I'm going to try my best here to help you understand what it feels like to be in Jordan right now. Because you aren't here and I am! HA!
Well first of all, here's an article from the BBC:
They are indeed throwing stones, and breaking memory cards (information I got from my little brother who awesomely went to the protests in the circle that is quite close to my neighborhood). So close in fact that today when returning from a cafe in another part of town Biff and I had to walk the rest of the way because the roads were closed and the cab wouldn't take us further.
Here's the part that's hard to explain. Though protests have indeed sped up and gotten more fervent, everything is still wonderful and calm. to put this into perspective, or at least try to. Upon walking back from the cafe Biff and I noted how humorous it was that we no longer have to turn on the TV and watch Al-Jazeera to hear the protesters laments because we can literally hear them screaming from our rooftop and on our walk home. However, tonight I made guacamole. It tasted like home and wonderfulness and my family enjoyed (so they say, I'm going to take their word for it because I make a pretty mean guacamole, courtesy of sophomore year and Sarah Telaneus who gave me the real secret ingredient). I'm also apparently going to a wedding tonight (it ended up that just my parents went, nevertheless someone had a wedding tonight). Because even though this is the Middle East and even though the news back home I'm sure makes it seem like everything's insane, people still get married and make guacamole.
Other than my daily commute facing a few mushkilahs, really everything's great, especially because it's just my little brother's memory card that got broken.
Last night, Biff's family took us on a drive and we got to go around the circle (before they closed it off today) to see what was going on, here's a pretty epic photo from the night.
Now that explaining that is over with, on to my planned blog post of the night. Be prepared, it's literally a copy of the same blog posts I've had over and over again. I'm still going to talk about it, I make no apologies.
--> Intermission: I have been fed by a total of four people in this country. Megan, Cassie (some of our funnier moments), Sarah Dawn, and my brother Sa'ad (last night I found out that when you have jaaj and roz, apparently it's bad luck not to finish the roz so he literally did the old school 'air plane flying'/feeding a baby and fed me even though i was totally halas-ing that the whole time, bahaha). Also, "being a pessimistic person" when there's a language barrier turns into have a little sad baby in your heart. What?
Along with that, tonight we went up to the roof to observe the police and people everywhere and I am determined to learn how to whistle loudly like my brothers can. you know, the way they do it in the movies when they hail a cab. Watch out America, I'm honing this skill within the next week.
--> finis
So in between the time I began this post and now when I've come back to it to finish it up and actually post it, apparently someone died in the protests at the duwwar. Honestly, who knows what will happen tomorrow. According to my brothers and sister, all of the protesters left because people who are for the king (and think the protesters are calling for the king to step down when really what they're protesting is change in election law and the abolition of appointments in the government) started throwing stones that were actually inflicting bodily damage. So, will they come back tomorrow? No one knows, I think they will. Biff brought this up tonight but, the fact that the protests starting in the rain yesterday was significant, along with the setting up of tents. They mean business, but there's a lot more going on I think than anyone can know, especially and outsider (which is me, if anyone forgot). So who knows, I shall report back of course. What else would I be doing? Oh, studying...woops!
