Abu-Lughod's body of work is grounded in long-term ethnographic research in Egypt, and is especially concerned with the intersections of culture and power, as well as gender and women's rights in the Middle East.[4]
Between the late 1970s and the mid-1980s, while she was still a graduate student, Abu-Lughod spent time living with the BedouinAwlad 'Ali tribe in Egypt.[3] She stayed with the head of the community, and lived in his household alongside his large family for a cumulative two years.[5] Her first two books, Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society and Writing Women's Worlds, are based on this fieldwork. Both books draw on her experiences living with the Bedouin women and her research into their poetry and storytelling.[3] She explores the way that ghinnawas, songs in a poetic form that she compares to haiku and the blues, express the cultural "patterning" of the society, especially with regard to the relations between women and men.[5] Abu-Lughod has described a reading group that she attended while teaching at Williams College – its other members included Catharine A. MacKinnon, Adrienne Rich, and Wendy Brown – as a formative engagement with the field of women's studies and a major influence on these early books.[6]
Her 2013 book, Do Muslim Women Need Saving? investigates the image of Muslim women in Western society. It is based on her 2002 article of the same name, published in American Anthropologist.[7] The text examines post-9/11 discussions on the Middle East, Islam, women's rights, and media. Abu-Lughod gathers examples of the Western narrative of the "abused" Muslim women who need to be saved.[8] Abu-Lughod further explains how the narrative of saving Muslim women has been used as a way to justify military interventions in Muslim countries. She deftly questions the motives of feminists who feel that Muslim women should be saved from the Taliban all the while injustices occur in their own countries. She argues that Muslim women, like women of other faiths and backgrounds, need to be viewed within their own historical, social, and ideological contexts.[9] Abu-Lughod's article and subsequent book on the topic have been compared to Edward Said and Orientalism[citation needed].
An article from Veiled Sentiments received the Stirling Award for Contributions to Psychological Anthropology. Writing Women's Worlds received the Victor Turner Award.[13]Carleton College awarded her an honorary doctorate in 2006.[14]
^Abu-Lughod, Lila (2002). "Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and its Others". American Anthropologist. 104 (3): 783–790. doi:10.1525/aa.2002.104.3.783. JSTOR3567256. S2CID19417513.
^"Masthead". Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. August 22, 2012. Retrieved May 25, 2024.