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.

This text is an original investigation in the complex relationship between women, gender, and language in a Muslim, multilingual, and multicultural setting. Moroccan women's use of monolingualism (oral literature) and multilingualism (code-switching) reflects their agency and gender-role subversion in a heavily patriarchal society.

In Morocco today, the idea of female laborers is generally frowned upon. Yet despite this, many women are beginning to find work in factories. Laetitia Cairoli spent a year in the ancient city of Fes; Girls of the Factory tells the story of what life is like for working women. Forced to find a factory job herself so that she could speak more intimately with working women, she was able to learn firsthand why they work, what working means to them, and how important earning a wage is to their sense of self. Cairoli conveys a general sense of the working life of women in Morocco by describing daily life inside a Moroccan sewing factory. She also reveals the additional work they face inside their homes. More than an ethnography, this volume is also for those who want to better understand what life is like for a new generation of young women just entering the workforce.

Interpretations of women in the antebellum period have long dwelt upon the notion of public versus private gender spheres. As part of the ongoing reevaluation of the prehistory of the women's movement, Carolyn Lawes challenges this paradigm and the primacy of class motivation. She studies the women of antebellum Worcester, Massachusetts, discovering that whatever their economic background, women there publicly worked to remake and improve their community in their own image. Lawes analyzes the organized social activism of the mostly middle-class, urban, white women of Worcester and finds that they were at the center of community life and leadership. Drawing on rich local history collections, Lawes weaves together information from city and state documents, court cases, medical records, church collections, newspapers, and diaries and letters to create a portrait of a group of women for whom constant personal and social change was the norm. Throughout Women and Reform in a New England Community, conventional women make seemingly unconventional choices. A wealthy Worcester matron helped spark a women-led rebellion against ministerial authority in the town's orthodox Calvinist church. Similarly, a close look at the town's sewing circles reveals that they were vehicles for political exchange as well as social gatherings that included men but intentionally restricted them to a subordinate role. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the women of Worcester had taken up explicitly political and social causes, such as an orphan asylum they founded, funded, and directed. Lawes argues that economic and personal instability rather than a desire for social control motivated women, even relatively privileged ones, into social activism. She concludes that the local activism of the women of Worcester stimulated, and was stimulated by, their interest in the first two national women's rights conventions, held in Worcester in 1850 and 1851. Far from being marginalized from the vital economic, social, and political issues of their day, the women of this antebellum New England community insisted upon being active and ongoing participants in the debates and decisions of their society and nation.

Encountering Morocco introduces readers to life in this North African country through vivid accounts of fieldwork as personal experience and intellectual journey. We meet the contributors at diverse stages of their careers–from the unmarried researcher arriving for her first stint in the field to the seasoned fieldworker returning with spouse and children. They offer frank descriptions of what it means to take up residence in a place where one is regarded as an outsider, learn the language and local customs, and struggle to develop rapport. Moving reflections on friendship, kinship, and belief within the cross-cultural encounter reveal why study of Moroccan society has played such a seminal role in the development of cultural anthropology.

This book examines the position of women in the contemporary Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Although it is culturally diverse, this region shares many commonalities with relation to women that are strong, deep, and pervasive: a space-based patriarchy, a culturally strong sense of religion, a smooth co-existence of tradition and modernity, a transitional stage in development, and multilingualism/multiculturalism. Experts from within the region and from outside provide both theoretical angles and case studies, drawing on fieldwork from Egypt, Oman, Palestine, Israel, Turkey, Iran, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Spain. Addressing the historical, socio-cultural, political, economic, and legal issues in the region, the chapters cover five major aspects of women’s agency: political agency civil society activism legal reform cultural and social agencies religious and symbolic agencies. Bringing to light often marginalized topics and issues, the book underlines the importance of respecting specificities when judging societies and hints at possible ways of promoting the MENA region. As such, it is a valuable addition to existing literature in the field of political science, sociology, and women’s studies.

This comprehensive guide will facilitate scholarly research concerning the history of Christianity in China as well as the wider Sino-Western cultural encounter. It will assist scholars in their search for material on the anthropological, educational, medical, scientific, social, political, and religious dimensions of the missionary presence in China prior to 1950.The guide contains nearly five hundred entries identifying both Roman Catholic and Protestant missionary sending agencies and related religious congregations. Each entry includes the organization's name in English, followed by its Chinese name, country of origin, and denominational affiliation. Special attention has been paid to identifying the many small, lesser-known groups that arrived in China during the early decades of the twentieth century. In addition, a special category of the as yet little-studied indigenous communities of Chinese women has also been included. Multiple indexes enhance the guide's accessibility.