Guests of the Sheik by Elizabeth Warnock Essay

Marriage is important in human society. Marriage is “the customs, rules, and obligations that establish a special relationship between a sexually cohabitating adult male and female, between them and any children they produce, and between the kin of the bride and groom” (Arenson, and Miller-Thayer 520). Most of the cultures are used to seeing only female and male getting married but looking deeper into the society; we can see there are more to it. There are many different types of marriages. In an ethnography called, Guest of the Sheik, by Elizabeth Warnock Fernea, she talks about her experiences in a small rural village of El Nahra in southern Iraq. Ethnography is “comprised of the writings of the anthropologist, detailing the life ways of a particular culture, investigated by means of direct fieldwork” (1). As she gets accepted by the women of the villages, she gets a more inclusive view of the culture.

Marriage practices vary across cultures. Every culture has its own way of conducting marriage according to their traditions and customs. Most cultures share common customs and practices, while some cultures have unique practices. Marriage refers to a social union agreed upon by the couples to unit as spouses. The union of couples implies sexual relations, permanence in union, and procreation. This research paper focuses on comparing marriage practices in American and Indian culture. There is significant difference between the two cultures in marriage practices.

Many groups and cultures practice the marriage rule of endogamy. To put the idea into more simple terms, people marry within their particular group. There are all sorts of groups. Some may be grouped by social status, others by religion, maybe a particular race, and so on. There are many possible factors that could play a role when choosing an “acceptable” bride or groom to be. In El Nahra the ideal marriage partner for women is her parallel cousin. A parallel cousin would be the son of the woman’s father’s

Power is different between women and men. Throughout history there has always been a lower expectation of women in society. The book touches every angle to what was happening in this country, where health conditions are very bad, women were being controlled by men, and women are losing their lives while giving birth. The mortality rate is very high because of the lack of equipment and health

However, through their constant interaction, both sides began to recognize some benefits each culture possessed. It takes time when you are immersed in a particular community to understand the cultural ethos and eventually the community as a whole. Through Elizabeth Fernea’s ethnography on Iraq’s El Nahra village, we learn that all cultures have unique and equally important aspects. In El Nahra, for example, the cultural ethos is family honor. The actions of the community are based on the solid family bonds that exist throughout. However, individualism drives the majority of America. Our actions seem to be a direct result of the cultural ethos. In this, lied much of the uncertainty between Bob, BJ and the El Nahran people. In America, we spend a great deal of the time away from home and our families and completing tasks that will further the success of the individual. Generally, Americans are willing to sacrifice a lot of their family solidity for individual success. A sacrifice of this magnitude would be unheard of in a community such as El Nahra. Their relationships, both marriage and friendship are based on their family, and no one seems to know any other lifestyle. Marriages in El Nahra were, for the large majority, predetermined. This tradition in America would be strongly questioned and completely disregarded, based on the cultural ethos of individualism. Americans put a large emphasis on

How do we define power in our society? Do you we look at those with money or those who acquire many things? According to Michael Parenti the structure of whether or not someone is defined in the sense of powerful or powerlessness relies on their social class and ethnicity. In the novella Under the Feet of Jesus by Helena Maria Viramontes, we see the development of power through the main character Estrella.It is clear that although Estrella’s background as a powerless migrant worker struggling to support her family financially she shifts into a powerful role as an empowered young latina woman.

You are Fatima, a middle-aged, middle-class woman in El Nahra, Iraq in 1954. You have met an American woman for the first time in your life, and have come to know her pretty well. But you just cannot understand how she can be happy living according to the American customs she has described to you. Construct Fatima’s argument for why the customs of Iraq, especially as they relate to gender roles and gender relationships, are vastly superior to those of the United States.

