Nubians of West Aswan: Village Women in the Midst of Change, The

Jennings, Anne M. The Nubians of West Aswan: Village Women in the Midst of Change. Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1995. 179 pp.

This book attempts to balance the record of male-female relationships in Islamic societies; the author feels that the model of male-dominance "is based upon incomplete ethnographic information" (p. 1). Jennings grants that men occupy formal positions of authority and have high status, but she contends "that women possess informal means by which they can effectively influence the behavior of others" (p. 1). She suggests that "women are privy to certain kinds of information that men find difficult to elicit from other men, since men are prevented, ideologically, from discussing private household matters in the public arena" (pp. 8-9). She then says that this information "is shared judiciously with men in the privacy of the home, enabling the latter to appear astute and knowledgeable publicly" (p. 9). Such a situation would appear to me to be more along the lines of women conspiring to maintain the male dominance of their close relatives or perhaps men manipulating women to maintain male dominance. There is nothing in Jennings' ethnographic record to show that women either exploit or withhold this information to enhance their own authority and status.

Despite its questionable theoretical posture and the questionable ethics of Jennings's lack of anv effort to grant her informants anonymity this book does supply much interesting information; it is largely organized as a set of biographies. The introduction details her fieldwork in Nubia. The first chapter is a history of the Nubians and modern Nubia. Chapter 2 introduces the people of West Aswan and, in particular, the family that Jennings stayed with. Chapter 3 covers the topics of growing up female, courtship and marriage, outlines the characteristics of the well-respected woman, and talks about women's property. Chapter 4 is a similar report on men, though Jennings tells us that she had less rapport with the men. Chapter 5 addresses village communication networks. And the final chapter focuses on culture change. Perhaps the most interesting section of this chapter deals with the changes brought to women due to the increase in tourism.

I found the unnecessary use of Nubian and Arabic terms distracting. The book often includes sentences such as, "On the morning of the shel)ka celebration, both the 'aruusa and the 'ariis engage in beautifying activities" (p. 61). Shebka is an engagement ceremony, 'aruusa is the bride, and 'ars is the groom. Jennings does not give any more information about any special indigenous meanings for these words. She just requires us to look them up in her glossary whenever we come across them. Why is not the English translation good enough? Occasionally an undefined indigenous term is used that is not in the glossary, i.e., mushahra on page 133, and the interested reader is required to find it in the index and then look up its first usage, which in this case is still not very helpful.

Robert Lawless

Wichita State University

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