Susan Hirsch offers a much needed ethnographic rather than text-based view of gender and a Muslim legal-ethical system. Her interesting book on the gendered nature of Muslim legal disputes in the Kenyan cities of Mombasa and Malindi opens with the familiar claim that her book aims to undermine the trope of the "oppressed Muslim woman." This claim (which appears in almost every anthropological work on Muslim women) flags the tenacious stereotypes that characterize the discursive field into which books such as Hirsch's enter.
This book is well crafted in terms of the conventions of scholarly texts that endow prestige among peers. Yet the frequent repetition of the phrase "subject position" ("ideologically salient subject positions," "gendered subject position") reminds us how some terms age better than others. Chapter 1, Legal Processes and the Discursive Construction of Gender is a detailed review of contemporary linguistic theories worked out in a range of ethnographic contexts, although some may find the lengthy footnotes distracting.
The text gains steam in succeeding chapters-the writing is more engaging, less peppered with jargon, and the ethnographic material fascinating. One of the very best parts of the book is her consideration of local language ideologies, primarily the convention of "keeping it [conflict] in the house." Talking about problems is not considered therapeutic among Kenya's Swahili-speaking Muslims as it is in our contemporary society, where the "talking cure" is pervasive. Rather, in Kenya's coastal Muslim communities, the public exposure of personal and familial conflicts is at best shameful and at worst, dangerous (232-34) for those who hear them, as well as for the utterer. She includes a thought-provoking comment on the transgressive nature of anthropological texts in ethnographic contexts where secrecy is a virtue, as it too reveals "family secrets" (14).
Transcripts of court cases, which provide the basis for her analysis, unfurl the numbing horror of marital conflict everywhere: accusations, betrayals, harsh words and violence, woven in, framed by and potentially altering the constitution of gendered beings. Hirsch compares her material on linguistic ideology and speech styles with other examples from further afield (Samoa, Central America, and the American court system.) While Geertz' and Rosen's work on Muslims in the Middle East is mentioned, Messick's work on Muslim Shafa'i legal experts in Yemen is not; it would have provided an excellent comparison, especially since many Yemeni communities have language ideologies and economies of affect which are similar to those Hirsch describes.
While Hirsch's is primarily a sociolinguistic analysis, she notes that many men, because of uncertain labor conditions, are unable to support their families (96-7). I would have welcomed a more thorough contemplation of the tragic dimensions of these political and economic conditions in a context where the transfer of material goods from men to women is not only a religious and legal obligation, but also a sign of "love." One might expect that marital conflicts might be particularly intense as this economy of affect encounters a postcolonial economy that undermines the ability of men to actually support their families consistently. Hirsch indeed notes the increase of women bringing marital cases to the court, where they present themselves as "persevering women" even as the act of speaking in public contests this view, presenting them as "complaining" women instead. Although the two beginning chapters may be too dense for cultural anthropology undergraduates with little background in linguistics, this book certainly will be of interest to graduate students of linguistics and cultural anthropology and scholars of East Africa.