Okay. Thank you for inviting me. Marilyn after all these years. It's great to see you again. And also, if I may, for this topic and for this series, it's not normally my topic at all, but I, I was glad I had. Basically, I was. Forced to do this. So, of course, I'm writing a book, A History of the Middle East. But through this perspective of citizenship, it's not a common topic.
Usually when you look at the Middle East, actually women's studies, there's a lot of much more than a normal political science. So I discovered So that's really interesting to see them, that citizenship is much more regarded as an important topic for citizenship in the Middle East. And it gives sort of a different perspective on the whole development of citizenship. So what I'll do is try to explain what citizenship is.
I was this morning standing in a row for my train and someone working for Amnesty International, and I asked them, what about citizenship? Do you do anything with it? Only human rights. And you said citizenship. Well, everybody has a passport. So, so many people think it's only it's a passport, but it's, of course, much more. And that's what I tried to explain and also in different books on women. So why is citizenship important?
So if you look at it as a much more broader thing than a passport or can you see it, it's identity. It determines who is excluded. Who is excluded. It's a bundle of rights, civil, political, social rights. But it's also an attitude and habits and practices. That's also important to remember because some people focus only on rights and other people focus on practices. And the most famous one, of course, Saba mahmood, who focussed mostly on practices and does not look at rights.
But she look at every researcher who looks at a different aspect of citizenship. The problem is, is when does it start? Where does it end? How important is it? I think it is important because it also if you look at the contemporary movement, most of it it's about citizenship.
Even though the contemporary uprisings in the Sudan, for instance, or in Iraq in 2019 or in Lebanon, you see it's not about nationalism especially, but it's about citizenship and common ideas of shared values, shared rights, inter sectarian dialogues. Or in Iraq, for instance, the movement with Muqtada al Sadr. And the comment as recently goes back to a previous period where Iraqi first was the most important slogan in the 1950s and forties and etcetera.
So it is an important element, and especially if you look back in history also in this case of women's movement. So it explains partly social movements and uprisings. At the moment I think the Arab Spring is on citizenship and I think it's also important it makes it possible to make broader comparisons not only between different countries in the Middle East and different movements, but also between the Middle East and Europe, because in Holland, the citizenship is a very big thing.
Refugees have to have a whole course how to become Dutch citizens. But it's more interesting, actually, to compare, for instance, Syrians who come in to Holland and to give a kind of parallel development of what citizenship means in Holland in history wise, and how it developed in Syria. And then you can have a more open dialogue, the differences and commonalities.
So this is what I would call important. The main slogan of the Arab Spring, of course, is bread, freedom and justice, which is about citizenship. I wouldn't know what it would be otherwise. And all the different movements that you have had over the past eight years after the Arab Spring, for instance, in Morocco, Sudan, in Iraq, as I mentioned, and Algeria.
So what I will do in this lecture is to give the definition of citizenship, citizenship and gender studies to show what happens in different books that I have read, the idea of social contract, which I work with, and then give you different examples of different social contracts. For instance, the colonial Pact, which I used a friendly social contract of the 1930s and forties, the populist authoritarian pacts of the 1950s and sixties. And the alternative to the social contract.
So all these social contracts have a different idea of what citizenship is, and it also allows for certain forms of citizenship. So you don't have. All citizenship. Even in Europe, you don't have that. So it's also interesting to see that you have a graded citizenship. So it depends on the situation, whether it is so what it is citizenship. So it's on a collective level and on the individual level.
So it's partly an individualisation and you a sense of personhood, self-discipline, nation, new sense of collectivity, a new sense of responsibility, especially in the 19th century, when the state starts to become the modern state starts to become more important and new ideas. If you look at a modern ideal of citizenship, of what the common good is, of course it an older ideal, what the common good is. But you see that in the modern history it all changes.
And all these different concepts that you have from Islamic history also starts to change, as Marylyn also shows in her book on Sign Up for Wealth. So also rights and entitlements and acceptation. That's the last thing which I think is an important. So it's not just ideas or rights, but it's also a way of an attitude of comportment in, of people in the world and how they act. So you have different types of citizenship. One is from above.
The state is an important source of citizenship because it's not because of giving people rights, but of giving controlling people, having greater control over resources, economic production, etc., and reproduction. So it tries to control people. So you see that in the 19th century, a state interferes much more directly into the personal lives of people in contrast to 18th century or earlier. So there's a real bureaucratic, bureaucratic state which starts to operate on people.
