Gender and Economics in Muslim Communities: a Critical Feminist and Postcolonial Analysis Ebru Kongara, Jennifer C
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This article was downloaded by: [IAFFE ] On: 23 March 2015, At: 20:23 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Feminist Economics Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rfec20 Gender and Economics in Muslim Communities: A Critical Feminist and Postcolonial Analysis Ebru Kongara, Jennifer C. Olmstedb & Elora Shehabuddinc a Economics, Dickinson College, P.O. Box 1773, Carlisle, PA 17103, USA, e-mail: b Economics, Drew University, 36 Madison Ave, Madison, NJ 07940, USA, e-mail: c Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality, Rice University, 6100 Main St. MS-38, Click for updates Houston, TX 77005, USA, e-mail: Published online: 15 Dec 2014. To cite this article: Ebru Kongar, Jennifer C. Olmsted & Elora Shehabuddin (2014) Gender and Economics in Muslim Communities: A Critical Feminist and Postcolonial Analysis, Feminist Economics, 20:4, 1-32, DOI: 10.1080/13545701.2014.982141 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13545701.2014.982141 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub- licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http:// www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions Downloaded by [IAFFE ] at 20:23 23 March 2015 Feminist Economics, 2014 Vol. 20, No. 4, 1–32, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13545701.2014.982141 GENDER AND ECONOMICS IN MUSLIM COMMUNITIES: ACRITICAL FEMINIST AND POSTCOLONIAL ANALYSIS Ebru Kongar, Jennifer C. Olmsted, and Elora Shehabuddin ABSTRACT This contribution seeks to delineate the broad contours of a transnational, anti- imperial feminist perspective on gender and economics in Muslim communities by bringing together feminist analyses of Orientalist tropes, development discourses and policies, and macro- and microeconomic trends. The goal is to facilitate conversations among scholars who have tended to work within their respective disciplinary and methodological silos despite shared interests. This approach pays special attention to intersectionality, historicity, and structural constraints by focusing on the diversity of the experiences of women and men by religion, location, citizenship, class, age, ethnicity, race, marital status, and other factors. It recognizes the complex relationships between the economic, political, cultural, and religious spheres and the role of local and transnational histories, economies, and politics in shaping people’s lives. Finally, it emphasizes that openness to different methodological approaches can shed clearer light on the question of how various structural factors shape women’s economic realities. KEYWORDS Islam, economic development, feminist economics, Orientalism, neoliberalism JEL Codes: Z12, B51, B54 Downloaded by [IAFFE ] at 20:23 23 March 2015 INTRODUCTION Why a special issue devoted to gender and economics in Muslim communities?1 We have grappled with this question at length, finding ourselves in the odd position of critiquing scholarship that assumes Islamic exceptionalism, yet arguing for attention to gender norms and economic processes in Muslim communities around the world. We believe that questions of gender and economics in Muslim communities merit special attention, not because Islam holds special explanatory power, but because of the long history of problematic Euro-American knowledge production about Muslims in general, and Muslim women in particular, within the context of global political and economic inequalities and power relations. © 2014 IAFFE ARTICLES The studies in this special issue affirm that Islam per se cannot explain either the successes or the challenges facing Muslim men and women. Like members of any other community, Muslims are diverse across the countries and communities in which they live, love, and labor. The opportunities and constraints they face are far from unique and are better understood with serious attention to the complex ways that religion intersects with local and global socioeconomic and political structures to circumscribe Muslim women and men’s lives, decisions, and activisms. In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a particularly pernicious kind of scholarship and popular writing about Islam, Muslims, and the special status of women and gender in these discussions has reemerged (miriam cooke 2002; Lila Abu-Lughod 2013). With much of the recent anti-Muslim rhetoric focused on the Arab world, Gamze Çavdar and Yavuz Ya¸sar note: “Highly ethnocentric and frustratingly resilient culturalism is again dominating public debates and the popular media, giving Middle East specialists a déjà vu feeling coupled with an ‘I-thought-this-was-resolved- 30-years-ago’ disbelief” (2014:259; this volume).2 Dramatic political, social, and economic changes worldwide since 9/11 have added urgency to the need for thoughtful scholarly research on the subject of gender, economics, and Muslim communities. A main objective of this contribution, and of this special issue more broadly, is to advocate for an approach that challenges ethnocentric and culturalist accounts of gender equality and women’s well-being in Muslim communities and highlights the limitations of attributing gender inequalities to the black box of Islam. By providing nuanced quantitative and qualitative analyses of women’s economic realities in a diverse group of Muslim communities, the studies in this volume expand our understanding of how political, social, and economic conditions at both the micro and macro levels shape and are shaped by women’s economic decisions and conditions. They also provide insights into broader questions that center on gender and development and important input into how research can inform the policy arena in more productive ways. What emerges is a vivid Downloaded by [IAFFE ] at 20:23 23 March 2015 picture of the complex ways that Islam interacts with social, economic, and political factors in women’s lives, decision making, and economic realities. The contributions in this special issue advance our knowledge of gender and economics in Muslim communities in three ways. First, by making use of a variety of methodological approaches, the studies illustrate how different methods are complementary and work together to provide a better understanding of the problems and struggles of communities in which Muslims live. Second, we bring together scholars – among the guest editors as well as the authors – with a range of disciplinary backgrounds, including anthropology, economics, gender studies, political science, psychology, and sociology. This diversity of disciplines allows us to place critiques of Orientalist scholarship in more direct dialogue with scholarship 2 GENDER AND ECONOMICS IN MUSLIM COMMUNITIES on economic development in Muslim contexts. Finally, the special issue comprises a close textual analysis that provides examples of ongoing Orientalism, several quantitative studies that challenge the notion of Islam as a dummy variable, and detailed studies conducted in Bangladesh, Iran, Israel, Nigeria, and Turkey. Taken together, they illustrate the historical and institutional heterogeneity of Muslim communities and allow us to address the question, what do the everyday economic lives of Muslim women actually look like? In this introductory essay, we bring together feminist analyses of Orientalist tropes, development discourses and policies, and macro- and microeconomic trends to facilitate conversations among scholars who have tended to work within their respective disciplinary and methodological silos despite shared interests. We do so in an effort to delineate the broad contours of a transnational, anti-imperial feminist perspective on gender and economics in communities of Muslims. This perspective rejects simplistic approaches that decontexualize Islam, in favor of those where attention to religion in general, and Islam in particular, is embedded in an analysis that takes into account intersectionality, historicity, and structural constraints through a focus on differences in the experiences of girls and boys, women and men by location, citizenship, class, age, caste, ethnicity, race, sexuality, and so on. This approach also recognizes the complex relationships between the economic, political, cultural, and religious spheres and the role of local and transnational histories, economies, and politics,