Suchergebnisse

AbstractWith the support of ethnographic material from Aden (Yemen), this chapter explores untypical family forms and residential patterns that break the normative conventions as regulated in law and reproduced in popular morality discourses. With material that extends from the late colonial era to the early 2000s, the chapter scrutinizes domestic relations in regards to the background of changes in family regulation (law and legal practice) during the course of the past fifty years. The family is analyzed as a concentration of relations of all kinds, both inside the family and in its contacts with the outside. The article raises pertinent questions about the family unit. How closed and autonomous is the family unit, actually? What outside relationships might dominate over family relations? How do matters of subsistence, translocal migration and global economies influence family patterns, maintenance arrangements and residence forms? Rather than looking at the family from a state perspective or as part of a nationalist agenda, this chapter draws the perspective from inside the family. What strengthens a family and what threatens it? Why is it that particular family forms are idealized while in practice other types might prevail? How do intimate needs, and sexual preferences and practices influence the experiences of closeness in a family? By applying practice perspective, that is, seeing household dynamics from structural and agentic perspectives complemented by agents' evaluations on the two, the article reviews critically Middle Eastern scholarship on domestic relations.

AbstractThis article asks what new things can be learned about the public sphere when looking at sexualities. In this ethnographic study on the Yemeni port town of Aden, at focus are institutions that organise sexualities, such as segregation, and agency indicative to a particular public sphere. The article is centred upon the following question: how do 'ordinary' (i.e. non-activist) women participate in making the public sphere? By comparing three different periods of history in Aden, as well as the capacities and resources that have been available for women to express their sexuality, this article aims to highlight aspects of the public that remain invisible in studies that neglect this important area of daily life. This comparison on the level of the public sphere is made possible by adopting a critical perspective on the notion of generations that treats such entities not as neat groups but as atmospheres that subjects agree were indicative to the era of their coming of age.

Abstract
This article focuses on adjudication of Muslim family law in countries that range from the Middle East and North Africa to South-East Asia. It begins by shortly summarizing the development of shari'a in pre-modern times, up until the 19th century. We discuss the basic features of marriage among classical jurists and argue that the close connection known today between the family and Islamic law can be traced to the emergence of modern nation states and centralizing state structures. We then provide a description of important personal status reforms during the 20th and 21st centuries and consider the growing body of scholarship that engages with adjudication of Muslim family law in action and in context. Finally, we consider the contribution that the articles contained in the special double issue make to the field of research, including the questions of gender and judicial authority, religion-based judicial activism, and the courts' involvement in larger socio-political processes.

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- Introduction -- 1. POLITICS IN THE DIGITAL BOUDOIR -- 2. GENDER AND THE FRACTURED MYTHSCAPES OF NATIONAL IDENTITY IN REVOLUTIONARY TUNISIA -- 3. MAKING INTIMATE "CIVILPOLITICS" IN SOUTHERN YEMEN -- 4. THE SECT-SEX-POLICE NEXUS AND POLITICS IN BAHRAIN'S PEARL REVOLUTION -- 5. "THE WOMEN ARE COMING" -- 6. CAUTIOUS ENACTMENTS -- 7. REVOLUTION UNDRESSED -- 8. INTIMATE POLITICS OF PROTEST -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- CONTRIBUTORS -- INDEX