The study of relationships—a topic which has received considerable attention in Europe, the United States, and parts of Asia, until now has not been addressed in the Arab world. Here for the first time are articles written by native feminist scholars that focus on intimate Arab familial relationships and provide a scholarly discussion of gendering of the self (the process of intimate selving) in the Arab community. The book is divided into three parts: biographical and autobiographical; ethnographic; and literary accounts in which the authors identify key family relationships—mother-son, brother-sister, mother-daughter-granddaughter, co-wives, and father-daughter—and explore them in terms of shaping and defining gender in relation to others.

The study of relationships—a topic which has received considerable attention in Europe, the United States, and parts of Asia, until now has not been addressed in the Arab world. Here for the first time are articles written by native feminist scholars that focus on intimate Arab familial relationships and provide a scholarly discussion of gendering of the self (the process of intimate selving) in the Arab community. The book is divided into three parts: biographical and autobiographical; ethnographic; and literary accounts in which the authors identify key family relationships—mother-son, brother-sister, mother-daughter-granddaughter, co-wives, and father-daughter—and explore them in terms of shaping and defining gender in relation to others.

This study explores the mother-daughter relationship as the most fundamental and most intimate female relationship. It draws on both early and contemporary writings of Arab women to illuminate the traditional and evolving nature of mother-daughter relationships in Arab families and how these family dynamics reflect and influence modern Arab life.

Family remains the most powerful social idiom and one of the most powerful social structures throughout the Arab world. To engender love of nation among its citizens, national movements portray the nation as a family. To motivate loyalty, political leaders frame themselves as fathers, mothers, brothers, or sisters to their clients, parties, or the citizenry. To stimulate production, economic actors evoke the sense of duty and mutual commitment of family obligation. To sanctify their edicts, clerics wrap religion in the moralities of family and family in the moralities of religion. Social and political movements, from the most secular to the most religious, pull on the tender strings of family love to recruit and bind their members to each other. To call someone family is to offer them almost the highest possible intimacy, loyalty, rights, reciprocities, and dignity. In recognizing the significance of the concept of family, this state-of-the-art literature review captures the major theories, methods, and case studies carried out on Arab families over the past century. The book offers a country-by-country critical assessment of the available scholarship on Arab families. Sixteen chapters focus on specific countries or groups of countries; seven chapters offer examinations of the literature on key topical issues. Joseph’s volume provides an indispensable resource to researchers and students, and advances Arab family studies as a critical independent field of scholarship.

Based on two years of ethnographic research in the southern suburbs of Beirut, An Enchanted Modern demonstrates that Islam and modernity are not merely compatible, but actually go hand-in-hand. This eloquent ethnographic portrayal of an Islamic community articulates how an alternative modernity, and specifically an enchanted modernity, may be constructed by Shi'I Muslims who consider themselves simultaneously deeply modern, cosmopolitan, and pious. In this depiction of a Shi'I Muslim community in Beirut, Deeb examines the ways that individual and collective expressions and understandings of piety have been debated, contested, and reformulated. Women take center stage in this process, a result of their visibility both within the community, and in relation to Western ideas that link the status of women to modernity. By emphasizing the ways notions of modernity and piety are lived, debated, and shaped by "everyday Islamists," this book underscores the inseparability of piety and politics in the lives of pious Muslims.

This book is a compilation of population-based research on the relationships of religion to family life and health.

The Syrian state's rhetoric of Arab nationalism left little room for the official recognition of minority identities in pre-war Syria. Yet in practice, the state continually engaged with the Druze and other minorities to reinforce its legitimacy, often through cultural policy. Uncovering this neglected aspect of pre-war Syrian politics, Kastrinou explores the cultural politics of marriage in Syria, primarily among the Druze, to reveal how practical rituals of marriage inform sectarian and national identity formation.Challenging the assumed inherence of sectarianism and Druze endogamy, the book provides an historical and ethnographic account of political power and its relation to social control in Syria. It demonstrates the centrality of the body to Druze cosmology and how ritual performances of birth, marriage and death maintain and negotiate sectarian cohesion. Connecting these struggles to national and international politics, Kastrinou examines how both the Syrian government and the European Union have sponsored marriage-themed dance performances in Syria, each leveraging its cultural importance to legitimise their own policy goals. The book establishes marriage as a pervasive idiom for the construction of collective identity in Syria, which is appropriated by individuals, sects, states and intergovernmental organizations alike. Its conclusions are relevant to scholars of Middle East studies, sectarianism, anthropology and politics.