exchanged between women’s homes were equiva-
lent to the ways in which men received visits in cof-
fee shops and that the important role of women in
directing the family economy and family relation-
ships saw the emergence of a women-only subcul-
ture of mature and responsible personalities (Kıray
1981, 268). Turkish women enjoy the sociality of
these visits and they help to develop the independ-
ence of mind and personal authority so striking to
foreign observers. Kıray’s data and interpretation
of them remain important in countering Orientalist
perceptions of women’s lives and in accounting for
the personal strength of women who were widely
believed to be oppressed, subservient, and silent.
They also direct attention to theoretical develop-
ments emerging from the work of scholars who
have attempted to rethink the public-private
dichotomy both from within and from outside
existing epistemologies. Marcus (1992, 119), for
example, argued that while there is a female
domain that is centered on the household, it cannot
be described as private or equated to the private
domain of Western modernity. Rather, she held, the
household is a center for women’s public, sociable,
and religious lives.
More recently, women scholars writing from
within the Middle East and North Africa have
developed a number of powerful analytical re-
sponses to the concepts of public/private and sex/
gender found in universalizing narratives of mod-
ernization and aspects of feminist theory as it
emerged from the 1960s. For Turkey, the rework-
ing of public and private in the work of Göle (1997,
2002) is of great interest. She points to a very dif-
ferent articulation of gender, space, and modernity
in Turkey, one which bears strongly upon debates
about the subordination of women, the nature of
sexuality, and the lives of women and men in mod-
ern Islamist states and societies. Driven by current
political events, much recent attention has been
given to veiling rather than to segregated space (for
example, Yegeno(lu 1998); however the effects
of a lessening of gender-segregated activities on
women’s emotional and political independence and
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the interdomestic domain
Discussions of women’s position in Muslim soci-
ety have repeatedly highlighted the importance of
“women’s worlds” in contexts of strictly gendered
divisions of labor and female seclusion (purdah). In
Bosnia, female neighborly networks are formed
around coffee morning visiting (Brinja 1995).
Intimate circles often articulate counter-hegemonic
resistance to male domination (Abu-Lughod 1986).
The theoretical point underlying these studies is
summed up by Rosaldo’s argument that women’s
position is raised when they can challenge male
claims to authority “by creating a sense of rank,
order and value in a world of their own” (1974, 36).
The crucial role played by British Pakistani women
migrants in creating and controlling the interdo-
mestic domain of sociability between families,
neighbors, and friends is developed by Werbner
(2002a). In Pakistan, Punjabi women traditionally