Description
Book SynopsisWhen women took to the streets during the mass protests of the Arab Spring, the subject of feminism in the Middle East and North Africa returned to the international spotlight. In the subsequent years, countless commentators treated the region's gender inequality as a consequence of fundamentally cultural or religious problems. In so doing, they overlooked the specifically political nature of these women's activism. Moving beyond such culturalist accounts, this book turns to the relations of power in regional and international politics to understand women's struggles for their rights. Based on over a hundred extensive personal narratives from women of different generations in Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon, Nicola Pratt traces women's activism from national independence through to the Arab uprisings, arguing that activist women are critical geopolitical actors. Weaving together these personal accounts with the ongoing legacies of colonialism, Embodying Geopolitics demonstrates how the production and regulation of gender is integrally bound up with the exercise and organization of geopolitical power, with consequences for women's activism and its effects.
Trade Review"A compelling portrait of women working inside, outside, and against systems of power." * Foreign Affairs *
"Pratt’s book has many strengths. The span of history it covers makes it an ambitious project, but Pratt deftly highlights the most analytically relevant features of each time period under consideration. . . . [And] leaves the reader simultaneously optimistic about the future of women’s activism in the region while also aware and wary of
the major challenges that women continue to face." * Middle East Journal *
"Groundbreaking research."
* Arab Studies Quarterly *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction: Embodying Geopolitics in the Middle East and North Africa
1 • Female Respectability and Embodied National Sovereignty
2 • The 1967 Defeat and Its Aftermath: The Breakdown of the Gender Order and the Expansion of Women’s Activism
3 • The Gendered Effects of Political Repression and Violence in the 1970s and 1980s
4 • The Political Economy and Geopolitics of Women’s Activism after the Cold War
5 • Women’s Rights as Geopolitical Discourse: The Struggle over Geography in the Post–Cold War Period
6 • The Struggle over Gender at the Heart of the Arab Uprisings
7 • The Gendered Geopolitics of Fear and Counterrevolution
Conclusion
Notes
List of Interviewees
List of Organizations
References
Index
