Labors of Love
eBook - ePub

Labors of Love

Gender, Capitalism, and Democracy in Modern Arab Thought

  1. 332 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Labors of Love

Gender, Capitalism, and Democracy in Modern Arab Thought

About this book

How to raise a child became a central concern of intellectual debate from Cairo to Beirut over the course of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Intimately linked with discussions around capitalism and democracy, considerations about women, gender, and childrearing emerged as essential to modern social theory. Arab writers, particularly women, made sex, the body, and women's ethical labor central to fending off European imperial advances, instituting representative politics, and managing social order.

Labors of Love traces the political power of motherhood and childrearing in Arabic thought. Susanna Ferguson reveals how debates around raising children became foundational to feminist, Islamist, and nationalist politics alike—opening up conversations about civilization, society, freedom, temporality, labor, and democracy. While these debates led to expansions in girls' education and women writers' authority, they also attached the fate of nations to women's unwaged labor in the home. Ferguson thus reveals why women and the family have been stumbling blocks for representative regimes around the world. She shows how Arab women's writing speaks to global questions—the devaluation of social reproduction under capitalism, the stubborn maleness of the liberal subject, and why the naturalization of embodied, binary gender difference has proven so difficult to overcome.

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Yes, you can access Labors of Love by Susanna Ferguson in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in History & Middle Eastern History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Dedication
  5. Contents
  6. Note on Translation
  7. Introduction: Seeing Women’s Work
  8. One: Childrearing as Civilization
  9. Two: Childrearing as Social Theory
  10. Three: Childrearing as Embodied Labor
  11. Four: Childrearing as Liberation
  12. Five: Childrearing as Anticolonial Temporality
  13. Six: Childrearing as Democracy’s Foundation
  14. Conclusion: Feminizing Reproductive Labor
  15. Acknowledgments
  16. Appendix: Women-Edited Arabic Periodicals, 1892–1939
  17. Notes
  18. Bibliography
  19. Index