Bodies, Religion, and Power in Tunisia

This book explores the body as a vector for reading the rapid changes in contemporary Tunisia through questions of sexuality, forms of clothing, and the dynamics of gender relations. Grounded in 15 years of sociological empirical research on the post-revolutionary period of Tunisia (2011-2020), this study addresses youth uprisings, through their bodies, against the dualities of traditional and modern, masculinity and femininity, and the legitimate and the marginal. Bringing together empirical research and a theoretical overview of the evolution of the place of the body in sociology and feminist theory, this book deconstructs biological, deterministic views of the body and offers instead a perspective of the body as interactive, subjective, societal, and cosmic, permeated by different systems, policies, philosophies, and ways of living. Chapters analyse Arab and Islamic cultural and cognitive frameworks for the body and apply Foucauldian and feminist concepts of the body and power to provide a comparative sociological study of global politics around the body while centering Tunisian youth movements that demand free use of the body. It will be of interest to students and researchers in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Sociology of the Body, Middle Eastern Studies, and Feminist Theory. Raoudha Elguedri Dumbrovska is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Qatar. She has a PhD in Sociology from the University of Tunis and taught Sociology at the University of Tunis (2014-2015 and 2018-2019). She worked as a researcher at the Observatory of Gender and Equality of Chances between Sexes in CREDIF, Tunisia (2012-2015).