MER Article Autonomy and Gender in Egyptian Families The Egyptian family is changing in significant ways, modified by the social and economic realities of everyday life which are in turn affected by changes in the local and international economy. Extended family living arrangements are declining in favor of nuclear families, which now account for 84 p Cynthia Lloyd, Barbara Ibrahim, Laila Nawar • 3 min read
MER Article Devices and Desires The development of population policy in the Islamic Republic of Iran provides fertile ground for reexamining the widely held assumption that Islamist ideology is the antithesis of modernity and surely incompatible with any form of feminism. Recent strategies that the Islamic Republic has adopted to Homa Hoodfar • 22 min read
MER Article From Demographic Explosion to Social Rupture Experts and politicians seem to agree that the demographic structures of the Arab countries have reached a critical point. They acknowledge that rapid population growth seriously constrains a country’s economy and, consequently, its social and political possibilities. In the relationship between consumption, savings and investment, demographic imbalance imposes an Philippe Fargues • 14 min read
MER Article Gender, Population, Environment Miryam lives with her family in Manshiyat Nasir, originally a squatter settlement at the foot of Cairo’s Muqattam hills, now largely a brick-built community of small apartment buildings and box-like single family homes. Most now have piped-in water and electricity. Her family is one of the thousands Sally Ethelston • 8 min read
MER Article Israeli Women, Palestinian Women Deborah S. Bernstein, ed., Pioneers and Homemakers: Jewish Women in Pre-State Israel (SUNY, 1992). Barbara Swirski and Marilyn P. Safir, eds., Calling the Equality Bluff: Women in Israel (Pergamon, 1991). Elise G. Young, Keepers of the History: Women and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Teachers Purnima Bose • 5 min read
MER Article Searching for Strategies In a heated student election campaign at Birzeit University in November, the oppositional “Jerusalem First” coalition made a striking spectacle as hundreds of its supporters marched smartly across the university’s hilltop campus. In a prominent position at the head of the march, female students from the Popular Front, clad Rita Giacaman • 8 min read
MER Article A Campaign Rally in Sanaa Just within the walls of the old city of Sanaa, southeast of Bab al-Sha‘ub, a large tent has been erected in an open square. People are milling about -- mostly children, but also men and women. The candidate is talking to a group of people as one of her opponents drives by in a black Mercedes. The c David Warburton • 1 min read
MER Article Universalism and Solidarity Fatima Mernissi, The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Women’s Rights in Islam (Addison-Wesley, 1991). Hisham Sharabi, ed., Theory, Politics and the Arab World: Critical Responses (Routledge, 1990). Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Ann Russo and Lourdes Torres, eds., Third World Women Barbara Harlow • 7 min read
MER Article Gender and Civil Society Suad Joseph, an editor of this magazine, teaches anthropology at the University of California-Davis and is a founder of the Association of Middle East Women’s Studies and the Middle East Research Group in Anthropology. She has published extensively on sectarianism, gender and the family, and constru Joe Stork • 11 min read
MER Article Growing Up In Jerusalem Jamila Freij (Umm Sam‘an) was born in 1930 in “new” Jerusalem, what is now called West Jerusalem. Her family had lived in Jerusalem’s Old City for 15 generations until 1925 when her father and his brother built houses in Bak‘a (which means “beautiful area”), then an unpopulated land outside the Old Anita Vitullo Khoury • 6 min read
MER Article Three Intifada Books F. Robert Hunter, The Palestinian Uprising: A War by Other Means (I. B. Tauris, 1991). Joost Hiltermann, Behind the Intifada: Labor and Women’s Movements in the Occupied Territories (Princeton, 1991). Julie Peteet, Gender in Crisis: Women and the Palestinian Resistance Movement (Columbia, 1991). Lucine Taminian • 4 min read
MER Article Aspects of Egyptian Civil Resistance Several films with critical political content opened during the 1992 Ramadan season in Egypt. The most popular was al-Irhab wa al-Kabab (Terrorism and Kebab), directed by Sharif ‘Arafa and starring Egypt’s foremost comic actor, ‘Adil Imam. The protagonist repeatedly visits the hub of the central government bureaucracy -- a Joel Beinin • 4 min read
