Veiled sentiments : honor and poetry in a Bedouin society

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Bibliographic Information

Veiled sentiments : honor and poetry in a Bedouin society

Lila Abu-Lughod

University of California Press, c2016

30th anniversary ed. with a new afterword

  • : pbk

Available at  / 2 libraries

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Note

Bibliography: p. 339-349

Includes index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

First published in 1986, Lila Abu-Lughod's Veiled Sentiments has become a classic ethnography in the field of anthropology. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Abu-Lughod lived with a community of Bedouins in the Western Desert of Egypt for nearly two years, studying gender relations, morality, and the oral lyric poetry through which women and young men express personal feelings. The poems are haunting, the evocation of emotional life vivid. But Abu-Lughod's analysis also reveals how deeply implicated poetry and sentiment are in the play of power and the maintenance of social hierarchy. What begins as a puzzle about a single poetic genre becomes a reflection on the politics of sentiment and the complexity of culture. This thirtieth anniversary edition includes a new afterword that reflects on developments both in anthropology and in the lives of this community of Awlad 'Ali Bedouins, who find themselves increasingly enmeshed in national political and social formations. The afterword ends with a personal meditation on the meaning-for all involved-of the radical experience of anthropological fieldwork and the responsibilities it entails for ethnographers.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments A Note on Transcriptions One: Guest and Daughter The Community Fieldwork Poetry and Sentiment PART ONE The Ideology of Bedouin Social Life Two: Identity in Relationship Asl: The Blood of Ancestry Garaba: The Blood of Relationship Maternal Ties and a Common Life Identification and Sharing Identity in a Changing World Three: Honor and the Virtues of Autonomy Autonomy and Hierarchy The Family Model of Hierarchy Honor: The Moral Basis of Hierarchy Limits on Power Hasham: Honor of the Weak Four: Modesty, Gender, and Sexuality Gender Ideology and Hierarchy The Social Value of Male and Female The "Natural" Bases of Female Moral Inferiority Red Belts and Black Veils: The Symbolism of Gender and Sexuality Sexuality and the Social Order Hasham Reconsidered: Deference and the Denial of Sexuality The Meaning of Veiling PART TWO Discourses on Sentiment Five: The Poetry of Personal Life On Poetry in Context The Poetry of Self and Sentiment Six: Honor and Poetic Vulnerability Discourses on Loss Matters of Pride Responding to Death The Discourse of Honor Seven: Modesty and the Poetry of Love Discourses on Love Star-Crossed Lovers An Arranged Marriage Marriage, Divorce, and Polygyny Eight: Ideology and the Politics of Sentiment The Social Contexts of Discourse Protective Veils of Form The Meaning of Poetry The Politics of Sentiment Ideology and Experience Ethnography's Values: An Afterword Appendix: Formulas and Themes of the Ghinnawa Notes Bibliography Index

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