Women of Fes: Ambiguities of Urban Life in Morocco

Contemporary Ethnography

by Rachel Newcomb

Throughout its history, Morocco has maintained a distinctive sense of identity. Its name conjures up visions of carpets and Casablanca, mint tea and the Marrakech Express, associations that are not entirely dispelled by visits to the country. However, in recent years Morocco has faced challenges to its stability. The advent of new technologies, such as satellite communications and the Internet, has enhanced the public's access to information and led to greater demands for human rights and government accountability. At the same time, Islamist influences are on the rise, with criticism from some that current structures of governance are not Islamic enough. As different factions assert competing visions for the identity of the Moroccan state, the status of women is frequently invoked as a barometer of the country's progress. The nation-state has characterized the Moroccan female citizen as simultaneously modern, secular, and Islamic, while religious discourse has framed the nationalist vision as hopelessly enslaved to Western secularism, suggesting that the Moroccan woman needs to "return" to an authentic Muslim identity. Based on two years of fieldwork conducted in the city of Fes, Rachel Newcomb's Women of Fes offers valuable insights into the everyday lives of Moroccan women. Newcomb evokes the struggles middle-class women face as they challenge and modify competing ideologies to create new forms of identity in work, family, and urban space. Simultaneously, the book situates women's lives within larger processes, such as globalization, human rights, and the construction of national identity.

Genres: Nonfiction, Anthropology, Morocco

248 pages, Hardcover

First published December 26, 2008

About the author

I'm a cultural anthropologist and freelance writer whose work has appeared in publications including Washington Post, MarketWatch, USA Today and MoneyGeek. I love writing and traveling, and especially observing and learning from other cultures. I have a creative writing master's degree from Johns Hopkins and a PhD in Anthropology from Princeton.

I've written ethnographies about my fieldwork in Morocco and a novel. More about my books can be found at my Amazon page, which has links to all my books.

Reviews

[The Curious Spoonie]

In the western world we like to paint a rather two-dimensional picture of Muslim women, a picture that usually includes limited rights, patriarchal control, and lack of personal agency. This European bias has, predictably, influenced past ethnographic research which typically focused on "traditional" women or women belonging to the lower classes of Muslim societies.

In Women of Fes, ethnographer Rachel Newcomb takes us beyond these preconceptions and details a fascinating look at the lives of middle-class women in Morocco. Her work confronts easy stereotypes and then moves beyond them to focus on the real women of contemporary Morocco with all of their complexities. Her immersive fieldwork shows that, as with women everywhere, it is impossible to define women in Muslim societies with simplistic labels or uniform categories.

This book describes how modern, middle-class life in Morocco is a constant push and pull between three worlds - the Muslim traditional patriarchy, Western influenced secularism, and growing Islamist movements. It also shows how the women of Morocco weave in and around these sometimes competing, sometimes complimentary viewpoints to create new and complex identities.

Written at a time when the Mudawana, the personal status or family code in Moroccan law, was being revaluated by the Moroccan religious authority, Newcomb's work takes on an even greater level of complexity. The debate over Mudawana reform, which regulates many issues that are inextricably linked to the female life including marriage, divorce, and inheritance, is a visible representation of the intricate and evolving roles of women in a Muslim society.

It is in this complex world that the author observes her female subjects as they challenge, reinforce, or bend this Moroccan trifecta of social ideologies. The choices they make as women, while not exactly the same as what we would consider the norm in American society are, in reality, no less autonomous or meaningful.

Newcomb’s writing style itself has something that many books about ethnographic fieldwork do not usually have - a relatability and ease that, although still rooted in good academic research, makes her writing personable and easy to understand. Often, as I was reading, I forgot that I was reading an academic study as I became absorbed with the world that Newcomb was describing. It is clear that this is a world that the author was not only immersed in but one that she felt personally connected to.

And, as is necessary for any good ethnographer, this fact of personal connection is one Newcomb readily admits. I appreciated how she consistently acknowledged her own individual associations and potential preconceptions within her work. The fact that the community that she was observing was not just an interesting one but one that she had, through marriage, become a part of made her observations all the more interesting and thoughtful. Although Newcomb clearly connects what she is witnessing to larger societal patterns and subjects she never loses sight of the humanity of the people around her.

I also wanted to add that I am writing this review not long after the tragic deaths of up to 100 Moroccan migrants at the breakwaters in Ceuta (July 2026) and I can’t help but wonder how the society Newcomb so thoroughly describes in her book connects to the lives I am now hearing about on the news. The male unemployment the author cites as a large stressor on the everyday lives of those she observed is the most obvious correlation, but I can’t help but wonder how the upper and middle-class Fassis she focused on would see this more recent tragedy. As a result of the same unemployment they are themselves experiencing? Or as a predictable result of the abandonment of traditional ideals? Or maybe in the same insular and detached way they responded to the lower-class suffering she noted so poignantly in this book.

Although I am admittedly far from an ethnographical expert, I found Women of Fes to be one of the best ethnographies I have read to date. In focusing on national debate over exactly what should define a “Moroccan woman” Rachel Newcomb also reveals the progress of the nation of Morocco as a whole and the complex issues that continue to force and shape societal change.

[Beth]

It's been a very long time since I've read an academic work that I couldn't put down, but this book is exactly that. Rachel Newcomb's _Women of Fes_ is compelling, objective but compassionate, academically thorough, theoretically and analytically precise, and accessible to those who may be new to Morocco, the Arab world in general, or anthropological theory. As someone who once lived in Morocco, I highly recommend this book not only for its valuable intellectual contributions but equally because it's a genuinely riveting and absorbing read.

[Amber]

Very informative ethnography into the lives of women within Fes. The author immersed herself within the community collecting several interviews to understand the changes of "traditional" and "modernity." I definitely recommend this book.