modern nation. Practices such as polygamy, concu-
binage, and divorce were regarded as “social evils”
that threatened the stability of bourgeois family
life. There was an “in-built conservative bias” in
many nationalist movements at the same time
ensuring that “women should retain a position of
traditional subordination within the family” (Jaya-
wardena 1987, 15). But others opted for more rad-
ical change as part of the social reconstitution
associated with national independence. Moves to
transform the family and the roles of women were
opposed not just by colonial rulers, but also by tra-
ditional political and religious elites, who coun-
tered with responses such as isolationism or
fundamentalism (Jayawardena 1987, 6).
Moghadam contrasts two styles of leadership
in contemporary Islamic nations (using Iran and
Afghanistan as case studies): modernizing (secular
nationalist) elites, “particularly, but not exclu-
sively, those with a socialist orientation” (1993,
125), who see the emancipation of women as inte-
gral to their agenda for development; and emerging
“fundamentalist” movements, which seek a return
to the past, including the (re) instatement of tradi-
tional sex roles. In the latter case, the family
encodes the social role of women, their citizenship
duties, their relation to the nation. That is, different
national visions imply different bases of citizenship
for women.
Articulation of the nation as
family
Fanon linked the metaphor of the nation as fam-
ily to the psychodynamics of colonial domination:
“Militarization and the centralization of authority
in a country automatically entail a resurgence of
the authority of the father” (1967, 141–2) – the
state borrows and enlarges the domestication of
gender power within the family. “Fanon under-
stands brilliantly how colonialism inflicts itself as a
domestication of the colony, a reordering of the
labor and sexual economy of the people, so as to
divert female power into colonial hands and dis-
rupt the patriarchal power of colonized men”
(McClintock 1995, 364). He understands the dif-
ferent ways in which men and women are impli-
cated in nationalist movements, and “recognises
the power of nationalism as a scopic politics most
visibly embodied in the power of sumptuary cus-
toms to fabricate a sense of national unity” (ibid.,
365). For men, women become the visible signs of
the emerging nation, and hence “subject to espe-
cially vigilant and violent discipline,” such as the
“emotive politics of dress” (ibid.).
McClintock has most clearly identified the man-
overview 155ner in which the family trope has been fundamen-
tal to articulating the nation in authoritarian polit-
ical thought. The family “offers a ‘natural’ figure
for sanctioning national hierarchy within a puta-
tive organic unity of interests” (1993, 63). Echoing
this view, Joseph has commented, “Hierarchy tends
to genderize: those in superordinate position are
masculinized, and subordinates are feminized”
(Joseph 1997, 66).
The family trope was explicitly employed by the
Egyptian nationalist leader Mu߆afàKàmil (1874–
1908). He worked to develop a new sense of
national belonging beyond local community or tribe
by promoting the idea of the nation as one family.
According to Baron, he did this to de-emphasize
religious difference. This idea was adopted by his
successor Sa≠d Zaghlùl – his home became Bayt al-
Umma(the house of the nation) and his wife Umm
al-Maßriyyin(The mother of all Egyptians). In turn,
this name evoked umm al-mu±minìn(mother of all
believers) that was given to ≠â±isha, Mu™ammad’s
favorite wife (Baron 1993, 248–50).
Depicting the nation as a family, with a common
symbolic home and mother, was an attempt to heal
communal rifts and bridge class divides. These
images were also meant to inspire male hearts with
love and instill in them the sense that they had a
duty to protect the honor of the family/nation
(Baron 1993, 252).
The nation-as-family trope is fundamental to the
assertion of a style of politics manifesting “Asian
Values” in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore,
where ruling elites have aspired to a form of
national politics deemed to be unique, and based
on core values rooted in putative history. Central to
this is the embracing of the patriarchal family as a
cornerstone of a unique Asian world-view that
brings social stability. In the island state of Singa-
pore, with a minority Muslim population, the rul-
ing elite claims a congruence between the place of
the individual in a “natural institution like the fam-
ily” (Heng and Devan 1992, 356) and the citizen’s
loyalty to a state that intervenes in all areas of their
lives. Women are represented as loyal daughters of
the paternal state, as well as patriotic mothers bear-
ing the nation’s children; “the transfer of the pater-
nal signifier from the family tothe state” renders
natural an “omnipresent government” (ibid.). The
model of paternal authority is an important under-
pinning of authoritarian rule.
In the case of Indonesia, the fictive patriarchal
family has been elevated to the status of a core ele-
ment of state ideology, particularly under the long
authoritarian rule of President Suharto (1966–98).
Indonesian political leaders have argued for an