1st Edition

The Routledge International Handbook to Veils and Veiling

Edited By Anna-Mari Almila, David Inglis Copyright 2018
    330 Pages 28 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    330 Pages 28 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    Veils and veiling are controversial topics in social and political life, generating debates across the world. The veil is enmeshed within a complex web of relations encompassing politics, religion and gender, and conflicts over the nature of power, legitimacy, belief, freedom, agency and emancipation. In recent years, the veil has become both a potent and unsettling symbol and a rallying-point for discourse and rhetoric concerning women, Islam and the nature of politics.

    Early studies in gender, doctrine and politics of veiling appeared in the 1970s following the Islamic revival and ’re-veiling’ trends that were dramatically expressed by 1979’s Iranian Islamic revolution. In the 1990s, research focussed on the development of both an ’Islamic culture industry’ and greater urban middle class consumption of ’Islamic’ garments and dress styles across the Islamic world. In the last decade academics have studied Islamic fashion and marketing, the political role of the headscarf, the veiling of other religious groups such as Jews and Christians, and secular forms of modest dress. Using work from contributors across a range of disciplinary backgrounds and locations, this book brings together these research strands to form the most comprehensive book ever conceived on this topic.

    As such, this handbook will be of interest to scholars and students of fashion, gender studies, religious studies, politics and sociology.

    List of Figures

    List of Tables

    Notes on Contributors

      1. Introduction: The Veil across the Globe in Politics, Everyday Life, and Fashion (Anna-Mari Almila)
      2. Part 1: Politics

      3. Neoliberalization and Homo Islameconomicus: The Politics of Women’s Veiling in Turkey (Yıldız Atasoy)
      4. Discourses of Veiling and the Precarity of Choice: Representations in Post-9/11 US (Tabassum F. Ruby)
      5. Wearing a Veil in the French Context of Laïcité (Anne Fornerod)
      6. 2007/8: The Winter of the Veiled Women in Israel (Tamar Elor)
      7. Veiling Narratives: Discourses of Multiculturalism, Acceptability and Citizenship in Canada (Shelina Kassam and Naheed Mustafa)
      8. Veiling and Unveiling in Central Asia: Beliefs and Practices, Tradition and Modernity (Marianne Kamp and Noor Borbieva)
      9. Part 2: From Politics to Fashion

      10. Iran’s Compulsory Hijab: From Politics and Religious Authority to Fashion Shows (Faegheh Shirazi)
      11. The Fashions and Politics of Facial Hair in Turkey: The Case of Islamic Men (Nazlı Alimen)
      12. Representing the Veil in Contemporary Australian Media: From ‘Ban the Burqa’ to ‘Hijabi’ Bloggers (Branka Prodanovic and Susie Khamis)
      13. Part 3: Fashion and Anti-Fashion

      14. Modest Fashion and Anti-Fashion (Reina Lewis)
      15. Veiling, Fashion and the (Per)formative Role of Dress in Niger (Adeline Masquelier)
      16. The ‘Discipline of the Veil’ Among Converts to Islam in France and Quebec: Framing Gender and Expressing Femininity (Géraldine Mossière)
      17. Muslim Youth Practicing Veiling in Berlin: Modernity, Morality and Aesthetics (Synnøve Bendixsen)
      18. Fashioning Selves: Biographic Pathways of Hijabi Women in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (Gisele Fonseca Chagas and Solange Riva Mezabarba)
      19. Part 4: Industries, Images, Materialities

      20. Culture Industries and Marketplace Dynamics (Özlem Sandıkcı)
      21. Images of Desire: Creating Virtue and Value in an Indonesian Islamic Lifestyle Magazine (Carla Jones)
      22. Smart-ening Up the Hijab: The Materiality of Contemporary British Muslim Veiling in the Physical and the Digital (Shehnaz Suterwalla)
      23. Part 5: Gender, Space, Community

      24. Veiling, Gender and Space: On the Fluidity of ‘Public’ and ‘Private’ (Anna-Mari Almila)
      25. Spacialised Veiling and a Critique of the Public/Private Dichotomy: A View from a Town in North India (Janaki Abraham)
      26. Hui Women and the Headscarf in China (Xiaoyan Wang)
      27. Constructions and Reconstructions of ‘Appropriate Dress’ in the Diaspora: Young Somali Women and Social Control in Finland (Anu Isotalo)
      28. Cover Their Face: Masks, Masking, and Masquerades in Historical-Anthropological Context (David Inglis)
      29. The Amish Prayer Cap as a Symbol that Bounds the Community (Jana M. Hawley)
      30. Veiling Studies and Globalization Studies (David Inglis and Anna-Mari Almila)

    Biography

    Anna-Mari Almila is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in Sociology of Fashion at London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London.

    David Inglis David Inglis is Professor of Sociology at the University of Exeter, UK.

    ‘Through an impressive array of thought-provoking essays, the reader is presented with contemporary, and historical, understandings of veils and veiling in various parts of the world.  We hear the stories of women—contextualized by scholars from a variety of disciplines—and in listening to their voices we begin to understand the complexity of meaning hidden behind the veil.’ – Nancy Nason-Clark, University of New Brunswick, Canada