The Politics of Engaged Gender Research in the Arab Region
Feminist Fieldwork and the Production of Knowledge
Lena Meari editor Suad Joseph editor Zeina Zaatari editor
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Published:25th Aug '22
Should be back in stock very soon
Arab women researchers explain what it means to carry out gender research in the MENA region and how research practices should be transformed
Critical analysis of what we know - and do not know – about women in the Arab region is needed to support social change. But how is knowledge on women and gender produced in the region? How does this change when it is undertaken by Arab women researchers? Through a critical examination of local fieldwork experiences, the contributors of the volume - who are Arab women researchers themselves - answer these questions. The book examines the specific structural conditions that shape people’s lives in the Arab region, from the effects of imperialism, settler colonialism and the neo-liberalization of economies, to racial capitalism, securitization, and embedded patriarchal ideologies and structures. The authors assess the implications of these different dynamics on undertaking research and also examine their own daily lives, the lives of their interlocutors, and the practices of their field. In doing so, they are able to escape hegemonic approaches and frameworks to the study of gender and to instead theorize from the local context to produce knowledge as they see it. This ‘engaged gender research’ challenges dominant discourses in academia, rejects the presumptions of ‘Arab exceptionalism’, and challenges liberal feminisms. It devises a new way of undertaking research on gender in the region to lay the foundation for a more just tomorrow.
Covering Morocco, Tunisia, Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Iraq and the Arab Gulf, the book argues that an engaged gender research - which is feminist and critically analyses the historical, political, economic and social contexts of the research topic first - will transform how we understand women and gender, and the Arab World.
Emerging from long-term collaborations and trainings, this set of critical and deeply moving essays exemplify how feminist epistemologies can productively explore the intersections of self, location and subject in different research settings and contexts. This volume is an essential addition to the library of all those interested and invested in transforming gender dynamics in the Arab region. -- Seteney Shami. Arab Council for the Social Sciences, Lebanon
ISBN: 9780755645220
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
232 pages