Farha Ghannam

Hania Sholkamy

Four anthropologists argue the relevance of bodily experiences and conditions for the understanding of social processes in Egypt today. Based on current ethnography that describes beliefs and practices concerning spiritual health, physical beauty, infertility, and physical health, the authors engage with the creation of identity in both urban and rural Egyptian settings. Each study attempts to transcend the limitations of health and ill-health as simple physical experiences and to make explicit the social and political significance of such conditions and processes. Throughout the studies, Egyptian citizens express their locations, cultures, identity, and beliefs through their enactment of physical conditions and through their many quests for therapies. The consideration of available medical resources and the strategic investments undertaken to utilize them provide ample commentary on the social situation of individuals and the changing dynamics of Egyptian society. The focus of this volume is on health and beauty, but its contribution lies firmly within the tradition of modern social analysis and critique. Contributors: Farha Ghannam, Montasser M. Kamal, Heba El-Kholy, Hania Sholkamy.

Health and Identity in Egypt

Simon Szreter

A. Dharmalingam

Throughout its history as a social science, demography has been associated with an exclusively quantitative orientation for studying social problems. As a result, demographers tend to analyse population issues scientifically through sets of fixed social categories that are divorced from dynamic relationships and local contexts and processes. This volume questions these fixed categories in two ways. First, it examines the historical and political circumstances in which such categories had their provenance, and, second, it reassesses their uncritical applications over space and time in a diverse range of empirical case studies, encouraging throughout a constructive interdisciplinary dialogue involving anthropologists, demographers, historians, and sociologists. This volume seeks to examine the political complexities that lie at the heart of population studies by focusing on category formation, category use, and category critique. It shows that this takes the form of a dialectic between the needs for clarity of scientific and administrative analysis and the recalcitrant diversity of the social contexts and human processes that generate population change. The critical reflections of each chapter are enriched by meticulous ethnographic fieldwork and historical research drawn from every continent. This volume, therefore, exemplifies a new methodology for research in population studies, one that does not simply accept and re-use the established categories of population science but seeks critically and reflexively to explore, test, and re-evaluate their meanings in diverse contexts. It shows that for demography to realise its full potential it must urgently re-examine and contextualize the social categories used today in population research.

Anthropological and Historical Studies in Critical Demography

Categories and Contexts

Reproductive Health Working Group

Population Council. Regional Office for West Asia and North Africa

This monograph examines the health perceptions of women living in the Middle East in order to 1) identify key theoretical concepts that facilitate incorporation of women's health perceptions into discourses on health and ill-health; 2) illustrate the relevance of understanding women's health perceptions to understanding their health and health-seeking behavior; 3) emphasize the relevance of women's health perceptions to the work of medical and social scientists; and 4) indicate how health and ill-health relates to women's self-perceptions and ideals. After an introduction, section 2 of the paper explains why women's health perceptions are important. The third section reviews the theoretical literature in the field of medical anthropology to develop the key concepts. Next, these concepts are applied to a consideration of major ethnographic works dealing with women's health issues in the region (maternal mortality, "frustrated" fertility and infertility, gynecological morbidities, somatization, and spirit possession as well as poverty, violence, and other non-health indicators of health). The fifth section discusses the relevance of women's "good health" to health perceptions with a look at female genital mutilation and menarche, marriage and fertility, natural child birth, sexual activity, and menopause. The concluding section shows how an understanding of women's health perceptions can lead to improvement in health services for women and to a better understanding of women's health issues.

Hania Sholkamy

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