The extended case approach facilitates the knowledge of complex social phenomena because, according to Burawoy (1998: 5), it “applies reflexive science to ethnography in order to extract the general from the unique, to move from the ‘micro’ to the ‘macro’, and to connect the present to the past in anticipation of the future, all by building on
preexisting theory.” Studying Lebanese women’s rights activism in reflexive terms allows us to move from the micro level, which concentrates on the uniqueness of these women’s experiences, to the macro level, which projects general conditions applicable to similar cases among women living in Muslim, Middle Eastern or other “non-western”
societies with similar religious, familial and historical constraints. Snow and Trom (2002:
147) define core characteristics of the case study method as including: (a), the
investigation and analysis of an instance or variant of some bounded social phenomenon that (b), seeks to generate richly detailed and ‘thick’ elaboration of the phenomenon
studied through (c), the use and triangulation of multiple methods or procedures including but not limited to qualitative techniques, based on interviews, participant observation and contents analysis. In this case study, I apply an engaged rather than detached approach in investigating and analyzing Middle Eastern women’s rights activism. Through this reflexive approach, which I discuss next, I generate a thick elaboration of how activists utilize their resources provided to them by the kinship system.
1.REFLEXIVITY
This dissertation is grounded in the concept of reflexivity (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992:
16-17), and Burawoy’s extended case method model (1998). Reflexivity provides an epistemological blueprint that informed my sample selection, my collection data method and my analysis. “Reflexive science has its pay-off, enabling the exploration of broad historical patterns and macrostructure without relinquishing either ethnography or science” (Burawoy 1998: 6). Bourdieu defines reflexivity as “…the systematic exploration of the “unthought categories of thought which delimit the thinkable and predetermine the thought” (1992: 10).
The Reflexive model, according to Burawoy is “a model of science that embraces not detachment but engagement as the road to knowledge. Premised upon our own
participation in the world we study, reflexive science deploys multiple dialogues to reach explanations of empirical phenomena” (1998: 5). In the communities of Middle Eastern women upon which I focus, I place myself as a member in order to understand the
engagement of these communities, to critically explore the options that present themselves to these communities, and to evaluate the framework they use to advance their causes.
In my research, I paid attention to the effects of symbolic domination on the population I studied and on myself as well. My orienting decision to locate particular respondents and events was determined by: the field in which they were contesting; the habitus and the doxa they were either going by or revolting against; the lieu or place of the agents within the field; and, finally, the various forms of capital they held or lacked. Bourdieu’s
theoretical framework looks at “strategies and mechanisms of symbolic domination”
(1992: 51). In his opinion, societies are differentiated entities made up of a set of
intersecting, self-regulating fields. And within each field, hierarchical positions between the dominants and the dominated are continually contested. Thus, women’s organizations negotiate rights and access in various social fields and levels. The fact that the
differentiated society “is not a seamless totality integrated by systemic functions, a common culture, criss-crossing conflicts, or an overarching authority” (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992: 16-17) means that women’s organizations have choices in adopting issues targeting specific instances of “authority”, rather than framing each initiative as a struggle against the system in its totality. This, in turn, creates modular organizational strategies, in which local alliances can be formed around specific issues.
I was alert to the traps of imposing exogenous determinants of gender roles onto identifications constructed by Lebanese activists, whether these determinants derived
from international treaties or were simply dictated by hegemonic western attitudes.
Symbolic domination and exogenous determinants were detected in positioning Lebanese women’s stance on feminism and gender activism vis-à-vis Western discourses. Emerson, Fretz and Shaw (1995) underline the danger that acceding to preconceptions can result in ignoring, marginalizing, or obscuring indigenous understandings. They also point to the need to focus “not on members’ decontextualized talk but on naturally occurring, situated interaction in which local meanings are created and sustained.” For them, “writing
ethnographic fieldnotes that are sensitive to member’s meanings is primarily a matter not of asking but of inferring what people are concerned with from the specific ways in which they talk and act in a variety of natural settings” (Emerson et al. 1995: 140).
Therefore, combining reflexive and feminist methodological approaches in my research lets women’s voices, activism, and conception of rights come through in building up a broader picture of the social dynamic in which they have agency.
2.THE FEMINIST STANCE
The theme of reflexivity is carried into my understanding of the feminist stance as well.
Ramazanoğlu and Holland (2002: 119) describe feminist reflexivity as “an invitation to other voices to challenge the researcher’s knowledge claims and conceptions of power.”
In particular, I used this principle as a guide to avoid decontextualizing gender, a major methodological challenge to my project because given that different social expectations are constructed differently for men than women, my task was to capture those
expectations on the most complex level while bringing them back to the real questions posed by Middle Eastern feminist activism.
As Williams (1991a: 233) explains, “gender differences are constructed by subjecting men and women to different social expectations and environments.” However, by
“decontextualizing gender,” we understand that these expectations are not universal or normative, but they rather mean different things to different groups (Williams 1991a).
Attitudes towards their expectations and environments vary tremendously according to personal, religious and cultural convictions. I maintain that one of the most serious challenges to understanding Middle Eastern feminism is to analyze the dynamism of these gender expectations: how and when they change, who and what changes them and where does the change occur. The Lebanese feminist movement is also a heterogeneous movement —or movements— that follow different logics and ordering principles. In this dissertation, I am careful not to project or assume at any point that the women’s rights activism whom I interviewed unconditionally represent all Lebanese women.
Finally, the feminist stance equips me as a researcher with a critical consciousness that is sensitive to the constraints and limits of my “knowledge, culture and experience,” and also my “personal skills, powers of empathy and political openness to silences and exclusions” (Ramazanoğlu and Holland 2002: 119). Despite the fact that activists shared a significant part of themselves with me, they still had untold painful memories,
unfulfilled dreams and shattered hopes. I am fully aware that they held these in their hearts as they remembered conflicts in their own families and endless wars that brought them destruction and new challenges for reconstructing dreams, institutions and
campaigns.