Writing Women's Worlds: Bedouin Stories

From Publishers Weekly
Abu-Lughod incorporates stories by Bedouin women into a critique of traditional ethnography. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Abu-Lughod, a Palestinian American anthropologist and author of Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society (Univ. of California Pr., 1986), is well known for her research on Arab women. In this second book based on her fieldwork among the Awlad Ali Bedouin in northwestern Egypt, she hopes to convey in greater depth the richness and complexity of these Bedouin women's lives through their stories, songs, poetry, and essays. Despite editorial comment by Abu-Lughod throughout (a lengthy introduction discusses her approaches to anthropological fieldwork and ethnographic writing), the Bedouin women themselves are the primary voices in the book (translated by the author). Although this is definitely a scholarly anthropological work, the informed reader can also find much of interest. The tales these women tell, which illuminate their relations to the world around them, have a universal appeal. Highly recommended for academic libraries and public libraries with strong Middle East or women's studies collections.- Ruth K. Baacke, Bellingham P.L., Wash .Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.


New York Times Book Review
"A different kind of ethnography, one in which the texture and richness of individual lives are vividly conveyed. . . . Abu-Lughod has demonstrated with great effectiveness that anthropology does not have to emphasize the divisions between us and everybody else; it is equally capable of drawing attention to our common humanity."


Women's Review of Books
"In Writing Women's Worlds, Bedouin women are the narrators of their own lives; they are not the subjects or objects of ideas projected by the ethnographer's imagination. . . . This will be an important work in the field of international feminist studies for some time to come. . . . An excellent effort to 'decolonize' a people in writing and to alter the usual preconceived ideas the Western reader brings to studies of Arabs and Muslim women."


Book Description
In 1978 Lila Abu-Lughod climbed out of a dusty van to meet members of a small Awlad 'Ali Bedouin community. Living in this Egyptian Bedouin settlement for extended periods during the following decade, Abu-Lughod took part in family life, with its moments of humor, 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. As the new teller of these tales Abu-Lughod draws on anthropological and feminist insights to construct a critical ethnography. She explores how the telling of these stories challenges the power of anthropological theory to render adequately the lives of others and the way feminist theory appropriates Third World women. Writing Women's Worlds is thus at once a vivid set of stories and a study in the politics of representation.


About the Author
Lila Abu-Lughod is Professor of Anthropology and Gender Studies at Columbia University. She is the author of Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society (California, 1986) and the co-editor, with C. Lutz, of Language and the Politics of Emotion (1990).


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Abu-Lughod, a Palestinian American anthropologist and author of Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society (Univ. of California Pr., 1986), is well known for her research on Arab women. In this second book based on her fieldwork among the Awlad Ali Bedouin in northwestern Egypt, she hopes to convey in greater depth the richness and complexity of these Bedouin women's lives through their stories, songs, poetry, and essays. Despite editorial comment by Abu-Lughod throughout (a lengthy introduction discusses her approaches to anthropological fieldwork and ethnographic writing), the Bedouin women themselves are the primary voices in the book (translated by the author). Although this is definitely a scholarly anthropological work, the informed reader can also find much of interest. The tales these women tell, which illuminate their relations to the world around them, have a universal appeal. Highly recommended for academic libraries and public libraries with strong Middle East or women's studies collections.-- Ruth K. Baacke, Bellingham P.L., Wash .


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