Muslim Notables, French Colonial Officials, and the Washers of the Dead

Women and Gender Politics in Colonial Algeria

Bibliographic Data

ID4009033
AuthorsAugustin Jomier (0000-0002-1221-9291, Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume39
Issue1
Pages9-33
Publication date2021-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueFrench Politics Culture & Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1537-6370 • E-ISSN: 1558-5271
PublisherBerghahn Books (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.3167/fpcs.2021.390102
OpenAlexW3161395486
LanguageEN
Citations received2

For many decades, scholars of gender and women's history in the Middle East and North Africa have challenged prevailing visions of an unchanged patriarchy, showing how patriarchy was transformed in relation to colonialism, and how some women struggled against it. To the contrary, this article aims to challenge our understanding of women's agency, taking Mzab as a case study. It explores the ways in which women of this Berber speaking region, inhabited by Ibadi Muslims and conquered by the French in 1882, contributed to the colonial reinforcement of male domination. Reading together works of ethnography, colonial administrative files, legal disputes, and Arabic-language newspapers, this article shows that, together with the colonial legal framework, other informal legal discourses and institutions shaped women's condition. Down the road, forms of patriarchy and notions of gender shifted

Arabic · Colonialism · Ethnography · Media studies · Newspaper · Patriarchy · Political science · Social science · Sociology · Vision · Anthropology · Gender Studies · Islamic Studies and History · Law · Multiculturalism, Politics, Migration, Gender · North African History and Literature

Tools

Open DOI