Writing Women's Worlds: Bedouin Stories

In 1978 Lila Abu-Lughod climbed out of a dusty van to meet members of a small Awlad 'Ali Bedouin community. The anthropologist was about to join that community to learn from them. Living in this Egyptian Bedouin settlement for extended periods during the following decade, Abu-Lughod took part in family life, with its moments of humour, affection and anger. She witnessed striking changes, both cultural and economic, and she recorded the stories of the women. "Writing Women's Worlds" is Abu-Lughod's telling of those stories; it is also about what happens in bringing the stories to others. Abu-Lughod explores how anthropology typifies cultures, questions the appropriation of Third World women in feminist theory, and unsettles the prevailing popular and scholarly understandings of Muslim Arab society.