ANTHR310 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Cultural Relativism, Saba Mahmood
27 Sep 2016
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Explanations in terms of culture tend to depoliticize and dehistoricize problems. Tribal culture, islamic texts, traditional roles of women (not technically traditional roles but what is widely accepted now as traditional . What about the us, the cold war, foreign powers battling over afghanistan: by using the oh, its just their culture excuse, it minimalizes things; it"s not a good reason/explanation. What was the meaning/history of the burqa in this area: from the western perspective, we would be mortified to hear that women had to wear the burqa, in muslim societies, it has been associated with a higher class/status. Lower class women do not wear the burqa because it gets in the way of manual labour or other tasks: the burqa was the least of people"s concerns after bombings, etc. Why did the secular women"s group rawa oppose the us-led attack on the taliban: they feared that a worse regime was coming at least the taliban had rules and structure.
