Thursday, March 31, 2011

1) Abu-Lughod, Lila. 2002 “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?" American Anthropologist 104(3): 783-790

Westerners are focused on reinforcing the binary of us and them, and they are using the notion of difference as a marker to make other cultures seem more patriarchal and detrimental to the lives of women. Rather they should leave their ethnocentrism at the door, and focus on how they are in some part responsible for how these cultures are viewed. Lila Abu-Lughod in Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others uses Laura Bush’s interviews to provide insight towards the ignorance of westerners have regarding the so called oppressive condition that Muslim women are subjected to in their communities. She argues three things, first that politicians are blurring the lines of what is causing these women to be discriminated against, and in turn Muslim women are symbolic of the war on terrorism.  She uses women as an icon since women and children are symbols of domination and that the rest of society should be sympathetic to their situation and experience, giving the country reason to barge in and so called liberate them from oppression. Second, there is a misunderstanding in regards to the veiling of women, and how it is oppressive and synonymous to women’s level of agency. Laura Bush claims the war on terrorism was affecting Muslim women negatively worldwide in regards to their treatment in religion and culture, her plan of action was to send American troops over to Afghanistan and liberate these oppressed women. During that process she failed to recognize that even though the ultimate sign of oppression is the politics regarding the veiling of women, in either case the veil could be a form of empowerment. Laura Bush associated the veil with having a lack of agency which is a fault conclusion. Westerners have a fixation with constructing and reiterating difference about other cultures in this case on the basis of a piece of clothing, when instead they could be focusing on more detrimental issues at hand. Westerners need to view situations from a holistic perspective by understanding the positive association that some women do have in regards to wearing the veil. Westerners have to stop generalizing the identity of the Muslim woman as someone in need of saving. This creates power dynamics associated with westerners being established as the knight in shining armour coming to save the damsel in distress which creates a false representation of these women. Third, is westerners reinforce their superiority by implying that they are the knight in shining armour coming to rescue the damsel in distress. Anthropologists need to be able to recognize that there is a difference between the self and the other, and they should work together to overcome this so-called oppression. Westerners need to ignore their preconceived stereotypical notions of how they view these Muslim women and should instead work as a collective to deter away from this universal inequality. 

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