ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author describes briefly aspects of her own field research into women's organizations in the Middle East. She intends that her analysis suggest conditions under which similar women's subsocieties might be identified elsewhere. Al-Ali's outline of the major debates within an historical analysis of the Egyptian women's movement suggests that contemporary activism has often depended on forging 'a strict separation between the "modern, secular and westernizing voice" on the one hand and the "conservative, anti-western and Islamic voice" on the other'. As al-Mughni notes, In Kuwait, the state does not compete with the family institution for control over individuals. Neither does it seek to weaken primary ties and kinship allegiance to enhance the citizens’ loyalities. Shami also describes how in Amman local discourses often depend on local definitions of a dichotomy similar to that of 'public' and 'private' and she reopens the old theoretical debate in anthropology to understand better local usage.
