Space for Gender: Cultural Roles of the Forbidden and the Permitted

Abstract

In this paper I analyze gender as cultural construction and reconstruction of space amongst Bedouin society in the Negev Desert in Southern Israel I focus, in particular, on changing meanings and boundaries between ‘forbidden’ and ‘permitted’ spaces. These meanings and perceptions are critically analyzed in the light of the ‘modernity planning project’ which has gradually moved Bedouin from spontaneous settlements to government-built towns. My main aim is to analyze cultural construction of space as it relates to women, and to explore how lack of consideration of these perceptions serves to increase control over Bedouin women in modernized towns through the reformulation of boundaries of ‘forbidden’ and ‘permitted’ spaces.