Family History In The Middle East Household, Property, And Gender [Paperback]

Challenges conventional assumptions about the family and the modern Middle East.

Despite the constant refrain that family is the most important social institution in Middle Eastern societies, only recently has it become the focus for rethinking the modern history of the Middle East. This book introduces exciting new findings by historians, anthropologists, and historical demographers that challenge pervasive assumptions about family made in the past. Using specific case studies based on original archival research and fieldwork, the contributors focus on the interplay between micro and macro processes of change and bridge the gap between materialist and discursive frameworks of analysis. They reveal the flexibility and dynamism of family life and show the complex juxtaposition of different rhythms of time (individual time, family time, historical time). These findings interface directly with and demonstrate the need for a critical reassessment of current debates on gender, modernity, and Islam.

In the current political situation, in which simplistic assumptions about the Middle East are the order of the day, well-informed books about the Middle East such as this one are of crucial importance.  Continuity and Change

By reconstructing the family histories of elites and ordinary people in the Middle East from the seventeenth to the early twentieth century, the book challenges prevailing assumptions about the monolithic traditional Middle Eastern family type. Instead, it argues cogently that the structure and boundaries of these families have always been flexible and dynamic.  American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences

This book challenges the traditional wisdom, not only about the parameters and significance of the Middle Eastern family in the past, but also about the very meaning of family itself and how we go about uncovering its past. The attention to methodological issues and analytical frameworks thl“l