Reinventing Love?

Corinne Fortier, Aymon Kreil, Irene Maffi (éds)

Reinventing Love?

Gender, Intimacy and Romance
in the Arab world

Berlin · Bern · Bruxelles · New York · Oxford

Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress.

This book received the generous support of the Foundation of the University of Lausanne, of the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences and of the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lausanne, and of the Société académique vaudoise (SAV).

Cover design: Thomas Jaberg, Peter Lang AG

Cover image: Samuli Schielke

ISSN 1663-6384 • ISBN 978-3-0343-2778-7 (Print)
E-ISBN 978-3-0343-2780-0 (E-PDF • E-ISBN 978-3-0343-2781-7 (EPUB)
E-ISBN 978-3-0343-2782-4 (MOBI) • DOI 10.3726/b10848

This publication has been peer reviewed.

© Peter Lang AG

Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften

Bern 2018

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About the editors

Corinne Fortier is Anthropologist. She is researcher at the French National Centre of Scientific Research (CNRS) and member of Social Anthropology Lab (LAS) (CNRS-EHESS-Collège de France-Universités PSL, Paris). She has conducted research in Mauritania, in Egypt and on Islamic scriptural sources related to gender, body, seduction, bioethics, and family law.

Aymon Kreil is Assistant Professor in the Department of Languages and Cultures at Ghent University. He has conducted most of his research in Egypt, on the issues of love, sexuality, consumption and psychological counselling.

Irene Maffi is Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Lausanne. She has conducted research in Jordan, Palestine, Tunisia and Switzerland and her scientific interests include reproductive health, sexuality, medical technologies, abortion, contraception, doctor-patient relationships, gender and class inequalities.

About the book

Affective and sexual intimacy are sensitive issues in the Arab World. However moments of closeness between men and women have always been possible, perhaps even more so today, thanks to the spread of mixed-gender social spaces and new communication technologies. Further, while undeniably embedded in gendered relations of power, love is a highly ambivalent field of experience that involves a good deal of negotiation between partners and with family and can stand in tense relationship to patriarchal domination. Often, however, romantic love is contrasted with love after marriage. This book precisely explores the relationship between love and marriage in the contemporary Arab world. By sketching the paths of amorous encounters in the Arab world, it introduces the reader to the conflicting configurations that shape love practices, providing new insights into a still-emerging field of inquiry. It examines notions of gender, intimacy and love through ethnographic case studies that offer an insight into current dynamics in Egypt, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates.

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Table of Contents

Corinne Fortier, Aymon Kreil and Irene Maffi

Introduction: Reinventing Love? Gender, Intimacy and Romance in the Arab World

Steffen Strohmenger

Chapter 1: The Art of Playing Tuql. How to ‘Make’ Love in Egypt

Corinne Fortier

Chapter 2: The Expenses of Love: Seduction, Poetry and Jealousy in Mauritania

Mariangela Gasparotto

Chapter 3: Practices of Love in Ramallah. Between Colonization, Norms and Individualism

Marion Breteau

Chapter 4: Pixel Outlines of Intimacy. Online Love among Young People in Muscat

Laure Assaf

Chapter 5: Who Is the Right One? The Meanings of (Marital) Love in the United Arab Emirates

Daniele Cantini

Chapter 6: Romantic Love and Finding a Place in Life: Jordanian University Students and Their Loving Subjectivities

Irene Maffi

Chapter 7: Uncertainties and Shifting Forms of Intimacy in Post-Revolutionary Tunisia

Irene Capelli

Chapter 8: (Im)Possible Matches: Love and Intimacy in the Lives of Unmarried Mothers in Morocco ←5 | 6→

Corinne Fortier, Aymon Kreil and Irene Maffi

Introduction
Reinventing Love? Gender, Intimacy and Romance in the Arab World