But on the other hand, you have a citizenship from below. And I think that's important because in most post structuralist analysis, it's mostly the state that operates and the whole idea of agency is mostly gone.
So that's what I think also is important in citizenship studies, that you really look outside agency and see how people also fight back against the state partly and try to form new communities outside of the state or separate from the state or or against the state, and making claims of different rights and the acts of citizenship. So collective performances, protest, solidarity, etc. in the book by an organism, I don't know if you know it acts of citizenship, which is an important book.
So you don't have a full, but you have a graded citizenship. So it's gradually and partially and never anywhere, neither in Europe or in the Middle East, a full citizenship. So so they wax and they wait. So there it's not a constant element. The most famous book by Marshall, which he wrote in the 1950s, which I'll show you in a moment, he has a kind of linear idea that citizenship with this progressive photo that it accumulates in the real and as full citizens.
That was his idea of how the welfare state would produce justice and, of course, gender citizenship. So what we have here in this picture. So you have the state, you have patriarchy. I'm not going to go into that, but we'll come to that later. You have different ideologies on what citizenship is, and you have citizens and social movements which try to determine and fight for their rights or for their autonomy and build up a culture of citizenship among themselves.
So what I think is important here to to make a distinction between nationalism, Islamism and citizenship was mostly they're both they're conflated. Usually they don't people don't make distinctions between these different elements. I think it is important to look at these separately because I think citizenship is actually more important than many of these other elements.
At least it's important to look at that issue, which is not always falls under either Islamism or nationalism, the most important ideologies. So let's just look at citizenship in gender studies. So the formation of citizenship. And I hope I don't offend Maryland. Oh, go ahead. I'm going to fit in her massive book and a very. Rich book in just one slide as you've probably read it. It's a great book and but very difficult to put in this scheme.
So the focus is on the rise of feminism, women's subject hood and participation and women's literature and gradual processes of creating censorship through transformation, of terminology of conduct and sense of self. I will look at it more deeply later on. Then you have the right approach. And this is, I think also these are important publications by Elizabeth Thompson on Syria and Salma Bachmann on Egypt and Laura Beer, the revolutionary womanhood. Also, I don't know if anybody knows.
It's a great book. I really like that. It's because it's one of the few books also on as far as I know, on the Nutters. Yeah. Yeah. They state state feminism. So here the focus on these rights is that it's partly it takes the ideas of Marshall, which were developed in Europe and the focus is on social, economic and political rights. But these are already drawn out rights with a clear definitions, but it doesn't have very much on discursive fields of citizenship.
It doesn't show how it really develops and certainly doesn't do anything on the kind of performative citizenship which you see in England isn't so book. They have political post-colonial theory. The most important or most famous, I think it's line arguments women and children as long. But I feel here you don't have to really have much agency.
Not to mention citizenship doesn't occur at all in her books and think it's like customer mean or harm have become tools of imperialism, etc. is that you have the really legalistic approach of women's rights. I wonder if you would agree with this, but I'm happy to hear later on. And these are of course, so the use of your book, Gender and Citizenship in the Middle East. Mona Russell There must be certainly more. And Cynthia Nelson's book on Doria Shafik.
So here you have gender and citizenship and especially on law. Islamic law is important, especially so it goes books as being very influential, I think, on especially on courts laws, polygamy, age of marriage, marriages, etc., and the whole idea of patriarchy and kinship working on these elements. And the state is very prominently in existence in her works. Mostly colonialism is neglected and counter movements are not.
Finally, you have here Women and nationalism, which is Beth Barron's book, which is also famous, both of these books. But again, if you look at her book, it's only focus. It mostly focuses on nationalism. So here you have a complete that citizenship and nationals are completely fall together and there's nothing about citizenship at all. She does have parts, of course, on women's rights, but not in relation to citizenship.
I want to ask you to contribute to an edited volume I did on Brakhage, and she had no idea what citizenship was actually. But she does a lot of other things, of course, and these books are great. So education work, of course. And then finally you have performative citizenship, which is a type of Mahmood's book, which probably everybody knows and is probably one of the most problematic books as far as I'm concerned. So the focus is on creation of Islamic feminist subject.
