We Share Walls: Language, Land, and Gender in Berber Morocco

We Share Walls: Language, Land, and Gender in Berber Morocco explores how political economic shifts over the last century have reshaped the language practices and ideologies of people in the plains and mountains of rural southwestern Morocco. Through an entrenched moral code that favors male emigration, women have come to personify the rugged homeland and embody its native language – Tashelhit. They create frameworks in which knowledge of rural land, people, and expressive culture is positively valued. In contrast, national narratives centered on Arab identity marginalize Berbers yet immortalize Berber women as remnants of an idealized past.
Through close analysis of verbal and song–texted forms, We Share Walls is a richly textured ethnography of anxiety and temerity among an overlooked Muslim group. Hoffman documents language choices and consequences in public and private contexts, providing insight into the everyday strategies Moroccan Berbers use to accommodate themselves to an Arabic–speaking society while retaining their own distinctive identity. With its fascinating semiotic and gender issues simmering beneath the surface, this engaging book will be of interest to scholars and students of anthropology, performance studies, sociolinguistics, and gender studies.

Spis treści:
List of Figures, Tables and Transcripts.
Series Preface.
Acknowledgments.
Note on Transcription and Transliteration.
Part I: Prelude:.
1. Introduction: Staying Put.
2. On Fieldwork Methods and Movements: ′Song is Good Speech′.
Part II: Dissonance: Gender:.
3. The Gender of Authenticity.
Part III: Consonance: Homeland:.
4. Building the Homeland: Labor, Roads, Emigration.
5. Voicing the Homeland: Objectification, Order, Displacement.
Part IV: Antiphony: Periphery:.
6. Transformation in the Sous Valley.
7. Ishelhin into Arabs? Ethnolinguistic Differentiatin g Practices in the Periphery.
Part V: Resonance:.
8. Mediating the Countryside: Purists and Pundits on Tashelhit Radio.
9. Conclusion.
Notes.
References.
Index

Nota biograficzna:
Katherine E. Hoffman is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Northwestern University. Her focus is on linguistic and sociocultural anthropology, ethnicity, indigenous people, and endangered languages. She has published articles in a range of journals, including American Ethnologist, Ethnomusicology, and the Journal of North African Studies.

Okładka tylna:
We Share Walls: Language, Land, and Gender in Berber Morocco explores how political economic shifts over the last century have reshaped the language practices and ideologies of people in the plains and mountains of rural southwestern Morocco. Through an entrenched moral code that favors male emigration, women have come to personify the rugged homeland and embody its native language – Tashelhit. They create frameworks in which knowledge of rural land, people, and expressive culture is positively valued. In contrast, national narratives centered on Arab identity marginalize Berbers yet immortalize Berber women as remnants of an idealized past.
Through close analysis of verbal and song–texted forms, We Share Walls is a richly textured ethnography of anxiety and temerity among an overlooked Muslim group. Hoffman documents language choices and consequences in public and private contexts, providing insight into the everyday strategies Moroccan Berbers use to accommodate themselves to an Arabic–speaking society while retaining their own distinctive identity. With its fascinating semiotic and gender issues simmering beneath the surface, this engaging book will be of interest to scholars and students of anthropology, performance studies, sociolinguistics, and gender studies.