![]() As children, we were taught not to write in our school books or library books, so annotations seemed taboo.īut what if writing in a book was not only OK but also encouraged?Īnnotation is a practical and valuable way to engage with text, whether it’s a novel, textbook, or article. Given these advantages, I plan to cite "The Romance of Resistance" in my own research project as an exemplar of the kind of argument I am trying to make as I seek to unearth similar insights about my topic, I will acknowledge Abu-Lughod's efforts as a blueprint for my own work.It can feel a little mischievous to write on the pages of a book, as if we're breaking some rule. In demonstrating how attention to specific forms of resistance reveals much more about how forms of power operate - and their consequent effects on human social life - Abu-Lughod illustrates the clear advantages of the method she proposes. While perhaps it would have been useful to discuss some examples of this scholarly problem in greater detail, Abu-Lughod's argument that such scholarship inhibits researchers from querying specific forms of power and resistance more rigorously is greatly buttressed by her own rigor. Further, because her examples are so rich and well-drawn, Abu-Lughod is able to write with greater authority on one of the principal problems she seeks to address: that of scholarship that uncritically celebrates an abstract “resistance,” particularly in the arena of gender. Its persuasiveness is a result of the detailed ways in which Abu-Lughod uses examples of Bedouin life, which reveal specifics not merely about power relations within these communities but also chart the complex ways in which the “outside world” affects them. The article is quite compelling both as a theoretical/methodological innovation and as a specific study of the power relations, and changes thereof, in a "traditional" Bedouin community. Abu-Lughod’s claim is that this method is better suited to the task of tracking such intricacies than methods employing abstract theories of resistance. Abu-Lughod’s article is therefore not merely about interpreting power and resistance but also examining the intricacies of the ways in which various aspects of modernity - including capitalism, media, nation-states and transnational movements such as Islam - affect power relations and gender dynamics in these “traditional” communities. Further, the author shows how this kind of examination can also reveal changes in the ways in which power operates in these Bedouin communities - specifically, those changes wrought by the increasing prominence of social forces previously external to them. ![]() These forms of resistance, Abu-Lughod argues, demonstrate not only the specific ways that Bedouin women resist power but also the particular social pressures that constrain or discipline them. To make her argument, the author provides several examples of forms of resistance that women in these Bedouin communities employ these include minor defiance, resistance to marriage, sexually irreverent talk and gestures, and subversive oral lyric poetry. Īnthropologist Lila Abu-Lughod uses examples drawn from her own fieldwork among Bedouin communities in western Egypt to argue in favor of examining specific forms of resistance to enable the study of shifts in power relations, rather than adopting an abstract theory of power - a move that Abu-Lughod says can result in scholarly romanticization of groups that are said to be battling oppression. ![]() “The Romance of Resistance: Tracing Transformations of Power Through Bedouin Women.” American Ethnologist, vol. Here is a example of an annotation of a well-known article in anthropology that was published in 1990:Ību-Lughod, Lila. ![]()
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