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Abstract
This article aimed to review the research carried out in the Middle East primarily on gender and feminist geography and also on place formation, urban space, movement and mobility in the social and political sciences. This aim turned out to be challenging primarily because of the colonial and post-colonial history of the region that continues to have a profound effect on the development of academic knowledge among Middle Eastern scholars as well as a restricted accessibility to material published inside the Middle East. Despite this, the article primarily focuses on feminist research on Middle Eastern women done by Middle Eastern scholars and published in Middle Eastern journals and books primarily in Arabic (and Hebrew in Israel). However, during the process of reviewing a large variety of articles, book chapters and books that exist on Middle Eastern women, we realized that it is sometimes difficult and rather artificial to review the material with only this division in mind. In the end, we reviewed the literature on gender and feminism in the Middle East mainly highlighting local published research and also briefly referring to research published in the West by both Westerners and local researchers. The article begins with presenting its research methodology. It then analyzes the website and literature review that we carried out on the contexts, frameworks and themes of gender and feminist geography and spatial research in the Middle East with particular attention on the research carried out in Israel/Palestine. We focus on the private–public spheres; migration and diaspora and the veil as key concepts in analyzing the literature in this section. In the last section, we explain the reasons for the limitations on gender and feminist research in geography inside the Middle East and mention some general conclusions.
Este artículo apunta a hacer un relevamiento de la investigación llevada a cabo en Oriente Medio principalmente sobre género y geografía feminista pero también sobre la formación de lugar, espacio urbano, movimiento y movilidad en las ciencias sociales y políticas. Este objetivo resultó de difícil cumplimiento principalmente por la historia colonial y post colonial de la región, que sigue teniendo un impacto profundo en el desarrollo del conocimiento científico entre los académicos de Oriente Medio, así como también una accesibilidad restringida al material publicado dentro de esta región. A pesar de esto, el artículo se centra principalmente en la investigación feminista sobre las mujeres de Oriente Medio realizada por los investigadores de allí y publicada en las revistas y libros de esta región principalmente en árabe (y hebreo en Israel). Sin embargo, durante el proceso de revisión de gran variedad de artículos, capítulos y libros que existe sobre las mujeres de Medio Oriente, caímos en la cuenta de que a veces es difícil y algo artificial analizar el material solo con esta división en mente. Al fin del proceso, revisamos la literatura sobre género y feminismo en Oriente Medio remarcando principalmente la investigación local publicada, pero también refiriéndonos brevemente a aquella que se publicó en Occidente por investigadores locales y occidentales. El artículo comienza presentando la metodología de investigación. Luego analiza la revisión online y bibliográfica que llevamos a cabo sobre los contextos, marcos y temáticas de género y la geografía feminista y la investigación espacial en Oriente Medio, con particular atención sobre la investigación llevada a cabo en Palestina/Israel. Nos centramos en las esferas pública/privada; la migración y la diáspora y los velos como conceptos claves para analizar la literatura en esta sección. En la última sección, explicamos las razones de las limitaciones en la investigación sobre género y la investigación feminista en geografía dentro de Oriente Medio y mencionamos algunas conclusiones generales.
本文主要回顾中东的性别与女性主义地理学研究，但亦同时回顾社会与政治科学中有关地方形塑，都市空间，移动与能动性的研究。此一目标相当具有挑战性，主要是因为该区域的殖民与后殖民历史，持续对中东学者的知识生产具有显著的影响，以及取得在中东世界内发表的作品有限所致。即便如此，本文仍特别聚焦由中东学者研究中东女性，并以阿拉伯文（在以色列则是希伯来文）发表在中东学术期刊与书籍的女性主义研究。但在回顾这些有关中东女性的各式文章，图书章节与书籍的过程中，我们领悟到以此一既定的划分回顾文献有时是困难且相当人为的。最终我们回顾的有关中东性别与女性主义研究的文献，主要强调在地出版的研究，但仍简要地参照西方与在地学者在欧美发表的研究。本文首先呈现该研究的方法学，接着分析我们对中东的性别与女性主义地理学和空间研究的脉络，架构与主题所生产的网站与文献回顾，并特别关注在以色列／巴勒斯坦所进行的研究。我们聚焦公私领域的划分，迁徙，离散与面纱等做为分析文献的重要概念。在最后的段落中，我们将阐述在中东进行性别及女性主义地理学研究的限制之缘由，并做出一些普遍的结论。
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Dr Orna Blumen and three anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on an earlier draft of this article.
Notes
1. We distinguish in the article between gender and feminist research in geography. The former includes research on women and gender issues that is not necessarily written from a critical perspective, whereas the latter presents a critical perspective.
2. We refer here to the occupied Palestinian territory of 1967 (the West Bank and Gaza Strip), which is partially governed by the Palestinian National Authority.
