Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society

Abu-Lughod first published Veiled sentiments in 1986 and conducted her anthropological fieldwork in the 1970s. She lived for two years with the Awald ‘Ali Bedouins of Egypt’s western desert frontier with Libya. This influential work in anthropology needs to be understood as a part of the debate of the 1980s, when Writing culture marked an important post-structuralist turn in anthropology. Abu-Lughod contributed by showing the awkward relationship between anthropology and feminism. “Writing Against Culture” and Veiled sentiments, illustrated a new way of writing feminist anthropology. Veiled sentiments begins by clearly positioning the author as she enters the field: she is unmarried, her father is from Jordan, her mother from the US – as she puts it, she is a “halfie”. We are introduced to the world she is entering when we understand the significance of her father having established her connections to the field, which gives her the respect and status needed to study and live among the Awald ‘Ali, and more specifically with the respected patriarch, the Haj, and his family. Although this is important, it is up to anthropologists themselves to develop their relationships once they enter the field – something Abu-Lughod does gracefully. She becomes part of the sphere of women – because gender segregation is practised – and this perspective reveals the hierarchy of the family, marriage patterns and political structures, as well as the relationships between the genders and between different age groups. Abu-Lughod forms personal relationships with the women when she washes clothes, witnesses childbirth, cooks, is present during times of grief and wedding celebrations, and is a part of “the joys of a sociable world in which people hug and talk and shout and laugh without fear of losing one another” (p. xiii). Parallels can be made with Beverly Chinas’ book, The Isthmus Zapotecs: A Matrifocal Culture of Mexico (Harcourt Brace, 1991), where Chinas distinguishes between the public and the private spheres in society, and how women harness power in the private sphere. Using the discourse of male honour and female modesty, Abu-Lughod illustrates the power and freedom that is harnessed by women through everyday forms of resistance. Much like Saba Mahmood’s work on piety, what is shown is not repressed Muslim women needing to be liberated