It doesn't mention it, but it analyses basically, I think, the alternative Islamist Citizenship project. So I will go into that a little bit further on. So let's just look at social contracts. So now we've had citizenship and the thing that goes with it is basically a social contract, but that's the broader framework where citizenship falls into.
So you have the classic idea of a social contract which actually starts from Mohammed, and it's based on the pact of Oman with with Christians and of course, between Muslims based on the Koran and Hadith, etc. I won't go into all of this. Important is, I think, the colonial pact. But that's a period that's crucial. Mostly it's seen as the nationalist era of the rise of nationalist movements in the Middle East.
Whilst in Egypt, different political parties in in Syria, the national bloc, etc., etc. And then of course the populist authoritarian pack, the fall of the authoritarian contract, the Islamists alternative and other alternative social contracts which are now trying to be created through these different movements and what they think should be the social contract at the moment, whether it's in Iraq or Sudan or as people think, mostly authoritarian groups or dictators, etc.
But at the same time, different movements against this authoritarianism and trying to figure out alternatives are the Legion mukoma in Sudan, the different movements in Iraq which were being suppressed, etc. So. Let's just go back and see how citizenship and social contracts fit into each other and then look at the colonial pact.
One of the things I've tried to find out in this book, and I stopped looking at calling it the Nationalists, I think Cleveland calls it the struggle for independence or something. In his famous book on a history of the Middle East. But I think it's much more still. Of course, he mentions that colonialism still is important, but I think it's much more important than he thinks or when he wrote the book in 75 or something.
So just to briefly mentioned that colonial pact, what is it, an alliance of notables, acceptance of foreign influence on the economy, education, state policies, support of the creation of independent religious institutions? How colonialism forms these different religious institutions.
The whole idea of divide and rule and the continuation of the personal statute, whether it's Islamic or Christian, and the support of conservative religious institutions, political institutions, and the continuity of patriarchy and paternalism. Thompson, in her book on Syria, calls it the pattern with the pact. So basically, she grabs the two together and citizenship and the social pact in French mandate period in Syria and calls it the patron loss pact.
How the the French mandate administration supported the existing patriarchal structures in in Syria. But this is a something that you see elsewhere as well. And that's why it's interesting to look at women's history, because there you can see how colonialism operates on these different issues.
So looking at at Marilyn's book, just to give a few ideas, what I think is fascinating is this whole idea of how the idea of rights is being transformed from a more based idea, based on a practice based on the Sharia to a more modern idea of rights. So that's why her book is rich in especially evolving these kind of ideas. So also the ideas of feminism, of course, the social participation, the rights of women and the emergence of individuals.
I mean, all the different books, the whole other culture which is being created at the time, which also has its impact on what citizens are supposed to do, what kind of obligations they have, what kind of duties they have through the nation and to the community as a whole. And here you have political ethics and gender justice and how they are intertwined in them. So it also looks at if you look at it, it fits into the whole not the idea of the second half of the 19th century.
And if you look at it through the lens of citizenship, basically, if you look at read books by Marwa Shukri, what is reading Darwin, it is basically about citizenship. If you look at the seven core ideas which arise from these books on the knocked off, the whole idea of rationality, freedom, reform, virtue, control, passions and etc., equality of political rights. This is of course, a parody almost of what's what is being done.
But if you look at these these different researches, it does come up with an idea of citizenship more actually than nationalism, because much of what what is being analysed doesn't really fall under nationalism but is a much broader category because it's on rights, other forms of identity, not necessarily nationalism, etc. So if you look at other elements as well, and this looking at bed barons,
you see that also what she analyses the whole idea of mother as, as a nation in Egypt, it doesn't really directly have a bearing on, on citizenship, but you can look at it from that perspective, especially this whole idea of women should be virtuous, modest, exemplary, compassionate of thought. So this would be the ideal of what a woman's citizen would be in this period, although it's not based on equal rights.
If you look at it, then you have all this whole row of different rights which are being developed at a time. I won't go into all of this. So political participation is one of them. But there are much more. So the right to education, equal education. So the same curriculum as boys. Higher access to higher education.
