Gocek and Bolaghi Study Guide

As you read Gocek and Bolaghi's "Reconstructing Gender," focus upon the following points.

Concentration on the voice and experience of women : two conceptual parameters
Three key themes: Tradition, Identity, and Power
Definition of gender: "The social organization of sexual difference," Joan Scott
Interpretive mechanism behind social organization is where sexual difference acquires a socially or culturally constructed meaning
- While this meaning situates itself in societal processes, it diffuses into power relations
pp. 2-3: Theory is great, but Dorothy Smith suggests we move beyond the level of textual discourse to the

actual realities, the real life EXPERIENCES of women
power relations: focus on the "relations of ruling," specifically in bureaucracies, administration, management, professional organizations, and the media.

"Patriarchy": A term identifying both the personal and public relations of power
To counter this patriarchy, Smith focuses on the everyday world as problematic: "The place from within which the consciousness of the knower begins."
p. 3-4: Only by combining the personal with the societal can we understand how, and more importantly, why "The forces of their own life become superior to them" (p. 3)
- Deconstruction
Pg. 4: Last paragraph : How can we use the concept of experience without suffering from its limitations? Joan Scott suggests that we bring "historicity" to experience. Contextualization of experience spatially (to the Middle East) and epistemologically (to the dimensions of tradition, identity, and power).
TRADITION: Societal processes in cultures and other than itself is static or at best derivative: Western view. Western feminists tend to see Third World Women as a monolithic group; our authors argue that (p.6), "the negative portrayal of tradition is eliminated within this experience, tradition in Middle Eastern gender relations emerges as a vibrant force that can be both constricting and liberating.
IDENTITY: P. 7: As Stuart Hall says, "Identity requires us to look at... the politics of difference, the politics of self-reflexivity, a politics than is open to contingency but still able to act."
P. 7: Mohanty points out that it is dangerous to focus only on gender identity and ignore social class and ethnic identities."
Third World gender identity also includes strong nationalist and anticolonial elements.
One cannot only focus on discursive power; one must also "analyze the other component of power, the coercive," (p. 8, 1st paragraph).
POWER: the personal was the political (p.8).
- Pierre Bourdieu: Symbolic power "located within language, religion, education, art, and ideology."
  As a mode of analysis, symbolic power underlined relations and advocated a "relational mode of thinking," rather than a publicly defined institutional mode that disadvantaged women.
P. 10: importance of autobiography
P. 12: "Restoring women to history" archival research (last five lines)
P. 13: Diversity of women's experience
P. 13: Bottom line: "stories of village women; not about them." What is the significance of this?
P.15: What do the authors means when they say, “The boundaries of power are perpetually negotiated"?

Citation: Afsaruddin, A. (2007, May 03). Gocek and Bolaghi Study Guide. Retrieved February 12, 2012, from Notre Dame OpenCourseWare Web site: http://ocw.nd.edu/arabic-and-middle-east-studies/women-in-islamic-societies/lecture-and-study-materials/gocek-and-bolaghi-study-guide.