Paper short abstract:

This paper studies aspects of paradigm shifts in Western ethnographic studies about Muslim women in the first two decades of the 21st century and their ideological underpinnings. It offers an insider's counternarrative emanating from Tunisia.

Paper long abstract:

In looking back at the representation of Muslim women in the narratives of Orientalist anthropologists of the 20th century, women in Muslim societies were denied agency and portrayed as helpless victims of oppressed male chauvinists. The 21st century seems to have ushered in a paradigm change in Western ethnographic studies of these vulnerable communities as they have been given agency and portrayed as key actors in the processes of social and political change in the region and were used as mediators in the cross-cultural knowledge production processes. This paper studies aspects of these paradigm shifts in Western ethnographic studies about Muslim women in the first two decades of the 21st century and their ideological underpinnings. It takes stock of multidisciplinary conceptual and analytical frameworks but draws heavily on the conceptual frameworks of socio-narrative translation theories. The study analyzes a corpus of disparate, yet corroborating, ethnographic narratives that cut across linguistic and cultural barriers with the mediation of a native translator and/or co-author. The work claims a ground for itself by mounting a countervailing narrative grounded in insider ethnographic research in Tunisia, the cradle of sociopolitical changes in the region in the 21st century.

Keywords: Arab Spring, Tunisian women, gender neo-Orientalism