BEDOUINS

The Awlad 'Ali Bedouins (Egypt, 1990) who formerly lived in tents in the desert have now settled in Egyptian towns.

There are several good stories here:

The resistance of Bedouins against the authority of the Egyptian state.

The resistance of Bedouin women against Bedouin men.

The resistance of young Bedouins against older Bedouins.

The change in the Bedouin's situation when they moved from the desert to the towns.

The consequences of this change in situation for women and the consequences of this change for men.

The impact of modern forms of communication (e.g. TV soap operas) and the pressure to acquire consumer goods on the Bedouin's way of life.

The social position of Bedouins in Egyptian society. i.e. 'marginalisation'

How some, but not all, Bedouins respond to marginalisation. i.e. 'fundamentalism'

This is how each of these stories can be told.

First you must have a definition of 'resistance': actions which defy authority, without openly rebelling against it. This allows people to feel that their lives are not entirely governed by those who are in authority over them. They may actually support that authority.

The resistance of Bedouin men and women against the authority of the Egyptian state

Abu-Lughod identifies six ways in which the Egyptian state exercises its authority over its citizens, and how the Bedouins resist this authority. There are examples for each of these in the text.

Abu-Lughod identifies four areas of resistance: resistance against petty restrictions, resistance against marriage, sexually irreverent discourse, ghinnawas.

Resistance against petty restrictions

Men do not approve of women smoking. Women smoke and use their kids as lookouts to let them know when men are approaching.

Resistance against marriage

Marriages are arranged by men. When a woman is opposed to an arranged marriage, mothers and daughters will collude to find an excuse so that the marriage will not take place. The example is of a marriage arranged by a husband who met some friends in the market. The wife opposed the marriage, not least because the proposed husband lived in a tent in the desert because he was in a blood feud and likely to be killed. She persuaded the husband to tell his friend that the daughter's cousin (patrilateral parallel cousin) had already exercised his right to claim the daughter in marriage.

When women are married against their will, they can express their feelings through oppositional songs, sung publically at weddings.

I don't want that old fez on the hill
What I want is a new Peugeot

In very rare cases, a woman successfully refuses to be married. Abu-Lughod tells the story of a woman who refused to be married. She refused to eat, screamed whenever the marriage was refered to, and covered herself with black dye. This story was often told. It is therefore a 'narrative of resistance'. It allows women to know that the possibility of avoiding an arranged marriage exists, even if virtually all women accept the marriages arranged for them.

Sexually irreverent discourse

Women tell stories to other women, mocking men's male anatomy and sexual behaviour. This undermines men's claim to authority based on their anatomy. An example is the story of the wolf and the old man hiding in a basket.

'A wolf demands food of a man and his wife. After they have given the wolf all they have, they hide from him; the husband hiding in a basket suspended from a tent pole. The wolf comes to demand his dinner and sees the man's genitals hanging out through a hole in the basket. So the wolf jumps up snapping at the old man's genitals.'

This is a discourse because women tell this story to each other as part of an ongoing, long-term conversation between many people about men's failings. It is sexually irreverent because it makes jokes about the one thing that distinguishes men from women. Instead of regarding this anatomical difference with reverence, it puts it in a ludicrous context.

Ghinnawas

Ghinnawas are sentimental sung poems about love and loss. (Make sure you don't confuse oppositional songs which take place at weddings with ghinnawas).

Tears increased oh Lord
The beloved came to mind in the time of sadness

Abu-Lughod sees ghinnawas as a form of resistance because they deal with the private inner emotional life of a person. This conflicts with a public life of duty and obligation to the community. Arguments for behaviour which sustain men's power is frequently presented as a moral argument (duty and obligation), rather than as a naked demand for power.

What then are the key ideas in this section?

They are that 'wherever there is power, there is resistance' (Foucault). In this case, examining the forms which resistance takes can illuminate the nature of power.

Secondly, power is never absolute. While men presume that they have power, in the real world there are numerous ways in which that power is diluted and subverted.

The transformation of Bedouin culture which took place when the Bedouins moved out of the desert and settled in Egyptian towns

First it is necessary to contrast the conditions in the desert camps with conditions in the towns.

This in turn has a number of consequences.

In the camps, women could move about freely because they were among kin. In the towns they live among strangers, and their husbands and brothers will not let them go out without a male kinsman as a chaperone.

Commercial advertising and what they see on TV soap operas create new wants for Bedouins. However, since women in the towns cannot take paid employment outside the home, they are dependent on their husbands for the consumer goods they covet.