These were all elements where women were fighting for the right to work and to receive not just to work, but also receive a salary, etc. But if you look also at acts of citizenship, you see the right to organise and to organise saloons, publish in journals, organise charity societies, etc. and all these organised boycotts, etc. In the end, however, if you look at how meagre the results are in the 1930s and why there's a counter movement at that point,
then you see what I would call the colonial pact, which is highly restrictive. In the end what is possible and the patriarchal system which is being upheld and supported of course is in Egypt.
This is highly complicated because the British were not there directly, but indirectly supporting the monarchy, which was a conservative element, and the Wafd eventually submitting through this system by also signing these agreements with the British on their military presence, etc., a police presence and cultural presence in a way. So what I think is important in this whole development of citizenship is especially crucial that 1937 50.
This, I think, is is a period where you can see that citizenship was really developed in the Middle Ages by all kinds of different movements, and that you have a full fledged idea of what citizenship could have been if the military had not stepped in in the end and turned it into an authoritarian idea of what citizenship is and state citizenship and state feminism in the end.
But it's interesting to look also at the history of this. This whole idea of citizenship and its introduction to the Middle East, because there is a link between actually Britain and also France directly ideologically in the person of Thomas Marshall. Here you have him and his book, Citizenship and Social Class. So what was important in 1930 is this whole idea of poverty, sickness. That was the reform. Social reform was the main element at the time. So it was not identity, It was not even Islam.
What people would think, although Muslim Brotherhood was important, not in other countries, but it was mostly social reform. And this is where feminism and women's movement would fit into in this idea of of restructuring Middle Eastern societies and looking at social rights and this high idea of shared common and equal citizenship also between whether you're Shia or Sunni or Christian or Muslim or whatever, you have a shared idea of what citizenship in this period is.
And it's against the notables and the aristocracy and the monarchies, of course, in the time. But this is, I think, a period of optimism. And also, if you look at other movements which come later on, even the Arab Spring, you see that they often look back at this earlier period as a period of hope and try to take elements from this earlier period. So this is just one figure. Of course, it was a general idea.
It was not based on Marshall's idea, but he was influential because he in Europe and especially in Britain, and of course, he was influential in establishing the welfare state and of Labour in the 1940s and fifties. So if you look at the genealogy in the Middle East, you have Mohammad Hadid and his daughter who built or designed the library here. He was important. They all studied in London and came out with their with his ideas when he went to Iraq and but also the Egyptian rushes library.
But also in France, you have the same elements through a boogie board at that period, but you have also on it an Islamic version and all these ideas of socialism, social justice in Islam and Muhammad crossover to create a new idea of Islamic citizenship. And actually it was not opposed to a secular or was opposed to secular state. But wasn't that different from what was happening in secular movements at the time and their ideas? So there was an exchange also in these in this period of what?
And you see that also in figure like Dorian Sheffield. But there must be more an even more representative of this whole trend and especially on the left. So here you see, I like there because she's not part of the older aristocratic class, but she was linked to these. But she did try to develop her own course. So here you have a whole range of developments she had from the 1930s. And her main idea, of course, is on feminism.
A country cannot be free if its women are not. The only solution was to build up a feminist movement to demand full political rights for women. And that's where she came into conflict with Nasser in the end went on hunger strike, etc.
But you see a kind of ambiguity. She's kind of a transitional figure as far as I think, and especially if you look at the role of citizenship, especially this idea to raise the social and cultural level of Egyptian women and prepare them for the worthy cause where the use of their rights is worthiness is, of course, is an older element and not that you immediately have equal rights.
You have to earn these rights in a way to become educated and become a citizen before you can really have these rights, as it were. So that's a different you have a more egalitarian idea in with the leftist. So if you look here today, you see what happened in the end. If you look at the Middle Eastern history, of course, this optimistic period did not work out because eventually the state took over and the military took over in all these revolutions and they became authoritarian.
So what happened to all these different rights in the new welfare state? And that this is the classic exchange of rights. So you have the political rights that the the these all these movements in the 1930s and forties demanded were exchanged for social and economic rights, which people got new housing, jobs, etc., etc., and the whole idea of social engineering.
So it was from above. So you see earlier, as we saw that the state takes over and creates citizens and here you see that the state takes over, but using social reform and social rights to give people their their demands, although they don't get it as right as it were. So that's the different thing. And at the same time, you see that the women and women's movements are also subjected to this state and they are subordinated to authoritarianism.
