Revisited: Muslim Women’s agency and feminist anthropology of the Middle East

Abstract

This article locates imaginative aspects of human subjectivity as a feminist issue by reviewing the concept of agency in the genealogy of Muslim and Middle Eastern women in anthropological and ethnographic literature. It suggests that, if feminist scholarship of the Middle East would continue approaching to Muslim women's agency -as it has been doing for decades-, it should do so as an epistemological question and thus expand the limits of ethnographic and analytical focus beyond the broader systems, such as family, nation, religion, and state. As an example to this proposition, the article then discusses the recent work on aspects of selfhood that escape from the structures, rules, systems, and discursive limits of life but captures imaginations, aspirations, desires, yearnings, and longings.Keywords Agency . Muslim women . Anthropology of the Middle East . Desire . Feminist theory Women's Agency in Anthropology of the Middle EastIt would be reasonable to suggest that women's agency has been the primary focus in the anthropology of the Middle East since feminist anthropologists have entered into the area studies in late 1960s. Like much early feminist scholarship, the feminist anthropology of the Middle East also took a critical distance to the former scholarship and its Bmale bias^ (Reiter 1975, Moore 1988. As I discuss in following pages more extensively, the particular type of Cont Islam (2018) 12:73-92

“I’m Trying to Give Them My Face.” Everyday Embodied Agency of the Muslim Other in Amsterdam

“…Yet not every Muslim focuses on religion in the same manner and intensity. For example, Soares and Osella (2009) explored seemingly nonreligious aspects of Muslims' everyday lives arguing that desire, leisure, fashion, and sports are agential through which Muslims challenge Islam vs. the West binary (Gokariksel and Secor 2010;Sehlikoglu 2018;Tarlo 2007aTarlo , 2007bTarlo , 2010. In this regard, O'Brien (2015) has conceptualized "religious individualism" to understand how young Muslims construct their definitions of agency within their religious identification to negotiate potential conflicts and tensions between their embodiments and the dominant cultural framework of whiteness (Driezen et al 2021).…”

Beyond ‘the Stepford Wives Syndrome’

“…Much has been written recently about the tendency to overemphasise the role of religion in the study of Muslims, and to ascribe a faith-related explanation to all phenomena (Schielke 2010;Jeldtoft, 2011;Sehlikoglu, 2017;Panjwani and Moulin-Stożek, 2017). This is often contested with an appeal to the study of 'everyday Islam' , an approach that emphasises 'the internal contradictions, ambiguities, and incoherences that inform the discourses and practices of ordinary Muslims' (Fadil and Fernando, 2015a: 60).…”

Feminist ethnography in the study of religion

“…Indeed, sociologist Beverly Skeggs argues that what is particularly feminist is the dedication to challenging extant narratives by broadening the recognition of knowledge (Skeggs, 2001, p. 437), something that is accelerating particularly within the study of Islam (Sehlikoglu, 2018).…”