Shortlisted for the Katharine Briggs Folklore Award 2000.
In the 1970s, often to the consternation of parents and siblings, certain progressive young Arab women voluntarily donned the veil. The movement, which rapidly expanded and continues to gather momentum, has sparked controversy within Islamic culture, as well as reactions ranging from perplexity to outrage from those outside it. Western feminist commentators have been particularly vociferous in decrying the veil, which they glibly interpret as a concrete manifestation of patriarchal oppression.
However, most Western observers fail to realize that veiling, which has a long and complex history, has been embraced by many Arab women as both an affirmation of cultural identity and a strident feminist statement. Not only does the veil de-marginalize women in society, but it also represents an expression of liberation from colonial legacies. In short, contemporary veiling is more often than not about resistance. By voluntarily removing themselves from the male gaze, these women assert their allegiance to a rich and varied tradition, and at the same time preserve their sexual identity. Beyond this, however, the veil also communicates exclusivity of rank and nuances in social status and social relations that provide telling insights into how Arab culture is constituted. Further, as the author clearly demonstrates, veiling is intimately connected with notions of the self, the body and community, as well as with the cultural construction of identity, privacy and space.
This provocative book draws on extensive original fieldwork, anthropology, history and original Islamic sources to challenge the simplistic assumption that veilingis largely about modesty and seclusion, honor and shame.

A ground-breaking ethnographic study of suckling in the Arabian Gulf , this book reenergises the study of kinship. It analyses the misunderstood and marginalized phenomenon of suckling drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Qatar over a seven-year period. Fadwa El Guindi situates suckling (often given other names or subsumed under misleading classifications) squarely in the analytical category of kinship, with recognition that kinship is necessarily biological, societal and cultural. The volume takes kinship study beyond origins, nature-culture debates, and social nurturing and relatedness, and challenges claims of deterministic, reductionist formulas. As well as key reading for those involved in milk kinship research, this book is valuable for anthropologists, Middle East scholars and others with an interest in breastfeeding, family and social organisation, and religion.

A ground-breaking ethnographic study of suckling in the Arabian Gulf , this book reenergises the study of kinship. It analyses the misunderstood and marginalized phenomenon of suckling drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Qatar over a seven-year period. Fadwa El Guindi situates suckling (often given other names or subsumed under misleading classifications) squarely in the analytical category of kinship, with recognition that kinship is necessarily biological, societal and cultural. The volume takes kinship study beyond origins, nature-culture debates, and social nurturing and relatedness, and challenges claims of deterministic, reductionist formulas. As well as key reading for those involved in milk kinship research, this book is valuable for anthropologists, Middle East scholars and others with an interest in breastfeeding, family and social organisation, and religion.

Faye V. Harrison's collection of essays focuses on the intersections between race, gender, sexuality, class, and nationality that exert a huge influence on human rights conflicts around the world. Using compelling examples, the authors illustrate the central premise that understanding the dynamics of these intersections has important implications for effectively confronting oppression and constructing positive change. Investigating conflicts in Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa, and Australia, they also reflect upon political concerns and anxieties worldwide that have grown out of the catasrophe of 9/11. The contributors comprise an internationally diverse group of anthropologists and human rights activists concerned with global, culturally diverse, gendered experiences. This anthology will be valuable to instructors, human rights workers, and applied professionals in anthropology, gender studies, ethnic studies, and international human rights.

El Guindi provides a comprehensive guide to the methods of visual anthropology and the use of film in cross-cultural research and ethnography. She shows how visual media - photographic, filmic, interactive - is now an accepted part of the anthropological process, a vital tool that reflects and produces knowledge about the range of cultures and about culture itself. It preserves the integrity of people, objects, and events in their cultural context, and expands our horizons beyond the reach of memory culture. El Guindi places visual anthropology within an empirically-based, analytic framework, built on systematic observation, identifying the research cycle that begins with data gathering and leads to visual ethnographic construction that is anthropological in method, process, and product. She explains how indigenous, professional, and amateur forms of pictorial/auditory materials are grounded in personal, social, cultural, and ideological contexts, and describes the non-Western critique of the Western traditions of visual anthropology. Her book is an excellent guide for ethnographic research, and for film and other media instruction concerned with cross-cultural representation.

