Mujeres de Yebalagénero, islam y alteridades en Marruecos

Abstract

Based upon eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork and anthropological research in a rural and montainous area of the south of Jbala or Western Rif, northern Morocco, this doctoral thesis explores the changing constructions of gender in a muslim society, and it analyzes gender constructions underlying religious discourses and discourses on alterity, rites of passage and rites of possession. This thesis is an in-depth ethnographic and anthropological study, and it is based on fieldwork carried out in three rural communes of the Province of Chefchauen. Data was gathered through participant observation and through interviews with Jbalan women from the communes of Mokrisset, Fifi and Beni Faghloum, territories of the qabila Ghzawa. The study has been sponsored by the Basque Government through its programme of predoctoral fellowships (2004-2008), and it has been carried out in the University of Cantabria, including a short period in which the author worked as visiting researcher at the Institut de Recherches et d'Études sur le Monde Arabe et Musulman (IREMAM) of Aix-en-Provence, France. The theoretical framework of the thesis is based on social constructivism, feminist epistemologies and critical theory, but also on an in-depth critique of the abuse of binaries and a revision of the concept popular Islam. A major focus of this study are female agencies, body politics and the politics of alterity. The thesis is presented in eighteen chapters and a chapter of conclusions, organized around themes such as the economic role of women, gender segregation in market places, kinship, birth, nuptial and funerary rites, social and cultural practices related to sainthood, sufism and sunni Islam, beliefs and practices linked to magic and the evil-eye, visions, divination and dream interpretation, and the belief in the jnun and practices related to it. Emphasis is placed upon rites of passage, belief in spirits and rites of possession, and devotional practices linked to religion. This doctoral thesis addresses the scope and diversity of ritual activities in the changing complex society of rural contemporary Morocco. By using gender as an analytic cathegory to elucidate wider social and cultural processes through ritual performance, it opens up new perspectives into the ideas and values, beliefs and practices underpinning the social and symbolic gender constructions.