicaments of Muslim women today, questioning whether generalizations about Islamic culture can explain the hardships these women face and asking what motivates particular individuals and institutions to promote their rights.
In recent years Abu-Lughod has struggled to reconcile the popular image of women victimized by Islam with the complex women she has known through her research in various communities in the Muslim world. Here, she renders that divide vivid by presenting detailed vignettes of the lives of ordinary Muslim women, and showing that the problem of gender inequality cannot be laid at the feet of religion alone. Poverty and authoritarianism--conditions not unique to the Islamic world, and produced out of global interconnections that implicate the West--are often more decisive. The standard Western vocabulary of oppression, choice, and freedom is too blunt to describe these women's lives.
Do Muslim Women Need Saving? is an indictment of a mindset that has justified all manner of foreign interference, including military invasion, in the name of rescuing women from Islam--as well as a moving portrait of women's actual experiences, and of the contingencies with which they live.

Sentiments voilés (Veiled Sentiments)

EMPECHEURS

Estos ensayos se centran en el problema de la mujer en Oriente Próximo, especialmente en Egipto, e Irán. En el cambio de siglo, el género se ha convertido en un asunto con una fuerte carga nacionalista que se relaciona de una forma compleja con las formas de vida occidentales. Estos trabajos, fruto de la extraordinaria expl

Feminismo y modernidad en Oriente Próximo (Feminismos) (Spanish Edition)

Sociology

Ediciones Cátedra

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Books by Abu-Lughod, Lila

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Abu-Lughod, Lila. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Dramas of Nationhood: The Politics of Television in Egypt

Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society

Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society

Writing Women's Worlds: Bedouin Stories

Writing Women's Worlds: Bedouin Stories

Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society

Do Muslim Women Need Saving?

Do Muslim Women Need Saving?

Sentiments voilés (Veiled Sentiments)

Feminismo y modernidad en Oriente Próximo (Feminismos) (Spanish Edition)