Description
Book Synopsis"Kapchan's splendid enthnographic study of women's performance genres in Beni Mellal, Morocco, is an outstanding contribution to gender studies and to the understanding of Middle Eastern society."-Choice
Trade Review"Kapchan's splendid enthnographic study of women's performance genres in Beni Mellal, Morocco, is an outstanding contribution to gender studies and to the understanding of Middle Eastern society. . . . Through the idiom of social performance, Kapchan paints a vivid picture of the changing domains of household and family. . . . This book will be useful to a broad audience, including those concerned with discourse analysis, the anthropology of gender, and the contemporary Middle East and North Africa." *
Choice *
Table of ContentsList of Figures
Transcription and Transliteration
Acknowledgments: Possession by Three Spirits
Introduction: The Dialogic Enterprise of Women in Changing Social Contexts
PART ONE. WOMEN IN THE MARKET
1. In the Place of the Market
2. Shtara: Competence in Cleverness
3. Words of Possession, Possession of Words: the Majduba
4. Words About Herbs: Feminine Performance of Oratory in the Marketplace
5. Reporting the New, Revoicing the Past' Marketplace Oratory and the Carnivalesque
PART TWO. GENDER ON THE MARKET
6. Women on the Market: The Subversive Bride
7. Catering to the Sexual Market: Female Performers Defining the Social Body
8. Property in the (Other) Person: Mothers-in-Law, Working Women, and Maids
9. Terms of Talking Back: Women's Discourse on Magic
10. Conclusion: Hybridization and the Marketplace
Appendix 1: Discourse of the Majduba
Appendix 2: Discourse of the 'Ashshaba
Glossary
Bibliography
Subject Index
Author Index
