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Wives Against Mothers: Women's Power and Household Dynamics in Rural Tunisia

Collège Édouard-Montpetit.

Michel Verdon

Université de Montréal

This article examines the way women's power and its relation to household dynamics have been addressed in the anthropology of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) through the classical works of Deniz Kandiyoti and Camille Lacoste-Dujardin. We argue that the notion of "classic patriarchy" they have elaborated and used is predicated on a "collectivistic" and "culturalist" perspective on living arrangements. We show the perspective's shortcomings and suggest an alternative, "atomistic" framework developed by one of the authors, which we adapt to the MENA. We finally assess the heuristic value of this framework by studying a Tunisian peasant village typical of the feminization of agriculture now taking place, a process through which women have gained power.

Key Words: women's status • household dynamics • classic patriarchy • atomism • Tunisia • Middle East • North Africa

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