Engineering gender, engineering the Jordanian State: Beyond the salvage ethnography of middle-class housewifery in the Middle East. (December 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Hughes, Geoffrey F
• Other Names: Bolt Maxim guest-editor.; Schubert Jon guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: Critique of anthropology. Volume 42:Number 4(2022)
• Page Start: 359
• Page End: 380
• Publication Date: 2022-12
• Subjects: Class -- gender roles -- the Middle East -- militarism -- social engineering -- the state; Anthropology -- Periodicals; 301.205
• DOI: 10.1177/0308275X221139151
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0308-275X

Abstract

The figure of the middle-class housewife or ' rabbat bayt ' emerged in the late 19th-century Arabic-language public sphere amidst the colonial encounter. This gendering of middle-classness responded to a perceived cultural 'lag' yet now itself increasingly signifies backwardness in relation to ideals of middle-classness emphasizing women's education and community service over older norms of purity and propriety. Today, amidst unemployment, discrimination, lack of childcare, lack of safe and reliable public transportation and a highly suburbanized built environment catering to male breadwinners, contemporary Jordanian families must navigate multiple class and gender paradigms. Against a tendency towards salvage ethnography that misrecognizes these constraints as manifestations of deeply held 'traditional' values, I emphasize their historicity, arguing that it is only by recognizing housewifery itself as a state project characteristic of the 20th century that we can appreciate how state-building projects drive the gendering of class roles – and the classing of gender roles.