Privacy and Gendered Spaces in Arab Gulf Homes

ABSTRACT We report the findings of a qualitative study of Qatari homes in the Arab Gulf. We identify the significance of privacy and gender segregation as anchors for identity, both national and religious. Maintaining these anchors seems to help Qataris resolve cultural tensions and conflicts to which they feel subjected. We show that the emphasis on these identity projects counters pressures toward a reverse acculturation in which hosts are numerically overwhelmed by guests.

[1]  A. Afsaruddin,et al.  Hermeneutics and Honor Negotiating Female "Public" Space in Islamic/Ate Societies , 1999 .

[2]  Ben Highmore,et al.  Wild Things: The Material Culture of Everyday Life , 2001 .

[3]  G. Crow,et al.  Home and family: creating the domestic sphere , 1989 .

[4]  Eric J. Arnould,et al.  Postassimilationist ethnic consumer research : Qualifications and extensions , 2005 .

[5]  Sharon Nagy.  Social diversity and changes in the form and appearance of the Qatari house , 1998 .

[6]  Søren Askegaard,et al.  The Glocalization of Youth Culture: The Global Youth Segment as Structures of Common Difference , 2006 .

[7]  J. E. Campo.  The Other Sides of Paradise: Explorations into the Religious Meanings of Domestic Space in Islam , 1991 .

[8]  M. Douglas,et al.  Rules and meanings : the anthropology of everyday knowledge : selected readings , 1973 .

[9]  S. Nageeb.  New Spaces and Old Frontiers: Women, Social Space, and Islamization in Sudan , 2004 .

[10]  D. Slater.  Consumer culture and modernity , 1997 .

[11]  M. Cassidy.  Cyberspace meets domestic space: Personal computers, women's work, and the gendered territories of the family home , 2001 .

[12]  Alison Blunt.  Domicile and Diaspora , 2005 .

[13]  F. ElGuindi.  Veiling Infitah With Muslim Ethic: Egypt's Contemporary Islamic Movement , 1981 .

[14]  Y. Tuan,et al.  Segmented worlds and self : group life and individual consciousness , 1982 .

[15]  R. Belk.  Possessions and the Extended Self , 1988 .

[16]  A. Wadud.  Woman's Identity and the Qur'an: A New Reading , 2005 .

[17]  Sue L.T. McGregor,et al.  Consumer Culture: History, Theory and Politics , 2008 .

[18]  L. Peñaloza.  Atravesando Fronteras/Border Crossings: A Critical Ethnographic Exploration of the Consumer Acculturation of Mexican Immigrants , 1994 .

[19]  Graham Crow,et al.  Home and Family , 1989 .

[20]  R. Antoun.  Veil: Modesty, Privacy and Resistance , 2001 .

[21]  E. Hall,et al.  The Hidden Dimension , 1970 .

[22]  J. Kron.  Home-Psych: The Social Psychology of Home and Decoration , 1983 .

[23]  G. Allan.  Insiders and Outsiders: Boundaries around the Home , 1989 .

[24]  C. Goodwin.  Privacy: Recognition of a Consumer Right , 1991 .

[25]  M. Kadivar.  An Introduction to the Public and Private Debate in Islam , 2015, Human Rights and Reformist Islam.

[26]  G. Mathews.  Global Culture/Individual Identity: Searching for Home in the Cultural Supermarket , 2000 .

[27]  A. Gardner,et al.  INTRODUCTION: New Ethnographic Fieldwork among Migrants, Residents and Citizens in the Arab States of the Gulf , 2008 .

[28]  B. Cooper.  Gender, Movement, and History: Social and Spatial Transformations in 20th Century Maradi, Niger , 1997 .

[29]  D. Holt,et al.  Dominated consumer acculturation : The social construction of poor migrant women's consumer identity projects in a turkish squatter , 2007 .

[30]  Alison Blunt.  Domicile and Diaspora: Anglo-Indian Women and the Spatial Politics of Home , 2005 .

[31]  Russell W. Belk,et al.  I'd like to buy the world a coke: Consumptionscapes of the “less affluent world” , 1996 .

[32]  Sharon Nagy.  Making Room for Migrants, Making Sense of Difference: Spatial and Ideological Expressions of Social Diversity in Urban Qatar , 2006 .

[33]  I. Cieraad.  At Home: An Anthropology of Domestic Space , 2006 .

[34]  L. Mulvey.  Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema , 1975 .

[35]  R. Deshpandé,et al.  Situational Ethnicity and Consumer Behavior , 1989 .

[36]  A. Friedberg.  Window Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern , 1993 .

[37]  L. Oswald.  Culture Swapping: Consumption and the Ethnogenesis of Middle-Class Haitian Immigrants , 1999 .

[38]  R. Belk,et al.  The Scented Winds of Change: Conflicting Notions of Modesty and Vanity Among Young Qatari and Emirati Women , 2009 .

[39]  C. Nelson.  public and private politics: women in the Middle Eastern world1 , 1974 .

[40]  C. Marcus.  House As a Mirror of Self : Exploring the Deeper Meaning of Home , 1995 .

[41]  Valerie J. Hoffman-Ladd.  Polemics on the Modesty and Segregation of Women in Contemporary Egypt , 1987, International Journal of Middle East Studies.

[42]  F. E. Guindi.  VEILING INFITAH WITH MUSLIM ETHIC: EGYPT'S CONTEMPORARY ISLAMIC MOVEMENT* , 1981 .

[43]  Fitzroy James Henry Somerset st Baron Raglan.  The temple and the house , 1964 .