Lila Abu-Lughod, "Honor and Shame," and:

• Peter Drucker, "The Age of Social Transformation"
• Martha Nussbaum, "Women and Cultural Universals"
• James Scott, "Selections from Domination and the Arts of Resistance"

For more assignment ideas involving this essay, please visit the Abu-Lughod link-o-mat.

Abu-Lughod and Drucker: Communities Old and New

In the very first paper that you wrote for this class, I asked you to discuss the negative and positive consequences of the breakdown of what Drucker calls "the old communities." One could argue that in the essay "Honor and Shame," Lila Abu-Lughod reveals to us a society in which "old communities" are still largely intact. For your last assignment, I would like you to return once more to the issue of community. I would like you to write a paper which explores the following question: What are the beneficial aspects of traditional communities, and what are the troubling aspects? To formulate your answer, you must draw on the reading by Abu-Lughod, plus any two other articles that we have read.The theme of community runs throughout all six articles that we have examined, so I can imagine a wide variety of interesting responses for this assignment.

In writing your paper, you might think about some of the following questions:

• In what ways can communities empower individuals, and in what ways can they weaken or hinder them?
• In what ways do communities threaten freedom, and in what ways do they promote freedom?
• In what ways do communities tend to discourage individuality, and in what ways do they help to foster the growth of individuality?

Of course, your answers to these questions will depend on how you conceive of "community," "freedom," and "individuality."

Brian Danoff, Fall 2000

Back to top

Abu-Lughod and Nussbaum: Gaining and Losing Access to the Central Human Functional Capabilities

In "Honor and Shame," Lila Abu-Lughod describes how education has changed the expectations of a young Bedouin woman named Kamla. Based on Abu-Lughod's account, can we say with certainty whether Kamla was given access to what Nussbaum terms the "central human functional capabilities" prior to her marriage? Would she have access to all of the capabilities after her marriage? How would Nussbaum recommend that we respond to Kamla's transition? Would she share Abu-Lughod's ambivalence about Kamla's move to the city?

Back to top

Abu-Lughod and Scott

In this assignment, I want you to use James Scott's terms and ideas to help us better understand the workings of power in the Bedouin society described in Lila Abu-Lughod's "Honor and Shame." And I want you to consider how ideas we have encountered in other readings could help to improve the lives of subordinate groups in that society.

Question:

What do the hidden transcripts and public transcripts reveal about the arts of resistance practiced in Bedouin society? What ideas, institutions or social practices discussed by either Benjamin Barber or Peter Drucker could improve the lives of subordinate groups in Bedouin society if they were introduced there?

Discussion:

This assignment's greatest challenge is that it asks you to apply Scott's ideas to passages from Abu-Lughod's essay, and to use Scott's terms to explain the sometimes hidden or even confusing elements in these passages. In order to do this well, you will have to practice the arts of close reading that Scott himself illustrates ­ quoting passages and discussing them very carefully to reveal details that might be easily overlooked. You need to show how quotations or incidents in Abu-Lughod's essay become clearer when framed with terms or ideas from Scott's essay. Try always to be aware of the complexity of the situations her essay describes, and remember that Scott tells us "Power relations are not, alas, so straightforward that we can call what is said in power-laden contexts false and what is said offstage true."

In applying the ideas of Barber or Drucker to Bedouin society, you may feel like you are judging a different culture on Western terms, and that may trouble you. You are welcome to examine the fairness of such cross-cultural criticism if you like and to find an different approach to the assignment if you think applying Western standards to Bedouin culture is not right. For example, you might instead consider whether the Bedouin society that Abu-Lughod describes will eventually develop the institutions and practices described by Barber or Drucker as it becomes more Westernized ­ or, alternately, whether the people in that society might become even more set in their ways in Jihad-like reaction to these Western ideas.

Assignment Goals:

To use ideas from one text to frame examples in another text. To practice the skill of close-reading, discussing passages with great care and attention to detail. To develop a well unified paper that uses three authors in its argument.

Michael Goeller, Fall 2000

Back to top