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Palestinian Women’s Empowerment through Social and Generational Gender Shaping
Abstract
This research examines the ways which shame ideology is used as a tool to promote empowerment among generations of Palestinian women. Shame is a phenomenon that permeates the realities of Palestinian women’s lives: women constantly negotiate the parameters of shame ideologies within the larger framework of their culture and, ultimately, within themselves (Baxter 2007). Shame (eib) ideology is self-regulating, meaning that an individual will monitor their behaviors and thoughts to reflect larger societal beliefs about morality (Abu-Lughod 1986; Elias 1989; Mahmood 2001). Self-monitoring, as well as communal monitoring, are perceived as modes of enforcement of shame ideology and behaviors. This paper takes an anthropological approach to understanding how the phenomenon of shame in the lives of West Bank Palestinian women is being used to promote generational empowerment. Realities surrounding shame are often enforced and perpetuated through female lineages, leading to women’s generational interpretations of gendered roles, subjectivity, and ideology. Kinship, in this regard, is an entity that both creates and reacts to socioeconomic and political changes. Drawing on fieldwork in Ramallah in 2019, this paper aims to uncover how shame ideologies have shifted across generations of Palestinian women and how those shifts have created new modes of empowerment which stem from Palestinian women themselves. References Abu-Lughod, Lila. 1986. Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society. Oakland, CA: University of California Press. Baxter, Diane. 2007. “Honor Thy Sister: Selfhood, Gender, and Agency in Palestinian Culture.” Anthropology Quarterly 80 (3): 737-775. Elias, Norbert. 1989. “Shame and Repugnance.” In Social Theory Roots and Branches, edited by Peter Kivisto, 414-419. New York: Oxford University Press. Mahmood, Saba. 2001. “Feminist Theory, Embodiment, and the Docile Agent: Some Reflections on the Egyptian Islamic Revival.” Cultural Anthropology 16(2): 202-236.
Discipline
Anthropology
Geographic Area
Palestine
Sub Area
Gender/Women's Studies