The Architectural Metamorphosis of the Israeli-Arab Kitchen: Social Structures, Cultural Patterns, and Gender Identities in a Spatial Perspective

Hawwa ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-228
Author(s):  
Kobi Peled
Keyword(s):  
Historical Context ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Domestic Sphere ◽  
Interior Space ◽  
Architectural Analysis ◽  
Political Transformations ◽  
The Sixties ◽  
The Status ◽  
And Gender

AbstractThis essay focuses on the relationship between form and culture. It demonstrates how architectural evidence can be used in the historical reconstruction of social and cultural processes. In this research, the architectural metamorphosis of the kitchen in the Palestinian Arab society in Israel is outlined from the end of the Ottoman rule to the late twentieth century. Beginning in late nineteenth-century rural Palestine, when preparation of food was an integral part of the agricultural way of life, this essay traces the kitchen's departure from the interior space during the period of the British Mandate in Palestine and the early years of the State of Israel; its return to the house in the sixties; and the subsequent changes in the design of the kitchen during the last quarter of the previous century. This socio-architectural analysis seeks to examine forms of life in a broad historical context of social, economic, and political transformations, and to carefully draw significant insights about the status of women in the domestic sphere from the architectural history of the kitchen.

Social Pretensions in Architecture and Ancestry: Hall House, Sawbridge, Warwickshire and the Andrewe Family

1996 ◽  
Vol 76 ◽  
pp. 51-72
Author(s):  
N. W. Alcock ◽  
C. T. Paul Woodfield
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Architectural Analysis ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Status ◽  
Country Houses ◽  
Social Importance

That architecture makes social statements is obvious in grand buildings from Norman castles to country houses. In smaller houses, such statements are often muted by our ignorance of their historical context and their date. This paper examines a small but sophisticated medieval house in which the combination of precise dating and informative documentation surmounts simple architectural analysis, to reveal something of its social importance to the family who built it. In the early nineteenth century, the status of Hall House, Sawbridge, was the lowest possible. It belonged to the Sawbridge Overseers of the Poor and was rented to families receiving parish support; later it became farm labourers' cottages. Most of the stages in the decline of the elegant medieval house to this lowly state can be documented, and links established to the only family in fifteenth-century Sawbridge with pretensions to sophistication. These clues lead to the identification of John Andrewe as the builder of Hall House in 1449, and to the recognition of it as a concrete expression of a family pride that was also being fostered by the invention of a distinguished ancestry.

The New Woman in Technological Modernity

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lena Wånggren
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
New Woman ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Cultural Work ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Technological Changes ◽  
The New Woman ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Key Terms

This first chapter places the New Woman figure in the literary and historical context of the late nineteenth century, as well as outlines the theoretical and methodological premises of the book. Defining along the way key terms such as modernity, technology and gender, the chapter asserts that in order to describe fin de siècle modernity, one must take into account not only the technological changes or advances specific of the time, but in addition the role played by contemporary notions of gender, and the cultural work of literature in changing these. Just as literature gains significance first in connection to other agencies – such as a reader – so technology also takes on specific meanings first when considered in a social context.

Arab Women and Work: The Interrelation Between Orientalism and Historiography

Hawwa ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 164-198
Author(s):  
Malek Abisaab
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Difference ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Legal Rights ◽  
Middle Eastern Women ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Sixties ◽  
Cultural Taboos ◽  
And Gender

AbstractThis essay examines the approaches and themes in two overlapping historiographical areas on women and labor since the sixties. The first area examines the scholarship on Lebanese women and modernization. The second area covers the scholarship on women, labor and the family in Arab Middle Eastern society. Despite their general critique of Orientalist representations of the “Muslim” woman, several scholars continue to invest cognate features of the modernization discourse and West-centered models of womanhood. For one, scholars have persistently stated that the social structures in Middle Eastern/Islamic society do not lend themselves to class or gendered divisions. Using classical Eurocentric criteria for gauging women's “empowerment,” these scholars tried to show that Arab working-women are unable to organize themselves on the basis of gender due to cultural taboos, sectarian affiliations, provincial loyalties, family authority, and lack of education. At times, “Islam” or “culture” is presented as operating from above-creating social attitudes that limit women's public activities and involvement in waged work. The primacy given to cultural difference prevents comparability between Western and Middle Eastern/Muslim women on the basis of shared socio-economic experiences. Several studies overlooked the complex interconnections among family, sect, class and gender expressed through the range of activities and experiences linking women's domestic and waged work. There is indeed an overwhelming focus on the ideas and attitudes of bourgeois woman and their legal rights, which are rarely analyzed in connection to historical context, economic arrangements, productive patterns, or social interest. Rather, they are discussed in connection to women's education and work and ultimately levels of modernization. These prevalent features of the historiographical literature give shape to new and subtle Orientalist narratives about Muslim/Middle Eastern women.

