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Space, Place and Home In Amman, Jordan: Re-Gendering Space
Abstract
In this paper, I examine relatively new spaces or uses of space in Jordan and their gendered implications. Drawing on two ethnographic cases, I trace spatial reconfigurations enabled by gendered transformations that have been precipitated by increased education, migration and attendant socio-economic transformations. In the first case, I examine the work trajectories of young women who migrate to Amman for employment. Most of these young women live in female dormitories for several years and in some cases for as much as a decade. I consider the implications of dormitory as home, as well as the re-configuration of links to home communities over time. Secondly, I will analyze the ways in which relatively new spaces of consumption in Amman, namely cafes, restaurants and malls, create a space for single young men and women to meet and court each other in the age of a marriage crisis. These spaces of courtship at times bypass or delay the making of marriages by families in the space of the home. Ultimately, I seek to bring these cases into conversation with the scholarship on houses and housing in Jordan, and particularly the notion of bayt (house) as signifier of kin relations and hierarchies in the household both literal and figurative.
Discipline
Anthropology
Geographic Area
Jordan
Sub Area
None