Women In Jane Schneider's Of Vigilance And Virgins

As early as 1966, with the writings of Jean A. Peristiany, the centrality of the conception of honor as a marker of an individual’s social worth, and of shame as the opposing force in place for the enforcement of honorable behavior, has been recognized by both social scientists and historians (Herr 1969). Initially, the ideological nuances of the relationship between honor and shame at work in particular societies was focused on small communities throughout the MENA region, for they provided examples of the “small scale, exclusive societies where face-to-face personal, as opposed to anonymous, relations are of paramount importance” (Peristiany 1966:11). Moreover, in all of the communities acknowledged by Peristiany, the collective perception

According to Schneider, honor could be understood as the “ideology of a property holding group which struggles to define, enlarge, and protect its patrimony in a competitive arena” (Schneider 1971:2). This initial conception makes sense, for in the absence of official states to illuminate borders, honor became a way for pastoral groups to maintain boundaries and preserve loyalty within the group itself. The understanding that social honor initially arose from competition over ecological resources, however, leaves room for one to question the role that women have in the construction of communal honor and dignity. In an effort to address this confusion, Schneider asserts that in a social environment marked by competition for a variety of resources, women’s reproductive capabilities became a way to control established group boundaries (Jowkar 1986; Kressler 1981; Schneider 1971). This contention is not novel, and can be found at the center of many investigations focused on the historical development of honor- and shame-based societies. Subsequently, the notion of the importance regarding the chastity of women in relation to the success of a community lends itself to an understanding of the over-arching construction of honor and shame upon virginity and purity. Within Muslim communities throughout the Middle East and North African region specifically, there is a close connection between women’s status in society, gender positioning, and the way in which the role of gender is modeled. The ability to understand the contribution of that construction of gender is not, however, solely related to a functionalist understanding of reproductive control, nor can it be derived from theology alone.