scholarly journals The Disruption of Victorian Class and Gender Norms

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 58-73
Author(s):  
Paula Rae Bacchiochi Ostrander
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Gender Norms ◽  
British Society ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Domestic Sphere ◽  
Popular Romance ◽  
Political Literature ◽  
Consumption Practices ◽  
Social Anxieties ◽  
And Gender

During the late-nineteenth century, discussions surrounding female shop assistants permeated British society and culture appearing in newspapers, popular romance novels and political literature.  Ultimately, through romantic literary and cultural texts “the shopgirl” emerged as a social construction, obscuring and shaping the experiences and identity of “ordinary” female shop assistants.  While Victorian gender norms attempted to restrict women to the domestic sphere, the study of shopgirls illuminates the social anxieties and gender discourses that emerged alongside shifting consumption practices in Britain, resulting in the breakdown of separate gendered spaces.  This paper will argue that the emergence of female shop assistants and the socially constructed “shopgirl” in the latter half of the nineteenth century transformed pre-existing Victorian class and gender norms in British society.  Not only did shopgirls embody fantasies connected to consumer culture, but disrupted class and gender norms resulting in a variety of social anxieties, pertaining to the loss of female domesticity, social mobility, morality, as well as the dangers of London for women.

Posthumanism and Gender, or the Fall Back into Nature

2020 ◽  
pp. 57-91
Author(s):  
Hedwig Fraunhofer
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Difference ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Scientific Theories ◽  
Human Exceptionalism ◽  
The Status ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Male Authority

Engaging with the scientific theories and popular concerns of the late nineteenth century, Strindberg’s naturalist plays enact the anxiety related to the renegotiation of the status of the human following the publication of Darwin’s work. The loss of human exceptionalism in the natural sciences intersects with the socio-political crisis of symbolic male authority in democratic modernity. An emerging posthumanism and the crisis of gender, i.e. ontological and socio-political questions, converge. Strindberg’s work problematizes the modern biopolitical, immunitarian lines of separation in terms of sexual difference, along a threatened binary gender distribution. While Strindberg’s work is part of the naturalist “dramatic” theatrical tradition -- a representationalist tradition centrally based on human dialogue and therefore generally considered “anthropocentric,” this chapter argues that Strindberg’s naturalist work, thematically if not yet formally, marks the intra-action of gender with a beginning posthumanism.

The Early Years of the Jewish Presence at the University of Illinois

1992 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-245
Author(s):  
Winton U. Solberg
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Characteristic Form ◽  
University Of Illinois ◽  
American Higher Education ◽  
Jewish Students ◽  
The University ◽  
The Church

For over two centuries, the College was the characteristic form of higher education in the United States, and the College was closely allied to the church in a predominantly Protestant land. The university became the characteristic form of American higher education starting in the late nineteenth Century, and universities long continued to reflect the nation's Protestant culture. By about 1900, however, Catholics and Jews began to enter universities in increasing numbers. What was the experience of Jewish students in these institutions, and how did authorities respond to their appearance? These questions will be addressed in this article by focusing on the Jewish presence at the University of Illinois in the early twentieth Century. Religion, like a red thread, is interwoven throughout the entire fabric of this story.

Травелоги югославских писательниц первой половины ХХ века: в поисках идентичности

2019 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-36
Author(s):  
А. Г. БОДРОВА
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The Other ◽  
Literary Field ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Egyptian Women ◽  
Dialogical Philosophy ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Women's Travel ◽  
Gender Boundaries

