Young Urban Saudi Women’s Transgressions of Official Rules and the Production of a New Social Group

Abstract

This article deals with young urban Saudi women’s transgressions of rules regulating dress and public conduct in Riyadh. Many researchers on Middle Eastern societies interpret as resistance the silent practices adopted by subalterns such as women or youth. The existence of such social groupings is scarcely questioned in these works, which focus mainly on the interpretation of practices as political or subversive. In this article, I emphasize the collective and public aspect of transgressions in order to show how transgressive acts participate in shaping collective identifications and in producing young urban Saudi women as a group. In the first section, I argue that transgressions have a public aspect that makes them transformative, as they are tacitly coordinated, reproduced among young women, and repeated every day. The second section states that the transgressions’ impact does not imply that they should be interpreted as resistance. In fact, transgressive acts are embedded in shifting power relations in the context of reform. In the third section, I show how transgressions have long-term implications for shaping groupings, identifications, and exclusions. Some transgressive practices that involve specific consumerist self-presentations have become norms among urban young women who conform to prevent rejection from the group. This study draws on ten months of ethnographic fieldwork in Riyadh between 2005 and 2009. I conducted interviews with young, urban Saudi women who studied or worked in Riyadh.

Piety, Glamour, and Protest: Performing Social Status and Affiliation in the United Arab Emirates

“…As a result, some students used the semi-safe space of the campuses to act and dress in defiance of family rules enforced at home. These findings parallel Le Renard’s work (2013, 2014) in Riyadh, which documented young Saudi women’s dress across different kinds of public spaces, including gender-segregated university campuses, and explored the ways in which shared decisions about fashion and self-presentation can build “shared feelings” among young women.…”

“…There are important exceptions to this “black box” narrative, both among scholars (e.g., Al-Qasimi 2010) and in popular media pieces (e.g., Hellyer 2014; Zacharias and Leech 2014). Research elsewhere in the Arab Gulf (e.g., Meneley 2007; Le Renard 2013, 2014) contributes to such analysis. Nevertheless, in the UAE, connections between fashion choices, socializing patterns, and different physical spaces remain underexplored.…”

“…Discussions about women in the Middle East typically engage with the classic division between public and private spaces, the ways in which women navigate them, and the differences that this division creates in women’s dress and behavior depending on their context (e.g., Deeb 2006; Fernea 1985; El-Guindi 1999; Inhorn 1996; Kilicbay and Binark 2002; Abu-Lughod 1986, 1993; Mahmood 2005; Masud, Salvatore, and Bruinessen 2009; Meneley 2007; Mernissi 1987; Le Renard 2013, 2014; Tschirhart 2014; Wynn 1997). This division centers on the idea that in the private space of the family home (or the home of a close relative or female friend), women have freedom of movement, self-presentation, and dress, as well as control over many household affairs, whereas the public spheres are male-dominated.…”

“…Building from Butler's work (1990Butler's work ( , 1997Butler's work ( , 1993, I focus on young women's constructions of identity via particular types of performativity and the ongoing processes by which they actively engaged in "self-making" through behaviors, speech, gestures, and fashion. I also propose that UAE universities provided a performative space (Goffman 1959;Le Renard 2013Mendoza-Denton 2008) in which young women could "try on" different presentations of self and identity that they would not otherwise have been able to experiment with. Universities were thus not only spaces for education but also for social performance, performances moreover that reflected the contradictory forces flowing through women's lives on-and off-campus.…”

Motivational Factors Leading Young Saudi Females to Become Bilinguals

“…Being able to have the opportunity to study English can open the doors to endless opportunities and financial security both in the Kingdom and abroad. Young female Saudi's measure their success through their parent's recognition and Saudi parents take pride in their children's achievements Renard, 2013). However, due to the internal nature of Saudi tribal culture, where features such as inter-tribal marriage and family name and honor are still hallmarks of the culture, learning English is not allowed to be a cultural passport to allow a change in values or behaviors.…”