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Response to the Review from Parin Dossa I would like to respond to the review that you wrote on my book: Politics and Poetics of Migration: Narratives of Iranian Women from the Diaspora for the Association of Feminist Anthropology. I feel that the review does not do justice to my work as you have not addressed a substantive theme of the book, namely women’s efforts to effect social change through storytelling. The first two paragraphs are descriptive and give minimal coverage to the points that are central to the book such as the discussion of research as a process, issues of voice and witnessing, and research accountability. The descriptive information included at random misrepresents my arguments. You state that “immigrants became racialized minorities.” One is racialized by the larger society but one does not become a racialized minority. You give a descriptive account on my collection and analysis of data but you miss out the point that the governing principle at work was to create space for women to tell their own stories. I have strong reservations on the last paragraph. You observe that the book’s prose has “a wondering nature” and that “the language is vague and the repetition is distracting.” Scholarship requires that you give examples to substantiate these observations. There are four separate stories and a whole chapter on focus group interviews (you do not even make reference to the latter). How these become repetitive or vague is difficult to understand unless you can provide substantive examples based on a sound understanding of this work. You raise the question as to what I did over the course of three years of my field work. Critical and feminist anthropology, the grounding for my work, requires that we ask not what we do (ethnographers produce rims of data using multi-faceted approach) but how we analyze the material. Voice and accountability are the critical issues. I would have been receptive to such a critique. At the end of the review, you state that “I would recommend this book to those interested in issues of gender and displacement, but probably not to those new to the subject matter.” Can you provide an explanation for the latter. In short, I do not think that the review has done justice to my work. I am open to criticism that is scholarly and well substantiated. Rose Wishall Ediger, the author of the book
review, declined to respond Website maintained by Suzanne Baker |