The women do get all these different so the right to have opportunity for work in the public sector, regulation of working hours for women employees, the right to vote, the right to run for public office. But what is the the purpose of the right to vote if the state determines exactly what's being done? And you don't really have an opportunity to interfere with the whole process. Sort of all these positive effects in the end are limited.
So protective legislation for women, expansion of free education and expansion for welfare services, as Bier writes in her book. But the negative effects of, of course, state domination and of independent feminism and in the end of different publications. So there's only one state feminist publication which remains what you see.
Before it was a huge amount of different publications from all kinds of different feminist writers who had established all kinds of different journals from left wing to moderate to Islamist, etc. So in the end, only one of these remained. So let's look at the last example. This is what we would what I would call this and this performative feminist citizenship in an attempt to create an alternative Islamist social contract. Most of you probably know about Mahmud's book. So what does she do?
She she writes about ethics of self-mastery. Just to get some quotes from her book and see if this is what I think it's one important element that you of of citizenship, especially this this acts of citizenship. She doesn't mention it in her book. She she mentions citizenship four times in her book. It's interesting to see that she does mention it in relation to the Arab Spring. So she does recognise that the uprisings are about rights, political rights and social rights.
But I wonder how you would link that to her own book, which she does completely something different in her book. So let's look at her. It's mostly a kind of self-deception. In that Islamist movements women impose upon themselves and not being subjected to, although they accept the patriarchy. She does not see it as something negative, but something creative because it's done by themselves.
So organising daily conduct, practicalities of daily living, educating ordinary Muslims and virtue their ethical capacities. So they create a whole new ethical dimension through all these practices of praying, meeting, studying Koran instead of the emphasis on agency, everyday resistance, etc. And of course, the last one embodied actions. So this whole role of these kind of analysis practices of virtue, techniques of the self. So it's self-mastery over one's passions and leading an ethical life.
So. And the end, of course, is creation of a virtuous society. So what is it? The politics of piety. It's in a sense, apolitical and an ethical practice. It's no resistance against the state. It's not emancipatory in the classical sense of individual liberation, and it accepts patriarchy as a hierarchy. But it does not participate in electoral politics, claiming rights, using judicial system to improve the situation of women.
So here you have what she mentions about citizenship, although I think it is about citizenship, but she only mentions it for time. So what she says about the Arab uprising and feminism or in general for civil and political rights under what people demand for civil and political rights under a democratic system committed to some degree of economic justice. So this is the classical analysis you have of citizens. But she doesn't lead to this kind of conclusion from her book.
This is in our preface, and she mentions other times modern Muslim citizens. So she does connect citizenship and Islam in some ways. Okay. So what she does is to create an alternative concept of citizenship as a liberal in opposition to a liberal secularism. And it's an alternative idea of citizenship formation based on piety. But if you look at at the north up and also all these other feminist or women's movements, you see much of actually the same kind of elements coming back.
So education, virtue, ethics, dialogue, etc., which you see already from the 19th century, which also Marilynne analyses and other people analyses. When you look at the whole debate on marriages and how marriage is supposed to have a modern form, etc., then you see also many of these elements coming back. So to conclude, eventually, looking back at all these different moments, what can we see? If you look at all these different books on women's movements, women's rights, etc.?
And if you look in connection with citizenship, I think it's a it's an interesting way to to look at the Middle East history and especially in this case on women, because then you see that citizenship is a kind of element which does go through this whole history and these different movements as kind of a red line which connects these different movements. So even Saba Mahmood's attempt to do something completely different.
If you look at it in perspective from citizenship, it's not really that it is different, but it is not completely contradictory with other elements is just another way of trying to create a new kind of community with a new kind of citizenship. But this is an element that you see throughout all of these different books. So it highlights citizenship, highlights the dimensions of rights, inclusion, exclusion, different forms of socialisation and cultural production.
And it's I think it's more fundamental than nationalism or Islamism, because these are mostly ideologies, but they contain citizenship within them. So it's important to eventually to use the concept to be able to understand them.
And I think the women's movement highlights some of these elements, especially more actually than other movements, because they're so much focussed on rights and practices, etc. So you get a completely different idea of what citizenship is and particularly the problematic dimensions of citizenship in the Middle East and all the kinds of different contentious elements within it.
