Communication and the social production of space

The objective in this article is to reconstruct some of the processes through which communities and groups emerge while simultaneously underlining the contradictions and conflicts which accompany such emergence. Women's hammam provides an excellent example of an informal form of association and co-mingling. Though the hammam ritual performance has its own norms, the process of organisation itself is shot through with contradictions and conflicts. A breach of the hammam etiquette can lead to disputes and quarrels among bathers. However, despite the contradictions and conflicts which the bathing experience often creates, what is specific to the hammam performance is the collective spirit it generates. The article first deals with some of the methodological concerns which the nature of this research raises. In the second section, some of the implications the ritual performance of bathing generates are explored. In the third section, the significance of this feminine spatial practice in relation to the politics of the production of space in contemporary Morocco is analysed. The article ends with an analysis of the representation of women's hammam in North African male francophone literature

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Bathing · Etiquette · Political science · Politics · Relation (database · Representation (politics · Sociology · African Studies and Ethnography · African Studies and Geopolitics · Gender Studies · History · Law · Multiculturalism, Politics, Migration, Gender

• Kese and Tellak

  Open Access•Karen Hahn•European Review•2016

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