Women in Fundamentalism

This book is interesting, timely, and readable and will appeal to a wide range of audiences and stimulate public discourse. Its systematic comparison of gender roles in three geographically and culturally separate fundamentalist communities is intrinsically interesting to any student of society. -- Conrad Kottak, University of Michigan
Maxine Margolis casts an anthropological eye on three cases of gendered fundamentalism. Although male power and the systematic control of women (their bodies, sexuality, marriage choices, and access to public space) have characterized state societies for centuries (China, India, Cultures throughout the Mediterranean), the Satmar Hasidim, the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints, and the Pushtun of Afghanistan and Pakistan persist in contemporary times. Despite their differing contexts (urban Brooklyn, small town Arizona and Utah, and rural villages in an Islamic society) the similarities are striking. Yet Margolis shows they also face irreversible changes brought by the internet, secular education, entanglements with the US legal system, and Western organizing around human rights. -- Louise Lamphere, University of New Mexico
Margolis brings an anthropologist’s eye to a question of broad and long-standing interest: what accounts for the parallels in the views and treatment of women in three apparently distinct religious communities. In this extended meditation on the underlying logics of female subordination among extremist groups, Margolis reminds us of the value of structured comparison, a forgotten art in this era of increasingly narrow specialization. -- Misha Klein, University of Oklahoma