Explores the meaning of writing in the post postmodernist moment when master narratives have been questioned and the very act of representing others has been problematized, and discusses some of the key theoretical debates emerging in the aftermath of what came to be known as the postmodernist crisis.

When the author first went to Botswana in the early 1980s to study the impact a major land reform had on rural life in this impoverished African country, social theory and ethnographic practice seemed solid and convincing. A decade later, and again in 1999, she returned to Bostwana and to the Tswapong people whose lives she had shared, and she encountered not only a rapidly shifting social reality, but she also began to ask questions that stemmed from and were shaped by theoretical frames quite different from those she had employed in her earlier work.

At the center of the narrative that runs through this study is a critical reflexive discussion that explores the tension between data recorded at a particular historical moment and the interpretive frames offered to make sense of such data.

Based on a collaborative research project - an exciting fruit of the region's peace process - this book provides an in-depth examination and comparison of women's participation in agricultural production in four Middle-Eastern countries: Egypt, Jordan, Palestine and Israel. Each of the country studies is set in context, providing an overview of the status of women in the national economy and society, and in education and law, before proceeding to analyze the status and roles of women in the rural sector. These up-to-date overviews are based on published and unpublished data, much of which is available for the first time in English. But the book can also be read as a fascinating story of the way gender is introduced into a complex political setting where "development work" is done. It offers a reflexive, critical examination of the very process of its own production and some general observations about the links between academic and development-centred discourses.

An evocative feminist ethnography focused on the rarely documented lives of women at the Israeli periphery. Concrete Boxes: Mizrahi Women on Israel's Periphery offers a rich depiction of contemporary life in one marginalized development town in the Israeli Negev. Placing the stories of five women at the center, author Pnina Motzafi-Haller depicts a range of creative strategies used by each woman to make a meaningful life within a reality of multiple exclusions. These limitations, Motzafi-Haller argues, create a "concrete box," which unlike the "glass ceiling" of the liberal feminist discourse, is multi-dimensional and harder to break free from. As the stories unfold, the reader is introduced to the unique paths developed by each of five women in order to keep their families and community together in the face of the stigmatic and hegemonic narratives of Isreal is who seldom set foot in their social and geographic periphery. Motzafi-Haller's ethnography includes the daily struggles of Nurit, a single mother with a drug-addicted partner, in her attempt to make ends meet and escape social isolation; Ephrat's investment in an increasingly religious-observant lifestyle; the juggling acts of Rachel, who develops a creative mix of narratives of self, using middle-class rhetoric in reimagining a material reality of continued dependence on the welfare system; the rebellious choices of Esti, who at thirty-five, refuses to marry, have children, or keep a stable job, celebrating against all odds a life of gambling, consumption beyond her means, and a tight and supportive social network; and the life story of Gila, who was born in Yeruham but was able to "escape" it and establish herself in middle-class life as a school principal. Taken together, these intimate narratives ask us to consider both the potential and limitations of post-colonial feminist insights about the manner in which knowledge is produced. Engaging, and at the same time theoretically informed, Concrete Boxes offers sustained reflection about Israeli reality rarely documented in scholarly work and a thought-provoking theoretical exploration of the ways in which individual agency encounters social restrictions and how social marginality is reproduced and challenged at the same time.

An evocative feminist ethnography focused on the rarely documented lives of women at the Israeli periphery. Concrete Boxes: Mizrahi Women on Israel's Periphery offers a rich depiction of contemporary life in one marginalized development town in the Israeli Negev. Placing the stories of five women at the center, author Pnina Motzafi-Haller depicts a range of creative strategies used by each woman to make a meaningful life within a reality of multiple exclusions. These limitations, Motzafi-Haller argues, create a "concrete box," which unlike the "glass ceiling" of the liberal feminist discourse, is multi-dimensional and harder to break free from. As the stories unfold, the reader is introduced to the unique paths developed by each of five women in order to keep their families and community together in the face of the stigmatic and hegemonic narratives of Isreal is who seldom set foot in their social and geographic periphery. Motzafi-Haller's ethnography includes the daily struggles of Nurit, a single mother with a drug-addicted partner, in her attempt to make ends meet and escape social isolation; Ephrat's investment in an increasingly religious-observant lifestyle; the juggling acts of Rachel, who develops a creative mix of narratives of self, using middle-class rhetoric in reimagining a material reality of continued dependence on the welfare system; the rebellious choices of Esti, who at thirty-five, refuses to marry, have children, or keep a stable job, celebrating against all odds a life of gambling, consumption beyond her means, and a tight and supportive social network; and the life story of Gila, who was born in Yeruham but was able to "escape" it and establish herself in middle-class life as a school principal. Taken together, these intimate narratives ask us to consider both the potential and limitations of post-colonial feminist insights about the manner in which knowledge is produced. Engaging, and at the same time theoretically informed, Concrete Boxes offers sustained reflection about Israeli reality rarely documented in scholarly work and a thought-provoking theoretical exploration of the ways in which individual agency encounters social restrictions and how social marginality is reproduced and challenged at the same time.

Explores the meaning of writing in the post postmodernist moment when master narratives have been questioned and the very act of representing others has been problematized, and discusses some of the key theoretical debates emerging in the aftermath of what came to be known as the postmodernist crisis.

When the author first went to Botswana in the early 1980s to study the impact a major land reform had on rural life in this impoverished African country, social theory and ethnographic practice seemed solid and convincing. A decade later, and again in 1999, she returned to Bostwana and to the Tswapong people whose lives she had shared, and she encountered not only a rapidly shifting social reality, but she also began to ask questions that stemmed from and were shaped by theoretical frames quite different from those she had employed in her earlier work.

At the center of the narrative that runs through this study is a critical reflexive discussion that explores the tension between data recorded at a particular historical moment and the interpretive frames offered to make sense of such data.