Ambivalence in practice : everyday life and gendered discourses among young, Muslim women in Baku, Azerbaijan

Abstract

Abstract

Geopolitically situated between East and West, Azerbaijan offers yet another example of the diversity of women s situation in the Muslim world, defying commonly held Western stereotypes. (Tohidi, 1996: 112)

My fieldwork was conducted among young, Muslim women in Azerbaijan s capital Baku. This dissertation explores how these women manoeuvre the many and at times contradicting demands of everyday life, their so-called compelling concerns (Wikan, 1990), how they attempt to adapt these compelling concerns to fit their own needs and wishes, and which discourses they invoke to explain their choices. I consider the ways in which these young women attempt to establish a socially sanctioned yet personally satisfying adult life, especially as it pertains to love and marriage, and how their views on the relationships between men and women play into this project, in the cross-section between individual agency and structural power.