Family History in the Middle East: Household, Property, and Gender

1. Introduction

1 Introduction Beshara Doumani As a nexus of interest and emotion on the cellular level of social organization , and as a key referential grid for the social imaginary, family is everywhere.1 It can be studied as a structure, a process, a cultural construct, and as a discourse. The considerable literature on history of the family in Europe and the United States published over the past four decades, which pushed out in all four directions, has produced fascinating and largely unexpected results and has deeply influenced research agendas in a variety of disciplines.2 In Middle Eastern Studies one cannot yet speak of family history as a distinct and established field of inquiry, but it is increasingly becoming a strategic site of analysis .3 This anthology is simultaneously a product of this increasing interest and an introduction to exciting new possibilities for rethinking Middle East Studies. Family history is a strategic site of analysis, because it demands careful attention to the interplay between micro and macro processes of change, and invites the building of conceptual bridges between materialist and discursive frameworks of analysis: two key challenges currently facing most scholars, especially social and cultural historians . The articles in this anthology are useful precisely because they grapple with the issues raised by these challenges on the level of praxis: i.e., through archival research and/or field work focused on specific times, places, and social groups. 1 2 Beshara Doumani Family history is also an ideal intellectual space for cross-disciplinary conversations, a fertile ground for the emergence of new lines of inquiry. In addition to historians, this anthology brings together scholars from the disciplines of anthropology and demography who are committed to a critical perspective on family, household, and kinship as historically contingent units of analysis. The purpose is neither to provide a schematic overview of the rich diversity of family life in the Middle East nor to present an orderly historical account of change over time. It is much too early for that and, in any case, it is not clear that such a project is desirable, as it might valorize the very assumptions that historians of the family are fond of challenging. Rather, the aim is to provide a cross section of the various thematics, theoretical approaches, methodological issues, and sources currently being explored. The very centrality of the family also makes it a slippery concept. The flexibility and fluidity of family forms as well as the diversity of household structures within a single setting, not to mention across time and space, wreak havoc with attempts at taxonomies and largescale generalizations (whether about epochs, regions, or cultures). In addition, the wide range of sources and questions that can be brought to bear on family life means that family can easily be (and has been) used as a convenient vehicle for pursuing different visions and approaches to history and social analysis in general.4 The articles in this anthology reflect these differences and uncertainties, all the more so considering that most of the authors did not begin their careers with a focus on family history. Hence, their tentative move in this direction carries with it theoretical baggage and topical concerns developed for other purposes. By the same token, however, the flexibility, diversity, and dynamism of family life can be liberating for those who want to explore alternative ways of recovering the past. They allow historians to follow the complex juxtaposition of different rhythms of time— individual time, family time, historical time— and make possible a much-needed nonlinear non-Eurocentric approach to history: that is, an approach that does not assume an inexorable movement forward towards a Western model of “modernity.”5 Finally, family history directly interfaces with the three major prestige zones that have dominated intellectual production in Middle East Studies over the past two generations: Islam, gender, and modernity.6 In all three, notions of family and household are omnipresent, but they remain in the background and float in and out between the lines in the form of assumptions that privilege some arguments and silence others. The very structure of this anthology makes the point that there is a need for a critical reassessment of scholarship in these three prestige zones in light of historically grounded studies on family life. Introduction 3 The Middle East contains diverse regions with long and rich histories .7 This anthology remains within the bounds of the...