| Gender on the Market: |
 by Deborah Kapchan 325 pp. Gender on the Market: Moroccan Women and the Revoicing of Tradition. By Deborah Kapchan. Series in Contemporary Ethnography, New Cultural Studies. Publications of the American Folklore Society. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996. Pp. xvii+325. Bibliography, indices, photographs, maps, appendices, glossary. $42.50 cloth, $19.95 paper. Author Deborah Kapchan teaches at the Center for Intercultural Studies in Folklore and Ethnology at the University of Texas, Austin. Her previous work on Moroccan women prepares readers for this newest ethnographic study: an investigation of changes in women's expressive culture over the last decade in Beni-Mellal, a town at the foot of the Atlas Mountains in central Morocco. In her introduction, Kapchan outlines how the theoretical concept of "hybridity" can be applied to the gender- and genre-breaking performances she witnesses. She then divides her book into two parts: Women in the Market and Gender on the Market. Part One: "Women in the Market," made up of five chapters, explores the shifting roles of women vendors in the suq or traditional marketplace (now being displaced by the Western-style boutique for many middle- and upper-class Moroccans). Kapchan presents and analyzes three sociolinguistically-specific oral performances: that of a vendor bargaining with a prospective buyer (shtara), of a religious healer (majduba), and of a herbalist (ashshaba). She concludes that these marketplace orators are using traditional, usually male, often religious language in new ways and in new venues. Part Two: "Gender on the Market" (also made up of five chapters) extends the concept of the changing marketplace to a range of gendered relationships in Beni-Mellal. Kapchan draws more clearly on the festival and ritual components of performative theory in her analyses of a pre-wedding henna party; of female singers (shikha); of female storytelling sessions about mothers-in-law, working women and maids; and, finally, of magic (sh¸r) to indicate slippages in older patterns. As she concludes, "Concepts of gender are clearly on the market in contemporary Morocco. The separate spheres described by scholars are now mixing, colliding, and producing new species of cultural forms and ideations." This work joins that of Elizabeth Fernea, Lila Abu-Lughod, Fatima Mernissi and Margaret Mills (among others) in exploring and revealing gender issues in the contemporary Middle East. Janet L. Langlois |