The Dialectic of Palestinian Women’s ‘Occupations’: Patriarchy, Settler Colonialism and Everyday Resistance
Year: 2026
Type: dissertation
Abstract: In the last few decades, the Palestinian concept of sumud (steadfastness) has been gaining more scholarly and activist momentum as a form of resistance falling within the realm of everyday informal politics against Israeli settler colonialism. The informality and the everydayness of sumud have long been associated with Palestinian women and their social spaces, mainly the domestic sphere of the home in contrast with the formal public sphere of organized politics dominated by men. This study examines the daily sumud ‘occupations’ of semi-nomadic women in Masafer Yatta, southern Palestine within two spheres: the domestic domain of the home and the public sphere of the rangelands. The concept of ‘occupation’ refers to the everyday activities people perform to bring about meaning and purpose in life. Based on ethnographic work in Masafer Yatta in 2023 and 2024, preceded by activist work in the region, I argue that the semi-nomadic lifestyle of the communities of Masafer Yatta, including the gender social order embedded within it, has been key to shaping a different mode of sumud than the prevailing literature on the concept. Operating outside the constraints of formal politics, the sumud ‘occupations’ of seminomadic women are enacted within the confines of their kin-based patriarchal regime. Accordingly, their sumud is informed by and enacted to reinforce communal values embedded within that regime. Moreover, I argue that the relative autonomy of the communities from organized political structures combined with a semi-nomadic lifestyle allows for the emergence of a mode of anti-colonial agency, especially for women, that is marked by consistency, reflecting the desire to sustain their socioeconomic system. As Israeli settler-colonisers subject women to a different set of norms than men, women are more capable of both maintaining and escalating their sumud practices from covert to overt acts of defiance than their male counterparts. These conditions under which semi-nomadic women practise sumud blur the boundary between an ostensibly apolitical domestic sphere and a political public domain, as claimed by conventional politics. Examined through an intersectional sociological lens across gender, race, and class, this study addresses key theoretical gaps in the scholarship of ‘everyday’ resistance literature on sumud.
Author: Shqair, Manal
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7166494110