Library Catalog
Amazon cover image
Image from Amazon.com

Love, Sex, and Desire in Modern Egypt : Navigating the Margins of Respectability / L. L. Wynn.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: Austin : University of Texas Press, [2021]Copyright date: ©2018Description: 1 online resource (256 p.)Content type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9781477317051
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 306.0962
LOC classification:
  • GN648 .W95 2018
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources:
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- 1. Foreigners Like Things Looking Old and Dark, Not Shiny -- 2. Mimesis, Kinship, Gift, and Other Things That Bind Us in Love and Desire -- 3. “Why Can’t You Study Respectable Women?” -- 4. Mimesis, Genre, Gender, and Sexuality in Middle East Tourism -- 5. Demimonde: Belly Dancers, Extramarital Affairs, and the Respectability of Women -- 6. Gift, Prostitute: Money and Intimacy -- 7. “Honor Killing”: On Anthropological Writing in an International Political Economy of Representations -- 8. Kinship, Honor, and Shame -- 9. Love, Revolution, and Intimate Violence -- Epilogue. Fifteen Years Later -- Notes -- References -- Index
Summary: Cairo is a city obsessed with honor and respectability—and love affairs. Sara, a working-class woman, has an affair with a married man and becomes pregnant, only to be abandoned by him; Ayah and Zeid, a respectably engaged couple, argue over whether Ayah’s friend is a prostitute or a virgin; Malak, a European belly dancer who sometimes gets paid for sex, wants to be loved by a man who won’t treat her like a whore just because she’s a dancer; and Alia, a Christian banker who left her abusive husband, is the mistress of a wealthy Muslim man, Haroun, who encourages business by hosting risqué parties for other men and their mistresses. Set in transnational Cairo over two decades, Love, Sex, and Desire in Modern Egypt is an ethnography that explores female respectability, male honor, and Western theories and fantasies about Arab society. L. L. Wynn uses stories of love affairs to interrogate three areas of classic anthropological theory: mimesis, kinship, and gift. She develops a broad picture of how individuals love and desire within a cultural and political system that structures the possibilities of, and penalties for, going against sexual and gender norms. Wynn demonstrates that love is at once a moral horizon, an attribute that “naturally” inheres in particular social relations, a social phenomenon strengthened through cultural concepts of gift and kinship, and an emotion deeply felt and desired by individuals.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9781477317051

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- 1. Foreigners Like Things Looking Old and Dark, Not Shiny -- 2. Mimesis, Kinship, Gift, and Other Things That Bind Us in Love and Desire -- 3. “Why Can’t You Study Respectable Women?” -- 4. Mimesis, Genre, Gender, and Sexuality in Middle East Tourism -- 5. Demimonde: Belly Dancers, Extramarital Affairs, and the Respectability of Women -- 6. Gift, Prostitute: Money and Intimacy -- 7. “Honor Killing”: On Anthropological Writing in an International Political Economy of Representations -- 8. Kinship, Honor, and Shame -- 9. Love, Revolution, and Intimate Violence -- Epilogue. Fifteen Years Later -- Notes -- References -- Index

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

Cairo is a city obsessed with honor and respectability—and love affairs. Sara, a working-class woman, has an affair with a married man and becomes pregnant, only to be abandoned by him; Ayah and Zeid, a respectably engaged couple, argue over whether Ayah’s friend is a prostitute or a virgin; Malak, a European belly dancer who sometimes gets paid for sex, wants to be loved by a man who won’t treat her like a whore just because she’s a dancer; and Alia, a Christian banker who left her abusive husband, is the mistress of a wealthy Muslim man, Haroun, who encourages business by hosting risqué parties for other men and their mistresses. Set in transnational Cairo over two decades, Love, Sex, and Desire in Modern Egypt is an ethnography that explores female respectability, male honor, and Western theories and fantasies about Arab society. L. L. Wynn uses stories of love affairs to interrogate three areas of classic anthropological theory: mimesis, kinship, and gift. She develops a broad picture of how individuals love and desire within a cultural and political system that structures the possibilities of, and penalties for, going against sexual and gender norms. Wynn demonstrates that love is at once a moral horizon, an attribute that “naturally” inheres in particular social relations, a social phenomenon strengthened through cultural concepts of gift and kinship, and an emotion deeply felt and desired by individuals.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 26. Apr 2022)