Overview

When 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.  

Full Product Details

Author:   Nicola Pratt
Publisher:   University of California Press
Imprint:   University of California Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.50cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.590kg
ISBN:  

9780520281752

ISBN 10:   0520281756
Pages:   328
Publication Date:   27 October 2020
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Out of stock  
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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments 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

Reviews

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 *

A compelling portrait of women working inside, outside, and against systems of power. * Foreign Affairs *

"""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 *"

Author Information

Nicola Pratt is Associate Professor of International Politics of the Middle East at the University of Warwick. She is the coauthor of What Kind of Liberation? Women and the Occupation of Iraq and author of Democracy and Authoritarianism in the Arab World.

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