New Spaces and Old Frontiers

Book excerpt: Salma Nageeb's book provides case studies and analysis of the lives of four Muslim women living in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan. Nageeb examines how these women negotiate their social space, locating their daily struggles within the increasingly rigid Islamic practice in Sudan. The women express resistance and cultural accommodation in different ways: while some choose to instrumentalize state and religious rules and rhetoric for their own aims, others stretch the boundaries with gentle persistence. These case studies provide a unique dimension to Nageeb's important sociological and social anthropological analysis of everyday life in the context of globalization and 'Islamization.'