Possessing lingerie, such as negligees, became the goal of young Bedouin women, outraging their elders, who still slept in their day clothes. This is what Abu-Lughod calls 'sexualised femininity'.

Singing, as a form of resistance, is lost as women no longer have the occasions or the skills to sing ghinnawas. Only males make audiocasettes, as women would think it immodest to make a recording for strangers to listen to.

There is a shift in the aspirations of women, who now desire educated, wage-earning husbands and fewer children than their mothers.

Kinship ties weaken (are attenuated) as younger Bedouin women idealise romantic love, freedom of choice in marriage, and the idea that the relationship between husband and wife should be one of companionship, all of which they derive from Egyptian TV.

In the sexually-segregated world of the desert camps, where autonomy is valued, women traditionaly show emotional indifference to their husbands, while their sense of worth comes from the knowledge that they have fulfilled their obligations to their families and their extended kin group.

Women in the camps are loud, coarse and sure of themselves, and are supported by the community of women. Women in the towns are isolated, dependent and concerned with pleasing their husbands.

Bedouin weddings

There are stark contrasts between traditional Bedouin weddings and modern Egyptian weddings.

The weddings of Bedouins who have settled in Egyptian towns combine elements of the traditional and the new. The bride will have a white satin wedding dress under the white cloak, will wear make-up and has her hair done. There is no public rite of defloration, although some symbolic elements of this remain; the groom as hunter, the bride as prey.

What then are the key ideas in this section?

They are that the transformation of Bedouin culture, once the Bedouins left the desert and settled in Egyptian towns, includes a redefining of female gender. Remember, 'gender is a social construction'. This is shown by the fact that gender - ideas in people's heads about what is a 'proper' woman or a 'proper' man - is variable over time and place (e.g. Rosie the Riveter), while sex is invariant (XX and XY).

Secondly, there is a shift from conflict between Bedouin men and women to a conflict between younger and older Bedouins. The new generation of Bedouins readily adopts Egyptian customs, listens to Egyptian music and wishes to have Egyptian-type weddings. In this, young men and women are allied against their elders.

Thirdly, an ideology of equality is replaced by an ideology of inequality. In the desert there was little opportunity for one individual to become significantly richer than another. This state of affairs was supported by an ideology of equality. In the towns, older Bedouin men invest in property, and large differences in wealth, something new in Bedouin society, become normal and acceptable.

New forms of domination

The steady transformation of Bedouin culture, with its increasing involvement with consumerism in its many forms, gradually enmeshed the Bedouins in the Egyptian economy, itself tied to the global economy. In this way the Bedouins are now subjected to a new form of domination, the domination of consumer culture, where decisions affecting their lives are made far from where the Bedouins live.

They are also subject to state institutions, such as schools.

As a consequence, the Bedouin is reduced to an individual, transacting his or her business with the state, or existing as an anonymous buyer of goods made by some unknown manufacturer, rather than as a member of a group with a clear identity and strong solidarity.

However, these new forms of domination themselves bring about new forms of resistance.

Fundamentalism

Fundamentalism, in whatever religion, can be defined by at least two beliefs:

'The past is a time of perfection; the present is corrupt.'

'There are sacred texts, which are the literal truth, and may not be questioned.'

Bedouins find themselves marginalised in Egyptian society. Egyptians look down upon them as uneducated and ignorant, lacking an understanding of how modern Egyptian society works (i.e. lacking 'cultural capital'). Bedouins in Egyptian society have no one to turn to for help (lack of ties to the elite).

Marginalised means pushed to the edges of society, ignored and despised.

There are two responses to this marginalisation. One is to try to fit in; to assimilate into Egyptian society. The alternative is to reject what you don't and can't have. The appeal of fundamentalism is to gain moral superiority, even when socially and economically you are inferior.

Egyptians are regarded by fundamentalists as westernised, morally corrupt and obsessed with consumerism. Fundamentalists can distinguish themselves by adopting strict Islamic dress and rituals, studying the Koran and changing their behaviour towards the opposite sex.

So, by changing the criteria by which people's worth is judged, Bedouins can be at the top instead of the bottom of the social ladder.

Note that Bedouins, Egyptians and fundamentalists are all Muslim. Being a fundamentalist puts you in a morally superior position to both desert Bedouins and urban Egyptians.

While fundamentalism can be seen as resistance against a new form of domination, fundamentalism itself imposes a set of constraints on its adherents. So escaping one form of domination only places you under the domination of another.