Anthropology of the Middle East and North Africa

This volume combines ethnographic accounts of fieldwork with overviews of recent anthropological literature about the region on topics such as Islam, gender, youth, and new media that are of particular relevance for understanding the "Arab Spring" of 2011. It addresses contemporary debates about modernity, nation building, and the link between the ideology of power and the production of knowledge. Contributors include established and emerging scholars known for the depth and quality of their ethnographic writing and for their interventions in current theory.

Sherine Hafez is Associate Professor of Women’s Studies and Middle East and Islamic Studies at the University of California, Riverside. She is author of The Terms of Empowerment: Islamic Women’s Activism in Egypt and An Islam of Her Own: Reconsidering Religion and Secularism in Women's Islamic Movements.

Susan Slyomovics is Professor of Anthropology and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is author of The Object of Memory: Arab and Jew Narrate the Palestinian Village; editor of The Performance of Human Rights in Morocco; Clifford Geertz in Morocco; and (with Barbara Rose Johnston) of Waging War and Making Peace: The Anthropology of Reparations.