The paper considers travelogues of Yugoslav female writers Alma Karlin, Jelena Dimitrijević, Isidora Sekulić, Marica Gregorič Stepančič, Marica Strnad, Luiza Pesjak. These texts created in the first half of the 20th century in Serbian, Slovenian and German are on the periphery of the literary field and, with rare exceptions, do not belong to the canon. The most famous of these authors are Sekulić from Serbia and the German-speaking writer Karlin from Slovenia. Recently, the work of Dimitrijević has also become an object of attention of researchers. Other travelogues writers are almost forgotten. Identity problems, especially national ones, are a constant component of the travelogue genre. During a journey, the author directs his attention to “other / alien” peoples and cultures that can be called foreign to the perceiving consciousness. However, when one perceives the “other”, one inevitably turns to one's “own”, one's own identity. The concept of “own - other / alien”, on which the dialogical philosophy is based (M. Buber, G. Marcel, M. Bakhtin, E. Levinas), implies an understanding of the cultural “own” against the background of the “alien” and at the same time culturally “alien” on the background of “own”. Women's travel has a special status in culture. Even in the first half of the 20th century the woman was given space at home. Going on a journey, especially unaccompanied, was at least unusual for a woman. According to Simone de Beauvoir, a woman in society is “different / other”. Therefore, women's travelogues can be defined as the look of the “other” on the “other / alien”. In this paper, particular attention is paid to the interrelationship of gender, national identities and their conditioning with a cultural and historical context. At the beginning of the 20th century in the Balkans, national identity continues actively to develop and the process of women's emancipation is intensifying. Therefore, the combination of gender and national issues for Yugoslavian female travelogues of this period is especially relevant. Dimitrijević's travelogue Seven Seas and Three Oceans demonstrates this relationship most vividly: “We Serbian women are no less patriotic than Egyptian women... Haven't Serbian women most of the merit that the big Yugoslavia originated from small Serbia?” As a result of this study, the specificity of the national and gender identity constructs in the first half of the 20th century in the analyzed texts is revealed. For this period one can note, on the one hand, the preservation of national and gender boundaries, often supported by stereotypes, on the other hand, there are obvious tendencies towards the erosion of the established gender and national constructs, the mobility of models of gender and national identification as well, largely due to the sociohistorical processes of the time.

Values and Gender Equality between Islam and the West

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 79-94
Author(s):  
Moulay Rachid Mrani
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equality ◽  
Virtual Space ◽  
Value Systems ◽  
Women And Gender ◽  
The West ◽  
Living Together ◽  
The Status ◽  
Muslim Intellectuals ◽  
Multiple Challenges ◽  
And Gender

If the development of technology, means of communication, and rapid transportation have made continents closer and made the world a small village, the outcome of the ensuing encounters among cultures and civilizations is far from being a mere success. Within this new reality Muslims, whether they live in majority or minority contexts, face multiple challenges in terms of relating to non-Muslim cultures and traditions. One of these areas is the status of women and gender equality. Ali Mazrui was one of the few Muslim intellectuals to be deeply interested in this issue. His dual belonging, as an African and as a westerner, enable him to understand such issues arising from the economic, political, and ethical contrasts between the West and Islam. This work pays tribute to this exceptional intellectual’s contribution toward the rapprochement between the western and the Islamic value systems, illustrating how he managed to create a “virtual” space for meeting and living together between two worlds that remain different yet dependent upon each other. 

Mind Cure

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wakoh Shannon Hickey
Keyword(s):  
White Male ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Scientific Psychology ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Performance ◽  
And Gender ◽  
First Americans ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Political Economic

Mindfulness is widely claimed to improve health and performance, and historians typically say that efforts to promote meditation and yoga therapeutically began in the 1970s. In fact, they began much earlier, and that early history offers important lessons for the present and future. This book traces the history of mind-body medicine from eighteenth-century Mesmerism to the current Mindfulness boom and reveals how religion, race, and gender have shaped events. Many of the first Americans to advocate meditation for healing were women leaders of the Mind Cure movement, which emerged in the late nineteenth century. They believed that by transforming their consciousness, they could also transform oppressive circumstances in which they lived, and some were activists for social reform. Trained by Buddhist and Hindu missionaries, these women promoted meditation through personal networks, religious communities, and publications. Some influenced important African American religious movements, as well. For women and black men, Mind Cure meant not just happiness but liberation in concrete political, economic, and legal terms. The Mind Cure movement exerted enormous pressure on mainstream American religion and medicine, and in response, white, male doctors and clergy with elite academic credentials appropriated some of its methods and channeled them into scientific psychology and medicine. As mental therapeutics became medicalized, individualized, and then commodified, the religious roots of meditation, like the social justice agendas of early Mind Curers, fell away. After tracing how we got from Mind Cure to Mindfulness, this book reveals what got lost in the process.

State, Islam, and Gender Politics

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Women's Rights ◽  
Socioeconomic Development ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Dress Code ◽  
Main Site ◽  
Muslim Countries ◽  
Personal Rights ◽  
The Status ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Economy And Education

The existing literature on women’s rights and Islam falls short of addressing the relationship between the religious debate on women’s rights and the existing rules of law in Muslim-majority countries. This chapter will bridge this gap by analyzing the status of women in the legal systems of Egypt, Turkey, and Morocco. It will evaluate the influence of Islam on the shaping of these laws, compared to other factors like culture, socioeconomic development, and education. Except in marginal cases like Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan under the Taliban, women’s rights in politics, the economy, and education have advanced in all Muslim countries. But there are some limitations placed upon women’s rights using religious arguments. Everywhere, personal rights about family life, sexuality, and dress code remain discriminatory against women. In this regard, the woman’s body has become the main site of the politicization of Islam, by state and non-state actors alike.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document