Gender and Citizenship in the Middle East By Suad Joseph, ed. (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2000. 400 pages.)

Abstract

The fourteen case studies that compose this volume address the various
institutional, economic, social, cultural, and political dimensions of the
debate on gender and citizenship in the Middle East. Using a crosscultural
comparative approach, the theoretical introduction as well as the
individual case studies seek to challenge dominant (especially western)
feminist models of analysis of the question of gender and citizenship in the
Middle East. The validity of dominant feminist paradigms is questioned by
introducing new social and cultural variables, and putting at stake a
number of traditionally unquestioned or unrecognized modes of identity
formation, such as kinship, family, tribe, and sects, which critically affect a
woman's citizenship status. The volume purports to contest essentializing
myths about the Middle East that artificially give it a character of regional
coherence, and homogenize the image of Middle Eastern women as a
category. The volume thus theorizes the gendering of citizenship from the
largely unexplored perspectives that open up from introducing the above
variables, toward a better understanding of the complex nature of the laws
(religious, political, patriarchal and patrilineal) governing the construction
of a gendered citizenship in the Middle East.
The theoretical introduction to the volume outlines the dynamics of a
number of points of departure that presumably underlie the writing of the
"legal subject in the Middle East," namely nations, states, religion, family.
The contributors seem to all concede that "most Middle Eastern states have
cemented the linkage between religious identity, political identity,
patrilineality, and patriarchy-that is, between religion, nation, state, and
kinship." The Middle Eastern countries studied in the volume are divided
regionally into four areas: North Africa (including Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia
and Morocco); Eastern Arab States (including Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan
and Iraq); the Arab Gulf (including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Yemen); the
Non-Arab Middle East (including Turkey, Iran, and Jewish and Palestinian
Arab women in Israel). The authors of the various case studies conducted
an exhaustive investigation of the related topics, albeit with a notable
difference of outlook varying between liberal individualistic and communitarian
conservative positions.
The methodological approach adopted by various contributors draws ...