Women And The Creation Of Urban Life

Those individuals remembered as the "founders" of cities were men, but as Elizabeth York Enstam shows, it was women who played a major role in creating the definitive forms of urban life we know today.

An attempt to reveal, recover and reconsider the roles, positions, and actions of Ottoman women, this volume reconsiders the negotiations, alliances, and agency of women in asserting themselves in the public domain in late- and post-Ottoman cities. Drawing on diverse theoretical backgrounds and a variety of source materials, from court records to memoirs to interviews, the contributors to the volume reconstruct the lives of these women within the urban sphere. With a fairly wide geographical span, from Aleppo to Sofia, from Jeddah to Istanbul, the chapters offer a wide panorama of the Ottoman urban geography, with a specific concern for gender roles.

Despite the considerable volume of research into various aspects of the social and economic, cultural and political history of eighteenth-century British towns, remarkably little has focused upon, or even reflected upon the distinctive experience of women in the urban context. Much of what research there is has explored the experience of laboring or impoverished women, or women of the social elite; by contrast, the essays in this collection take up the study of the participation of middling women in urban life. This volume brings into sharper focus the relationship between changes consequent upon urban development and shifts in the pattern of gender relations in the 18th century. The contributors address such themes as the extent to which to what extent urban change accelerated a redefinition of gender relations; the connections between urban growth, changing definitions of citizenship, and the emergence of the male gendered political subject; the role of women in a literate, consumer and industrializing society; the place of women's networks in the economic, political and social life of the town and the distinctive role played by women in areas such as philanthropy and business; and how the development of urban society in turn inflected contemporary conceputalizations of gender.

Based on extensive fieldwork, Women of Fes shows how Moroccan women create their own forms of identity through work, family, and society. The book also examines how women's lives are positioned vis-à-vis globalization, human rights, and the construction of national identity.

Extrait de la couverture : "Gendering the city provides a significant contribution to urban studies, balancing critiques of domination with analyses of how groups and individuals have actively carved out spaces that resist and recofigure dominant gender regimes. The collection draws on a wide range of empirical work, conducted in both canada and the United States, to explore the diversity of women's experiences. It is both grounded and provocative. - Ann Forsyth, Harvard University Graduate School of Design."

Khmer Women on the Move offers a fascinating ethnography of young Cambodian women who move from the countryside to work in Cambodia's capital city, Phnom Penh. Female migration and urban employment are rising, triggered by Cambodia's transition from a closed socialist system to an open market economy. This book challenges the dominant views of these young rural women--that they are controlled by global economic forces and national development policies or trapped by restrictive customs and Cambodia's tragic history. The author shows instead how these women shape and influence the processes of change taking place in present-day Cambodia. Based on field research among women working in the garment industry, prostitution, and street trading, the book explores the complex interplay between their experiences and actions, gender roles, and the broader historical context. The focus on women involved in different kinds of work allows new insight into women's mobility, highlighting similarities and differences in working conditions and experiences. Young women's ability to utilize networks of increasing size and complexity allows them to move into and between geographic and social spaces that extend far beyond the village context. Women's mobility is further expressed in the flexible patterns of behavior that young rural women display when trying to fulfill their own "modern" aspirations along with their family obligations and cultural ideals.

"Adopting the guise of a flaneur, Wilson reconsiders the classical imagery of the city from the viewpoints of diverse groups of women: bourgeois wives, prostitutes, transvestite writers, and others. Its originality resides in its deft, consistently provocative interweaving of underground feminist discourses with the familiar, male-infected rhetorics of urban experience."—Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz

Those individuals remembered as the "founders" of cities were men, but as Elizabeth York Enstam shows, it was women who played a major role in creating the definitive forms of urban life we know today.

Extrait de la couverture : "Gendering the city provides a significant contribution to urban studies, balancing critiques of domination with analyses of how groups and individuals have actively carved out spaces that resist and recofigure dominant gender regimes. The collection draws on a wide range of empirical work, conducted in both canada and the United States, to explore the diversity of women's experiences. It is both grounded and provocative. - Ann Forsyth, Harvard University Graduate School of Design."

Using case-studies from Oxford to Beijing and Chicago, Women and the City shows women constructing their lives in the urban environment, sometimes working against a system where needs are marginalized. Women are shown as community activists, homeless women, carers, patients, travellers, rock musicians and workers. The book emphasizes women as active agents, and the contributors include women working in urban management as well as academics from diverse backgrounds.