Individuals become part of society through processes of socialisation. As they go through such processes, individuals become members of intermediary groups and institutions that contribute also - in different ways - to their individuality. Such groups/institutions encompass a person's life from birth to death. They mostly are the family (nuclear and the extended), education, the household, etc. Those mirror, as a microcosm, relations within society as a whole.
Ideals of education and transmission of value-systems are possibly carried on also outside the formal institutions. The individual passing from the family to a schooling system - where private, religious and, secular education coexist - is given the personal liberty of choice from a large variety of choices.
It is not only the minds of persons that are involved in this process but also their bodies. Dietary laws, eating and sleeping habits, clothing codes and sexuality are part of the "domestication" of the body, aiming to make individuals conform to social norm. Rites of passage, including childhood rites, marriage, burials and other ceremonies in an individual's life, are some of the manifestations of socialisation.
The varieties of "family" types and relationships will be addressed in the framework of families, households, and membership in other social groups that rely on adoption, fictive kin, etc., as for example in the mamlûk system. This part of the research will include references to name-giving.
Large formations, e.g., the army, the bureaucracy, and the 'ulamâ' corps, have their own modes of integration, which include elements of socialisation supplementary to formal education.
On the basis of these few general considerations, which should guide our research, it is necessary to come back to certain points which seem to merit closer investigation.
The school is of particular importance amongst the various institutions which contribute to the integration of individuals in society. From the maktab to the madrasa, how do "education programmes" shape first the child, then the adolescent, and the adult? To what extent do the privileged relations between students and teachers play a role in socialisation processes? What is non-religious education's role in the transmission of knowledge and in an individual's social training? These questions, amongst others, merit more thorough research. It may be particularly useful to analyse traditional educative systems and to compare them with new educational theories, often originating in the Occident, which began to make an appearance in the Muslim world in the 19th century.
One of the most tangible off-shoots of education - whether parental, scholastic, or socially dictated norms - is the "domestication" of an individual's body itself. Research on the constraints imposed upon the human organism by social training - dietary restrictions, rules regarding sexual behaviour, clothing norms, practices linked to various rites of passage (birth, circumcision, marriage, death ...) - and on the resources men and women have available to free themselves from this control would certainly greatly contribute to knowledge about Islamic societies. Such a study appears all the more promising as it would parallel current preoccupations within Western historiography.
A thorough enquiry must be made into the different structures of loyalty and of solidarity. Many studies have already emphasised the role played by ethnic membership, tribal loyalties, kinship, or along other lines, brotherhood bonds in the structuring of social belonging (e.g. the henceforth "classical" studies of Evans-Pritchard, 1949; Tillion, 1966; Gellner, 1969). On the other hand, certain questions have up to now largely escaped researchers' investigation. The family, especially, should be given attention. What exactly is the influence of a permanent familial network? Has the emergence of the nuclear family led to a noticeable change in socialisation phenomena? What is the position of servants and slaves in the family fabric, and in the formation of individuals? How have demographic behaviours evolved? What role does ethnic and genealogical membership play in the structuring of individual and collective identity? These are some of the questions, amongst others, which must be dealt with in the proposed research.
Studying the family also means trying to pin-point a key moment in any individual's existence: childhood. Though generally absent from studies, childhood should represent a priority investigative field. Another unavoidable theme is the role of women in the processes of social reproduction and social integration. In spite of the recent development of gender studies, there are still numerous questions posed concerning this subject. In particular, one must question the nature of women's bonds with tradition, asking if women are devoted to the mere transmission of norms and values, or if they have any room to innovate in this domain. In another line of thought, time could be spent on trying to identify precisely various moments in the process which led to the slow emergence of feminism in Muslim societies from the last decades of the 19th century. Finally, it would be fitting to take an interest in feminine solidarity, a phenomenon the importance of which can easily be seen.
In the Granada meeting, the medieval history of Mediterranean Islam was the focus of five case-studies
Gender as a pivotal factor appeared as one of the common characteristics of the presentations and as such was discussed and proposed as a subject to bear in mind. Raising or educating girls and boys, as well as the presentation of biographical materials were noted as potential fields of interest in this respect.
Education as a primary way of integrating individuals in society was underlined as another and related topic. Emphasis was put on how individuals used their acquired knowledge in shaping their careers and on the different ways of transmitting knowledge and establishing social networks in which science and kinship are the dominant elements.
The study of family ties in the scholar's milieu will be another favoured topic. The necessity of integrating bodily concerns in the shaping of individuals and their integration in society was finally underlined as a complementary prospect in the global perspective of the planned research.
The "modernists" concentrated equally on textual evidence and institutional frameworks. We discussed the chapters on childhood and adolescence in "First person narratives". There are, not unexpectedly, common denominators between early Arab and Turkish authors, since they shared a comparable social and educational environment in the years before the collapse of the Empire. Modern Arab autobiographies started, like the majority of the Ottoman examples, at the turn of the century. In both cases historical and fictional genres are not always clear cut.
There are three major categories in Arab auto-biographical literature: (1) the pioneers; (2) autobiographers after 1950; (3) "minorities": Christians and women.
The pioneers such as G. Zaidan, A. Amin, and S. Musa disclaim an individualistic outlook and present themselves as typical representatives of their generation. Turkish authors produced many "hybrids", located between memoir and autobiography, although historical research often neglected the childhood experience. Although it is far too early to speak of an archetypical "Turkish childhood" the texts of the same period show full awareness of the total lack of stability of the period, the individuals being at the mercy of the historical waves. Family, school, particular teachers and reading matter seem to be more worth recording than week-ends or holidays. At an early age access to the same corpus of knowledge, especially passage through the same educational system quite indelibly affiliates graduates' personal and collective futures. It also associates their ulterior social, political and psychological loyalties. Throughout the Ottoman empire four parallel educational systems function: the traditional madrasa network, the individual millet schools, the missionary and other foreign instructional centres, and the Ottoman state civic school. The role of the individual faced with a plurality of educational opportunities is part of research on the Christians in the Arab East, in late Ottoman Syria and in the form of a comparative approach in Beirut and Scutari.
Common questions between the Medievalists and the Modernists were the hermeneutics of bio-bibliographical collective works as an "Islamic" genre sui generis and the use of "ego-documents" for the investigation of questions such as childhood as a discernible period of life.
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