In recent years, America’s attention has been gripped by stories of women who have escaped from the Middle East. Each has a unique story, but they all have the same themes of oppression, abuse, and domination. Americans rushed onto the scene ready to “save” Middle Eastern women and many of the activists are now been highly praised for the influence they made in the region. Others, however, have come to question whether the Muslim women in the Middle East really needed the U.S. to rescue them from Islam. *Insert Thesis*

Through out Middle East the lives of women appear to have no influencing role in society. Elizabeth Fernea provides an survey of the traditions of an Iraqi village in her book Guests of the Sheik. Within this book, Fernea explores the element of gender and its impact on the roles of women in Iraq, directly in the village of El Nahra. She also encounters the expectations based on the gender-specific social constructs of polygamous families. Another woman author, Leila Abouzeid, explores similar elements in the work Return to Childhood, which is based in islamic Morocco. Fernea, who the women of the harem call Beeja, presents experiential information about the life of both women and men and her role within her husband 's life as it reflects

In a patriarchal society such as colonial Latin America, women were considered second class citizens. No matter their class or ethnicity, all women experienced the social and cultural limitations that are subjected to them by this patriarchal society. Women had limited access to education, women are used to satisfy men’s personal desires and legal systems neglected women’s court rights while heavily advocating men’s. However, not all women are subjected to the same limitations because of the difference in one’s economic status and ethnic identity. Nonetheless, women still found a way to carve out a space for themselves in attempt to overcome these regulations set by a patriarchal society.

mother and her family” (121). Now, in America, a wife is determined by love, and

There is no doubt that “understanding power in all its complexity is important for feminism because it offers an inroad to the analyses of systems of inclusion and exclusion, the structures of domination and subordination, and the hierarchies of privilege” (Bromley 2012). It is true that power is the authority held by a group or party which allows them to make use of public sources and have political control over a society. However, this essay is supposed to cover different concepts of power in three texts. In the book, A Small Place, Kincaid represents the issue of corruption amongst the group of people who hold power, which is the government. She sees the global economy as a way for the people in power to abuse the powerless. Also, in Uses of the Erotic, Lorde writes about the erotic as a source of power and information, which people constantly confuse with its opposite, the pornographic. According to Lorde, power comes from sharing deeply any pursuit with another person (Lorde 56). Lastly the theme of power is also represented in Adrienne Rich’s Compulsory

Marriage is a ritual that marks a change in status for a man and a woman and the acceptance by society of the new family that is formed (Rosman & Rubel, 1981). Marriage, like other customs, is governed by rules (Rosman & Rubel, 1981). Anthropology has represented marriage as the definitive ritual and universally translatable regulative ideal of human societies (BORNEMAN, 1996). Marriage also the act of joining two persons of opposite sex together to become as husband and wife. Many people in the society have different opinions or outright misconception of the meaning of marriage. While some people see it as a union between a man and woman, others take it to mean an agreement made between a man

One of her famous works is Once in a Promised Land; the story of a couple in America; the Dream Land, Halaby’s details the painful crumbling of a marriage mired in prejudice , cultural displacement , and deceit in the days following 9/11 Jassim Haddad and his wife, Salwa , have come to Tucson from Jordan so Jassim can pursue his career as a hydrologist .Questions regarding their cultural and religious

Being the daughter of an Arab and also of an American; she portrayed herself as being in “numerous ways culturally more American than an Arabian” individual (Abu-Lughod, 1988:140). Throughout her work, the author makes it clear that the factors of being a woman of Arab descent and her positionality had several consequences in the types of research she could perform and the ties and relationships she could build with the members of the Bedouin tribe. The fact that she was a “Dutiful daughter” doing fieldwork in a segregated society helped her understand the significance of modesty and humility for women in the Bedouin tribe. “…with the contributors to this volume I share the experience of being a woman studying a sex-segregated society. Unlike most of them, I was in the peculiar situation of being neither completely a cultural insider, nor a total outsider.” (Abu-Lughod, 1988:140). Being in a segregated society were male dominance was a basic characteristic of the natives exposed the author to both sides, but mostly to the female’s side, and that is what her research was mostly based on. Being one of the natives benefited her fieldwork, because she had the opportunity to feel and act just as one of them by adapting to their culture. Malinowski on the contrary was more reserved when writing his fieldwork experiences, because he did not