3. For the writing of this article, it is important to position ourselves within the academic context of the Middle East. Tovi Fenster positions herself as an Ashkenazi Jewish Israeli who is a Professor of Geography specializing in gender and feminist research. Hanaa Hamdan-Saliba positions herself as an Arab Palestinian woman citizen of Israel who has a PhD in Geography and Urban Planning, and specializes in gender and minority research. Tovi works in the discipline of Geography in one of the largest universities in Israel. Hanaa obtained her PhD from the same university, and is now pursuing a postdoctoral in the Department of Geography at the University of Autonoma in Barcelona, Spain. Tovi supervised Hanaa in her PhD research on the subject of Constructing a Sense of Belongings at the Margins of Globalization: Palestinian Women Citizens of Israel in Tel-Aviv Jaffa. We should also mention that Israel has been an independent state since 1948 which resulted in the Nakba or the Palestinian disaster. Palestine, by contrast, has been under Israeli occupation since 1967, and has been subjected to all the related restrictions on education, academia and intellectual life. There are very limited academic ties between Israeli and Arab and/or Palestinian academics in Middle Eastern countries because of the ongoing Arab–Israeli conflict, although establishing such contacts is generally easier for Arab Palestinian researchers than it is for Jewish Israeli researchers.
4. We refer to the following countries (in alphabetical order): Egypt, the Gulf Emirates (Qatar, Oman), Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Turkey. The website research was carried out before the Arab uprising and has been updated during the revision of the article. We also relate to some publications from Morocco. Although it is not considered as a Middle Eastern country, some of the research published on Moroccan women is quite significant.
5. Because of the limitations on the length and words of articles, we have not included the detailed tables in the text. The data are available upon request directed to the writers.
6. This information is detailed in a separate table that is not included in the text because of word limit. The table lists the title of each volume (each volume of Al-Raida focuses on a specific theme), the topics of research and the affiliation and origin of each author. It is possible to get it upon request to the writers.
7. Edited by Martina Rieker, the Associate Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences and Director of the Institute for Gender and Women's Studies at the American University in Cairo, and by Kamran Asdar Ali, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Texas, Austin. All the other contributors of this volume live and work outside the Middle East.
8. The scholars are from both inside and outside the Middle East.
9. Kuttab works at the Birzeit University, Palestine.
10. Naber is from outside the Middle East, while the other three authors are from the Middle East.
11. One of the writers is from outside the Middle East, whereas the others are from the Middle East.
12. The hijab is a head covering and is actually different from a veil, which also covers the face (Hamdan Citation2007).
13. For example, Qasim Amin, who was an Egyptian jurist and one of the founders of the Egyptian national movement and Cairo University. She is perhaps most noted as an early advocate of women's rights in Egyptian society. She regarded the hijab as a symbol of the oppression of women and their exclusion from public space (Barakat Citation2000; Abu-Lughod Citation1987; Mernissi Citation1987; Abo Odeh Citation1993).
14. Feminist and gendered research in Israel outside the field of geography focuses on the political and social aspects of gender, including identity, employment and the family (see, e.g. Stier and Lewin Citation2002; Citation2001; Hacker Citation2009, Citation2008; El-Or Citation1994, to name just a few); ethnicized power relations between Jewish women, for example, between Mizrahi and Ashkenazi Jewish women (see, e.g. Bernstein Citation2007; Khazzoom Citation2002; Kalev Citation2005; Herzog Citation1998); on nationalized power relations between Palestinian women and men, and Palestinian and Jewish women (see, e.g. Herzog, 1998, 2004; Abu Rabia 2008; Monterescu Citation2003; Warwar Citation2002); and the situation of educated Palestinian women who negotiate their identity and resist the spatial control of gendered, cultural and national constructions (Herzog Citation1999, Citation2004, Citation2007).
15. One of them is Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian of the Institute of Criminology, Faculty of Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She writes extensively on critical perspectives of women, law and human rights discourse, and on women and social control (Shalhoub-Kevorkian Citation1998, Citation2000, Citation2003, Citation2007). She has also edited a book entitled Palestinian Feminist Writing: Between Oppression and Resistance (2007, Mada al-Carmel – The Arab Center for Applied Social Research). The book's six articles were written by Palestinian women master's and doctoral-level students on Palestinian women in Israel. The issues covered in the articles are the history of the activism and work of Palestinian women in rural areas in the era of British colonialism; women's narratives on the Nakba; Palestinian teachers in Israel; demographic discourse among the Palestinian political elite in Israel; Israel feminist researchers and Palestinian right of return; and discrimination in health policies.
16. The exceptions are two significant pieces of research. The first, published in 2004 by the Institute of Women's Studies (IWS) at Birzeit University is entitled Palestine in the Second Intifada: The Dynamics of Resistance and Survival. This research examines the emergence of the Palestinian women's movement in the shadow of the oppressive practices of the Israeli occupation, and reveals how Palestinian women perceive their role within this political reality. It focuses mainly on the political aspects of Palestinian women's movement and less on their geographical aspects (Kuttab and Abu Awwad Citation2004). The second piece (Taraki Citation2006) addresses Palestinian survival during the Second Intifada, with an emphasis on gender and communities in conflict situations. It is based on data published by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics obtained from a survey of Palestinian households done in 1999. It analyzes a number of subjects including family relations and networks, labor force participation and economic activities. Like the aforementioned research done under the auspices of the IWS, this research tackles, in part, the issue of women's mobility under occupation.