Ok so its only a bump from page 2, and this thread is prob more suited to IMHO… I had to regretfully turn in Sabres of Paradise back to the library, I kept it out for 6 wks, It is one of my favorite old books as I love the sombre black cover with the gold arabic inscription on the cover, and the wonderful B&W photos within
So I am reading Highlanders by Karny now, equally fascinating and enlightening and also tragic. I guess further reading on the woman of Daghestan, would be helpful. Supposedly descended form the Amazon’s, what has been the influence of woman on this society? Has it disappear under the weight of the patriarchical culture?
I really haven’t seen much writing at all on the women of Dagestan, in any discipline whatsoever (although admittedly I’m not too familiar with whatever anthropology or sociology literature may exist). I’d refer you to the excellent Web bibliography of the North Caucasus maintained by Amjad Jaimoukha, but it’s apparently disappeared sometime in the past couple of months. I really need to write him and see what the heck is going on. But descended from the Amazons? I’ve only seen one reference in any publication that could have remotely been considered scholarly, an article in an edited volume of Gail Lapidus that I have at home somewhere:
Gail Warshofsky Lapidus, Women in Russia (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1977 (a quick poking around reveals that Lapidus has written other articles on the status of women in Russia; you might want to check some of them out.)
Also, if you’re interested in the status of women in Soviet society in general, with some anecdotes on women in non-ethnic Russian areas, you might try Francine du Plessix Gray’s Soviet Women: Walking the Tightrope. It’s a quick and enlightening read if this is a world you haven’t explored before. And do check out the Gammer book for more historical info on the Russian conquest of the North Caucasus.
From my rather limited and not terribly direct contact with Dagestani culture, I’d say that it is indeed rather patriarchal by American standards. Women often hold very traditional wife/mother roles and tend to get married very young, even by post-Soviet standards; the birthrate is much, much higher in the Caucasus, both north and south, than in the Slavic parts of the FSU. (My ex used to joke that at 21, I was way over the hill and should have banged out a couple of kids already instead of going to college. Only half-jokingly, I might add. One of the major reasons he and I would have been a disaster in the long run.)
In general, I’d say the North Caucasus is more socially conservative than central/northern Russia, especially urban centers like Moscow. But even the most non-feminist men in that culture have huge amounts of respect for their mothers.