Bargaining with the devil: States and intimate life
Abstract
Since the 1980s, an explosion in state, international, and nongovernmental campaigns
and programs propose to increase women's rights and protections in Arab countries.
Women and women's rights activists often invite and appeal to male-dominated states
to regulate, intervene, or change the rules in sexual and family life in order to
address a range of problems and challenges, including lack of economic and other resources,
political and citizenship exclusions, or intimate violence. What are the implications
of relying on states as the main arbiters of rights and protections This is a longstanding
feminist question whose answer hinges on underlying assumptions and theories about
states and governance. Reliance on states as the primary sources of protection and
support in intimate life has largely worked to rearticulate gendered, economic, and
other inequitable power relations, bolster states, reconstitute state authority over
intimate domains, and limit possibilities for gendered, sexual, and kin subjectivities
and affinities. This dynamic may be metaphorically described as a "devil's bargain"
since state-delivered rights and protections in these realms are so often attached
to important restrictions and foreclosures. The article conceptually and theoretically
expands on my research on family law projects in Egypt and the United Arab Emirates
in Consuming Desires: Family Crisis and the State in the Middle East (Stanford University
Press, 2011). Its title is inspired by Deniz Kandiyoti's influential article, "Bargaining
with Patriarchy" (Gender & Society, 1988), which I re-engage for analytical purposes.
© 2014 Journal of Middle East Women's Studies.
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/19491Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1353/jmw.2014.0019Publication Info
Hasso, FS (2014). Bargaining with the devil: States and intimate life. Journal of Middle East Women's Studies, 10(2). pp. 107-134. 10.1353/jmw.2014.0019. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/19491.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Frances Susan Hasso
Professor of Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies
I am a Professor in the Program in Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies at Duke
University with secondary appointments in the Department of History and Department
of Sociology. I taught in and directed the International Comparative Studies Program
at Duke from 2010-2015 and was a member of the Oberlin College faculty from 2000-2010.
I am Editor Emerita (2015-2018) of the Journal of Middle East Women's Studies

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