Anthropology of the Middle East

The study of kinship remains central to anthropology and to understanding the social world in which we live. Although key debates on kinship have stayed embedded in anthropological studies, the impact of global changes affecting marriage, divorce, family structure, and the inevitable consequences of the interaction between biotechnologies and social and cultural practices have all served to bring back kinship into anthropological discourse in a forceful way. As a result, there is a tendency to move away from the distinction between the biological and social aspects of kinship and to focus on emerging forms of relatedness and their broader implications. In such an approach, relatedness is viewed as a process that is fluid and mutable, and that is constructed through active human agency. It expands to include changing gender relations, new family forms and the outcome of assisted reproductive technologies.

Kinship and alliance studies are a significant part of anthropological work related to the Arab and Muslim world, but they tend to focus primarily on rural and tribal societies rather than on contemporary evolutions (urbanisation, migrations, etc.). This article centres on the construction of these new anthropological objects and uses multidisciplinary data to define its field of study: Muslim family law reforms, demographic transition, the evolution of women's condition, etc. The rising age of first-time brides is an important variable. It is one of the general aspects of reforms in current Muslim states, and these reforms are having a certain impact on the French statute law. At stake, as is often the case in anthropological research, is the question of women's choice regarding marriage. In contemporary contexts, the fact that women continue to commit to proximity consanguinity marriages underlines the persistence of the social and cultural determinations of marriage.

Marriage has become an expensive proposition in the United Arab Emirates, so much so that it is used by some Emirati men as justification for marrying someone outside Emirati society. This article examines the changes in Emirati weddings over the last 30 years, presents a synopsis of the public discussion of Emirati marriages, and considers how the carefully contained public discussion deflects the comprehensive changes that have transformed Emirati society.

For the middle class of Fes, Morocco, the traditional resources provided by kinship practices remain an important form of economic and social support in an increasingly globalised world. Women's significance in kinship networks not only highlights women's changing role in the Moroccan public sphere, but also indicates the flexibility of kinship principles once applied primarily to men. As more women have entered the public sphere for reasons of economics and education, the possibilities for their social networks have widened to include both relatives and non-kin.

This study calls for a reintegration of space and relatedness in anthropological theories of social formation. It is based on the examination of spatial tropes in the kinship narratives and discursive practices of an extended Swahili-speaking family network historically located between Oman and coastal East Africa.

Anthropological debates on kinship in the Middle East have centred on the 'problems' of patriparallel cousin marriage and milk kinship. A focus on Middle Eastern reactions to assisted reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilisation allows a fresh perspective on the study of kinship in the region. My own research has investigated Islamic legal reactions to assisted reproductive technologies and the practice of assisted reproduction in Lebanon. Islamic legal reaction is diverse, as are the uses made of these techniques by non-specialist Muslims. Considerations of propriety and public reputation remain uppermost, although matters of kinship are debated and new patterns and ideologies of relatedness are potentially emerging.

The impact of kin during personal status cases is not anticipated by Syrian statute, although the influence of litigants' families in disputes is frequently acknowledged by the court. Although usually supportive of claims, kin can undermine the legal process by opposing litigants' strategies through threats to withdraw economic and social support or by asserting their authority to intervene on the litigant's behalf. Through observation and analysis of a recent arbitration session related to a request for a judicial divorce in Damascus I describe how the court is powerless to oppose the intervention of the wife's angry mother, although the final resolution appears to have been formulated within the parameters set by the legislation.

Ceremonies are a very important part of Iranian life. They have definite order, ritual and objects associated with them. The political and economic situation of individuals taking part in a ceremony mark them, and if there are various classes, positions and gender, they are all markers of ceremonies. To study any topic in terms of the duality of traditional and modern versions has become banal and too simplistic. Looking at one single ceremony, indeed even looking at only a few hours of a ceremony can show how malleable are the boundaries of a ceremony, to be affected by many factors. Regarding the few hours that I am reporting about, the following factors are involved: an earthquake; the Islamic Revolution and the reactions to it; satellite television; and consumer goods; as well as changes in people’s way of life that have affected the availability of time, the availability of space, and, finally, the place of the visual, the centrality of the camera in organising a ceremony in a way that it can be recorded in an acceptable manner for later viewing. Responding to all these changes and trying to hold together a very important ceremony and a number of people who must be kept together through ceremonies is what gives the following its meaning and urgency of its reporting.

BOOKS

Davis, Eric (2005), Memories of State: Politics, History, and Collective Identity in Modern Iraq (Berkeley: University of California Press). 398 pages, 19 figs. ISBN:0-520-23546-0. US$27.50.

Trafton, Scott (2004), Egypt Land: Race and Nineteenth-Century American Egyptomania (Durham and London: Duke University Press). 367 pages, figs, illstrns. ISBN 0-8223-3362-7. US $23.95.

FILM

Osku’yi, Mehrdad (2000) The Widower (21 minutes), (2000) My Mother’s Home: Lagoon (32 minutes), (2003) Beyond the Burqa (52 minutes), Young Iranian Cinema Society.

FILMS

First Film Exhibition of Tehran’s Quarters, 30 October–2 November 2006.

CONFERENCES

Sixth Biennial of Iranian Studies Conference, 3–5 August 2006, London, U.K.