LanguageTerm (authority = ISO 639-3:2007); (type = text)
English
Abstract (type = abstract)
This dissertation explores the role that wise women, especially Upper Egyptian female healers, played in the global development of anthropological expertise and the robust spiritual economy of healing in nineteenth and early twentieth century Egypt. Despite repeated campaigns by government officials and doctors to discredit their knowledge and outlaw their practices, wise women controlled a widespread market in occult objects that remained crucial in the everyday lives of Egyptians. The project combines Middle East history’s rich foundation of gender/women’s and social history, with insights from science and technology studies, critical race and post-colonial studies, and budding scholarship on the Islamicate occult sciences to consider how racialized constructions of the Upper Egyptian peasant woman—along with the socio-medical, spiritual, and economic worlds they inhabited—shaped the making of modern Egypt.
I recast histories of magic, medicine, markets and museums through the ideas and practices of wise women. The development of anthropological thought in interwar Egypt and abroad, I argue, hinged on the study of “superstitious” healing practices (khorafa) or “old wives medicine” (tibb al-rukka) attributed to Upper Egyptian and formerly enslaved East African healing practitioners. My study uses wise women’s amulets and talismans—collected in Egypt by anthropologists, medical officials, and private collectors—as an archival source to write the social and intellectual histories of lower-class women, formerly enslaved Africans, and Upper Egyptian migrants who left few traditional archives.
The dissertation combines analysis of material objects, namely amulets housed in European and Egyptian ethnographic collections, with traditional nineteenth and twentieth-century archival sources in Arabic and Ottoman Turkish on magic (sihr), occult sciences (al-ulum al-gariba), and medicine (tibb), to reconstruct the political and spiritual economies of healing in late Ottoman and interwar Egypt. Wise women and their amulets found themselves entangled in the “internationalization of social sciences,” not as mere objects of study or “go-betweens,” but critical producers of knowledge.
Subject (authority = RUETD)
Topic
History
Subject (authority = LCSH)
Topic
Healers -- Egypt -- History
RelatedItem (type = host)
TitleInfo
Title
Rutgers University Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Identifier (type = RULIB)
ETD
Identifier
ETD_11032
PhysicalDescription
Form (authority = gmd)
InternetMediaType
application/pdf
InternetMediaType
text/xml
Extent
1 online resource (v, 319 pages) : illustrations
Note (type = degree)
Ph.D.
Note (type = bibliography)
Includes bibliographical references
RelatedItem (type = host)
TitleInfo
Title
School of Graduate Studies Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Identifier (type = local)
rucore10001600001
Location
PhysicalLocation (authority = marcorg); (displayLabel = Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey)
I hereby grant to the Rutgers University Libraries and to my school the non-exclusive right to archive, reproduce and distribute my thesis or dissertation, in whole or in part, and/or my abstract, in whole or in part, in and from an electronic format, subject to the release date subsequently stipulated in this submittal form and approved by my school. I represent and stipulate that the thesis or dissertation and its abstract are my original work, that they do not infringe or violate any rights of others, and that I make these grants as the sole owner of the rights to my thesis or dissertation and its abstract. I represent that I have obtained written permissions, when necessary, from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis or dissertation and will supply copies of such upon request by my school. I acknowledge that RU ETD and my school will not distribute my thesis or dissertation or its abstract if, in their reasonable judgment, they believe all such rights have not been secured. I acknowledge that I retain ownership rights to the copyright of my work. I also retain the right to use all or part of this thesis or dissertation in future works, such as articles or books.