Elite Strategies for State-Building: Women, Family, Religion and State in Iraq and Lebanon

Abstract

Investigation of the relationships among women, families, religions and states in the Middle East has been stimulated in part by the problematisation of the concepts of `women',2 `the family',3 `religion',4 and `the state'5 in political sociology, anthropology and feminist scholarship. The rethinking of these concepts has produced a body of case studies mainly focused on individual countries and with a contemporary emphasis. This has been a necessary process for building the empirical foundations for comparative and theoretical endeavours.