So what you see actually, if you look at it from this perspective, that a lot of this history is basically on the struggle of defining what citizenship is. So Islamist movements would have a different way of defining what citizenship is, although they might not recognise it as something that is called citizenship. And even if you look at, for instance, in Egypt at the moment at Sisi, he does have a concept of citizenship. So you see it coming back and all the different elements.
Of course, it's a completely authoritarian idea of what this is about was based on stability, not political rights, of course. And the idea of that you would without stability, you would not have economic progress, etc. And it's, of course, based completely on the state of the state as the kind of guaranteed to identity, etc. So I'll leave that. When. This is very inclusive and comprehensive. There's a ton to discuss. Mary, thank you very much.
And thank you all for that very rich paper. And yeah, just to say, it's it's a great pleasure to have you all here. We've we first met when we were both students in Cairo, so that is a long time ago. So really, really good to have you here. I'm just going to I'll try to be really brief and, you know, sort of starting off with what you say at the end, women's movements highlight essential aspects of citizenship. And that certainly, I think, you know, you've demonstrated that.
And that's that's very important. And you've also shown how it was differently positioned at different historical conjuncture as there are shifting relationships between citizens and political authorities and all these things.
So, you know, it's I agree with you that citizenship is a really good way to sort of think about all these things, and also that it's such a good comparative mode to think about Middle Eastern societies, other societies, and to get away from the essentialism that so often, you know, is a problem and still a problem in the study of the region. But what I want to do is maybe pull out what you also called some of the more problematic aspects of citizenship.
And you certainly mentioned these, but I want to maybe dwell on them a little bit more. So you see women's movements highlight essential aspects of citizenship. And to that, I would also add the concept and practices of citizenship highlight essential and cross societal aspects of patriarchal, social and familiar organisations. And you certainly certainly recognise that. And I think that this is one way in which we also really need to think about citizenship.
What does it tell us about enduring issues and problems? And especially the issue of gendered citizenship is something where women and men are assigned differential roles and differential. There are different expectations in terms of what they do, which is in tension with the constitutions of certain states that say, you know, all citizens are equal before the law. But in fact, they they really aren't.
And certainly restrictions on women's full citizenship have often been ignored or resisted in the name of cultural specificity as well, that this is something that, you know, this our culture is special in this way and we can't make changes. So I think that all of these things come into the question, the question of of citizenship.
So I went back to what I think is a groundbreaking book, Ruth Lister's book, Citizenship Feminist Perspectives, which first came out in the late 1990s, and then there was a revised edition and she begins with an observation and I quote, Citizenship is an ostensibly gender neutral concept that in fact is deeply gendered. A universalist idea that masks gendered and often raised particularity.
And of course, this is something that feminists have recognised since, you know, go back to Olympe Digger's French Revolution. Mary Wollstonecraft Of course. And in her conclusion, Lister says citizenship provides an invaluable strategic theoretical concept for the analysis of women's subordination and a potentially powerful political weapon in the struggle against it.
And so I think maybe that's even though I don't focus specifically on the term citizenship in my book, that's something I'm really trying to struggle with and and work through. And I guess I just want to mention several areas where I see this and ask you to maybe comment a little bit on them. And the first is the whole question of, you know, what do you do in terms of citizenship when power is hierarchical rather than generative?
In other words, when you've got a hierarchical power structure in society, and this partly can result in group based or kinship based citizenship, where individuals and particularly women in this case are disadvantaged. How do you maybe from the perspective of citizenship studies, how can we think about hierarchical power relationships and maybe try to work out ways that that those can be resisted or that have been resisted in the past? If we're thinking historically?
So in these various social contracts that you outlined, where does the power come in and how does that affect the way citizen ship works? And, you know, for instance, and I think one could look at this in each period, the continuing centrality of patriarchal authority in the family. So it's not just the state, but it's the family. And that's about law, personal status, law, but it's also about access to resources and and how then.
Women and and subordinated men can actually work their citizenship in ways that that help them. And certainly one way that we see that centrality of patriarchal authority in many, many societies, Muslim majority societies, is like the concept of will they you know, the concept of male guardianship of a female. So they're right. There is a way in which citizenship is skewed towards men.
And, you know, I think my my heroines in info is I think she recognised very much that oppression begins in the family. And Lister has a lot to say about this, not with regards to the Middle East, but the whole question of public and private and how defining a realm called the private realm allows this patriarchal power to continue by having a space that is supposedly away from politics and away from public scrutiny, and where that can be a space of oppression as well as of affirmation.
