Susanna Ferguson

Smith College

2025 Fatema Mernissi Book Award Winner

Labors of Love: Gender, Capitalism, and Democracy in Modern Arab Thought

Stanford University Press 

A nuanced book that extends the concept of tarbiya/childrearing beyond the female body demonstrating its importance for the construction of the nation and social subject from different lenses: Islamic, colonial, liberal, and personal. By meticulously tracing early women’s writings and periodicals from the Arab Mashriq, Egypt, and the diaspora, Ferguson skilfully demonstrates the contradictory nature of women’s childrearing labor as both sites of constraints/conservatism and power/liberation. In placing modern democratic politics, linear time, and capitalist social formations in direct conversations, Labors of Love is pioneering in striking local and global debates answering questions related to the perception of childrearing, women and family as being stumbling blocks for regimes around the world.

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