A groundbreaking anthropological analysis of Islam as experienced by Muslims, "By Noon Prayer" builds a conceptual model of Islam as a whole, while traveling along a comparative path of biblical, Egyptological, ethnographic, poetic, scriptural, and visual materials. Grounded in long-term observation of Arabo-Islamic culture and society, this study captures the rhythm of Islam weaving through the lives of Muslim women and men. Examples of the rhythmic nature of Islam can be seen in all aspects of Muslims' everyday lives. Muslims break their Ramadan fast upon the sun setting, and they receive Ramadan by sighting the new moon. Prayer for their dead is by noon and burial is before sunset. This is space and time in Islam--moon, sun, dawn and sunset are all part of a unique and unified rhythm, interweaving the sacred and the ordinary, nature and culture in a pattern that is characteristically Islamic.

A groundbreaking anthropological analysis of Islam as experienced by Muslims, "By Noon Prayer" builds a conceptual model of Islam as a whole, while traveling along a comparative path of biblical, Egyptological, ethnographic, poetic, scriptural, and visual materials. Grounded in long-term observation of Arabo-Islamic culture and society, this study captures the rhythm of Islam weaving through the lives of Muslim women and men. Examples of the rhythmic nature of Islam can be seen in all aspects of Muslims' everyday lives. Muslims break their Ramadan fast upon the sun setting, and they receive Ramadan by sighting the new moon. Prayer for their dead is by noon and burial is before sunset. This is space and time in Islam--moon, sun, dawn and sunset are all part of a unique and unified rhythm, interweaving the sacred and the ordinary, nature and culture in a pattern that is characteristically Islamic.

Faye V. Harrison's collection of essays focuses on the intersections between race, gender, sexuality, class, and nationality that exert a huge influence on human rights conflicts around the world. Using compelling examples, the authors illustrate the central premise that understanding the dynamics of these intersections has important implications for effectively confronting oppression and constructing positive change. Investigating conflicts in Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa, and Australia, they also reflect upon political concerns and anxieties worldwide that have grown out of the catasrophe of 9/11. The contributors comprise an internationally diverse group of anthropologists and human rights activists concerned with global, culturally diverse, gendered experiences. This anthology will be valuable to instructors, human rights workers, and applied professionals in anthropology, gender studies, ethnic studies, and international human rights.

Shortlisted for the Katharine Briggs Folklore Award 2000.
In the 1970s, often to the consternation of parents and siblings, certain progressive young Arab women voluntarily donned the veil. The movement, which rapidly expanded and continues to gather momentum, has sparked controversy within Islamic culture, as well as reactions ranging from perplexity to outrage from those outside it. Western feminist commentators have been particularly vociferous in decrying the veil, which they glibly interpret as a concrete manifestation of patriarchal oppression.
However, most Western observers fail to realize that veiling, which has a long and complex history, has been embraced by many Arab women as both an affirmation of cultural identity and a strident feminist statement. Not only does the veil de-marginalize women in society, but it also represents an expression of liberation from colonial legacies. In short, contemporary veiling is more often than not about resistance. By voluntarily removing themselves from the male gaze, these women assert their allegiance to a rich and varied tradition, and at the same time preserve their sexual identity. Beyond this, however, the veil also communicates exclusivity of rank and nuances in social status and social relations that provide telling insights into how Arab culture is constituted. Further, as the author clearly demonstrates, veiling is intimately connected with notions of the self, the body and community, as well as with the cultural construction of identity, privacy and space.
This provocative book draws on extensive original fieldwork, anthropology, history and original Islamic sources to challenge the simplistic assumption that veilingis largely about modesty and seclusion, honor and shame.