The panel focuses on the everyday experiences of women engaged in movements, parties, NGOs, institutions in the Mediterranean region. It invites contributions that critically call into questions the forms and meanings of female engagement in the religious and secular public realm. 

SISP 2016: Milan, 15-17 September 2016

Argument

Besides such a religiously motivated female engagement, the heterogeneity of women participating in social and political movements all over the MENA region gained the interest of scholars who analysed women’s activism in protests, especially during the so called “Arab springs” (Khamis 2011; Bennoune 2012). Five years after the revolts, women’s political and/or religious engagement turned to be either silenced, eclipsed by state repression, or transformed: women’s militancy being institutionalised, included within state bureaucracy; or rather represented by associations closed to –unless embedded with– the governments (Göçmen 2014). Yet, it was exactly from these precarious and evolving niches that women find their ways for expressing their public role, in some cases in the context of new institutional arrangements related to the religion/state boundaries.

In the light of these considerations, the categories of mobilisation and participation seem indeed inadequate both at the theoretical and practical levels. Hence the necessity to focus on the everyday experiences of women engaged in movements, parties, NGOs, institutions in the Mediterranean region. The panel invites contributions that critically call into questions the forms and meanings of female engagement in the religious and secular public realm. In particular, it analyses the scope and scale of female participation by asking: How concretely does it occur? Which factors/actors contribute in enhancing it? To what extent the current political and social transformations have contributed in redefine it?
Designed as a space of dialogue and encounter, the panel promotes original models of interpretation based on different contexts and experiences. It strongly welcomes contributions based on empirical researches (both single cases studies or larger analyses), envisaging an interdisciplinary perspective and employing ethnographic and comparative methodologies.

Submission guidelines

please send an abstract (max 500 words) by following online instructions: http://www.sisp.it/convegno2016/ 

deadline :  05/06/2016

Selection

The proposal are selected by Chiara Maritato and Luca Ozzano from the University of Turin.