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subordinate discourse: women, weaving, and gender relations in North Africa
Author(s) -
MESSICK BRINKLEY
Publication year - 1987
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1525/ae.1987.14.2.02a00020
Subject(s) - ideology , gender studies , weaving , sociology , ethnography , politics , public discourse , anthropology , political science , law , zoology , biology
The discourse of women's domestic weaving in North Africa embeds a distinctively female worldview. Ethnography concerning one Moroccan text of this discourse is cross‐referenced with versions documented across the region. The reconstruction of the historically specific discourse of North African women is followed by an account of the political economy of its dissolution. In hierarchical societies, cultural accounts tap shared, public representations of gender relations, articulations of the dominant ideology. A subordinate discourse, characterized by its coexistence with such a dominant ideology and by its nonpublic, silent quality, can be interpreted using an initial structuralist step. [ideology, gender, cultural theory, North Africa]