Anyway, BACK to the book that blew my mind. If you've been reading, you'll recall the title well, Feminism and Islamic Fundamentalism: The Limits of Post Modern Analysis. Alas, as most anthropology books do (and I should have expected it, honestly) this book posed a lot of questions and offered very few hard and fast answers. But then what kind of anthropology book would it be if it gave actual answers? Granted, it would have been far more satisfying, but would have been far less anthropological. Here are two of my most thought provoking quotations I pulled from the final chapters of the book:
-The author was discussing the ways in which anthropological work surrounding the tracking of Iranian women in the workplace has been bereft of any serious criticism of Iran (becasue the numbers are so low and losing ground instead of gaining) and in fact sometimes has been prone to a sort of apologetic stance where anthropologists will attempt to justify why the numbers are so low when she wrote, "In all this the question we come down to is why is it that the stagnation (or regression) in women's access to employment and education is not taken as a serious blow to women's status in a non-western context such as Iran, as they would be had the authors been dealing with women's status in the West? Can this attitude be understood in any way other than as reflecting the low expectations of cultural relativists when it comes to the rights of women in non-Western societies?" I added the emphasis becasue it was that question that got me. Is cultural relativism a limiting factor when it comes to women's rights? Are we (as researchers) so afraid of stepping on toes and offending (because of mistakes of the past in social sciences as well as the need to be hyper politically correct so as to not lose legitimacy in the field) so much that it is now impossible to condemn things we see as problems? Or it this hyper sensitivity a necessary evil in order to avoid going back in time to the sort-of ugly past of the social sciences? It would be so much easier if we were dealing with hard and fast facts and could make judgments and say something is either wrong or right. Alas, complaining gets us nowhere. But then again, is cultural relativism also getting us nowhere? Outside of the well-developed framework of the book it sounds terrible to even think about some of these things but are we too bound by being politically correct and by the idea that we can never judge another cultural practice?
-Along the same lines as the above question, the author, near the end, once again asks the question of limitation, "Should intellectuals continue to blur their own views-apologize for their secularism, even turn to religion- because religion has been presented to the masses as the only genuine, home-grown vehicle for national liberation, and thus avoid asserting their own identities?"
This one is tricky. Mostly because I've been thinking about religion here a lot this past week. In America, I would pretty much be comfortable saying to most people that I dislike religion because I think it muddies the water and is just generally a nuisance. I openly criticize Christianity, Catholicism, Mormonism, Scientology, etc, etc. And i would have added Islam to that list except I can't bring myself to. Not after having been here. Because something I have realized through discussion with other SITers and contemplation is that the reason I find it difficult to latch onto Islam and criticize it in the same manner I do religions at home is that Islam here is intertwined with the culture in nuanced and confusing ways. It's difficult to separate here what is Islam, what is government, what is culture, etc. And becasue I have established in the framework of cultural relativism a non-judging attitude towards culture, I can't bring myself to be as openly mean towards Islam. So whereas this author says that giving Islam more berth when it comes to being judgmental is a flaw, I would contend that if you look at Islam in the way it is expressed here it becomes more difficult to be as harsh as she promotes. However, she brings up a very good point still that hearkens back to the discussion I had about the previous quotation. Are we being too nice? Are we being too careful? Is there such a thing as being too careful when it comes to the lives of others?
I just don't know.
Like I said before, it would be so nice to have finished the book and have it tidily tie up all loose-ends like a good piece of fluff-fiction should. Instead this book opened up avenues of thought that I hadn't even considered until now (I mean, who honestly contemplates whether they're being too PC...well i guess a lot of people recently). But I hadn't! It has been a steadfast goal of mine for so long to be as PC as possible, becasue I didn't understand why someone would not want to (and still when it comes to just being PC, aside from cultural relativism, I don't understand why you wouldn't err on the side of 'oh hey let's just be nice')! And now here I am, wondering if anthropology has stagnated itself in being the "science of nice-ness" that it can't actually do anything or condemn things that anthropologists feel are wrong. Gah, here I go again. Seriously, circles, CIRCLES.
Anyhow, it's been a splendid day and a wonderful night full of fun (including mock protests staged on my kitchen floor by my siblings and myself during dinner) and I'm off to bed because tomorrow I have plans for pancakes. And even if my mind is in unrest with so many issues being rummaged around and dust being kicked up in my mind's eye from documents in my file cabinets under the label "Things I'm pretty Certain About" being strewn about and reconsidered, and the whole of Jordan is waking up to more protests tonight, I have plans for pancakes dammit. So I'm going to attempt to quell the thinking and embrace the shouting and chanting and (every so often) police sirens as some nice background noise and wake up tomorrow to try and find some blueberries. Goodnight wonderful readers, endless love and here's to hoping you have an amazing breakfast as well (best meal of the day!)!
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