And you mentioned that the question of terminology and this to me also intersects with the question of power, because who has the right to define the terminology and who has the right to make sure that certain meanings work?
So, for instance, around the question of rights and yeah, I've been fascinated by how the term Huck and how cloak how this sort of shifts in the late 19th century from being something that means with regards to women, something that means, you know, the Xhosa, the what is due to a woman in marriage. So what, by getting married? What can she expect as her as her rights?
But then it becomes more general and it becomes sort of Huck and Mara, the right of the woman, and then it becomes a whole culture of women's rights. But throughout this and then you also have this fascinating term of Huck and muscles of rights that have been stripped away, showing up in the press in the 19th century. But the thing is, there's still an ambiguity around that because people mean different things by rights.
So you have this term rights, but different people mean it in different ways. So you have debates over freedom, you know, career. So what kind of right does a woman have to hurry and what does that mean? So I think that question of who has the power and the ability to define these terms is a really important one for citizenship studies. And I'd be interested in hearing you say a bit more about this.
And along with that, this question of you pointed to duration of field and she talks about worthiness, rights and worthiness. And this seems to me another iteration of the whole question of rights and duties, which is, I think, pretty ubiquitous in citizenship. I mean, you get that list of brings up, for instance, the the the example of New Labour and the way they talked about, you know, the you have to fulfil your responsibilities before you can really deserve rights.
So I think this is another way in which, you know, you have obligations or duties and you have rights and who is going to define what those are and how they are are gendered. And one thing that I notice when I'm reading newspapers, Arabic newspapers from the 1890s and a bit later constantly women are, you know, this is always paired, it's like ad hoc will worship right and duty. And it's somehow paired a lot more for women than it is for men in public discourse.
And I think that's an interesting thing that that needs to be taken on board. And it seems, if anything, it's the wedge of that is emphasised more than the rights. And again, these terms are malleable in the sense that people are assigning different definitions, you know, to So duties are mostly assumed to be women in the home. But some feminists I think are trying to expand that. But again, who's to, who's who's the one who who actually has the ability to define that?
And Lister also notes that, you know, duties imply also that one has the ability to fulfil them. So you have to have the resources that allow you to fulfil those rights. But then what happens if the duty kind of outweighs the rights? And again, I think about the discourse on girls education at the turn of the century where it was all about family duty, you know, the, the maternal is discourse that the mother has to be educated in order to to be a good citizen.
And I actually think the maternal ism, I think is a direct I think there is a direct relationship. It's one way that women are claiming. Citizenship is through the maternal role. But then what happens if education for girls is defined instrumentally as this is so that girls can become good mothers? What about what happens to girls right to self-realisation and to go further in studies and so forth?
So again, I think all of this actually comes into that nexus of kind of authority and the power to to define, you know, the FDA in the 1930s. I found that really interesting that you saw that as a period of maybe more freedom. And I wonder if you could say a bit more in terms of gender, because to me, the FDA, it's a very masculine concept. You know, it's it's really. And when they talk about equal rights, do they really mean equal rights for everybody?
Where do they place women in this? And just finally, one thing, when you talk about the NATA. With regards to Sabah Mahmood's, emphasis on morality and ethics, and I agree, the terms are really they really echo. But I think the difference is I see the difference as being that in the NATA there is a recognition that these had to become public issues and they they had to be they had to be determined and fought over in the public sphere, which I don't really see so much in Mahmud's paper.
So sorry. I hope that makes it make some sense. Just a few kind of thoughts. No, thank you very much. If I could. I think if I could. I know it's quite possible, but if you can answer briefly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. Yes. I'm glad you brought up all these issues. And then it's good. Of course, if you look at it from a different perspective, because I'm just focusing on citizenship that I'm trying to pull in women's issues into it.
But you're you're you're completely right. And especially on the on the issue of power, of course, that it's a determining element in all of these. That runs through the whole history every time again and again that these relations are asymmetrical. So, yeah, I agree completely with you, and especially you're also fascinating in this terminology.
That's something to really look into how that changes constantly and even now how it's being used in all these different but especially in the north, a period, it's been very extensively looked at the whole idea of shop and all these different. Mm hmm. So much.