ABSTRACT
In this chapter I discuss the concerns that led me to explore aspects of masculinity in Muslim societies, although these did not form an explicit component of my original research agenda. In the process of assembling material for quite a different project-namely a comparative analysis of women, Islam and the state (Kandiyoti 1991)—insights and hypotheses concerning the construction of masculine identities crept up surreptitiously and eventually called for attention with an insistence that could no longer be ignored. This focus on masculinity led me to revise and amend some of my earlier assumptions about the nature of patriarchy (Kandiyoti 1988a) and to question my reading of materials I had been using. A clarification of my intellectual trajectory is therefore in order as a means of situating my observations, which at this stage remain tentative and exploratory.
