Geographies of Muslim Women: Gender, Religion, and Space

by Ghazi-Walid Falah (Editor), Ghazi-Walid Falah (Editor)

This groundbreaking volume explores how Islamic discourse and practice intersect with gender relations and broader political and economic processes to shape women's geographies in a variety of regional contexts. Contributors represent a wide range of disciplinary subfields and perspectives--cultural geography, political geography, development studies, migration studies, and historical geography--yet they share a common focus on bringing issues of space and place to the forefront of analyses of Muslim women's experiences. Themes addressed include the intersections of gender, development and religion; mobility and migration; and discourse, representation, and the contestation of space. In the process, the book challenges many stereotypes and assumptions about the category of "Muslim woman," so often invoked in public debate in both traditional societies and the West.

Genres: Nonfiction

337 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Natalie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading it for the second time, I am enjoying it even more. This book proves the point that there is a diversity of lived experience of Muslim women despite the fact media tends to obsure this fact.

[Parlei · Rating 4 out of 5]

This volume consists of an interdisciplinary array of compelling texts addressing the issue of gender/religion/space and the intersections of these with the category 'Muslim women.' What makes this volume particularly powerful is a heightened awareness of this book as it figures into larger socio-political questions, as it is addressed in popular media and in academia. In the introduction this book grapples with its own points of weakness, namely by critiquing the category 'Muslim women' but defending why the term is necessary despite its contentiousness. It also admits that only a few contributors to the volume are themselves Muslim women, calling for a need of heightened representation of Muslim women in these disciplines.

I recommend in particular Amy Freeman's "Moral Geographies and Women's Freedom," an article which used interviews of Moroccan-born women living in France to develop a discourse for how women interpret their own migratory actions, particularly as it relates to notions of "mobility" and "freedom." This is a powerful piece because it contains transcripts of women who are actually at odds with one another in interpreting similar migratory patterns. It also questions the notion of a 'universal freedom' and rejects 18th c. Enlightment ideas of the free individual, making a compelling case for embodied, contextual, and ideologically-dependent ideas of freedom.

I also recommend Ayari and Brousseau's "Writing Place and Gender in Novels by Tunisian Women," (taking a literary approach) and "Transnational Islam." (takes a geography-religion approach.)