Khouloud Naili and Krimo Dahmani
In the M'Zab Valley, women have long remained confined to their domestic sphere and are invisible in outdoor spaces. This study aims to analyse the use of public and private…
Abstract
Purpose
In the M'Zab Valley, women have long remained confined to their domestic sphere and are invisible in outdoor spaces. This study aims to analyse the use of public and private spaces by the women of Ksar El Atteuf, particularly after the significant changes that society has undergone.
Design/methodology/approach
This study examines the role of gender in the daily life of an urban community in the M'Zab Valley in Algeria through semi-structured interviews with relevant experts and a survey of 100 Mozabite women. It focuses on their roles and views regarding using spaces and maintaining Mozabite heritage.
Findings
Social and religious norms influence women's utilisation, behaviour and roles in gendered spaces. Most women consider their place to be within the house but refuse to live primitively. Education and work have enabled them to emerge outdoors. The results also showed that owing to the restrictions imposed on women, 60% of them emphasised the need to express their opinions and make decisions, and 26% asked for more opportunities and spaces.
Originality/value
This study broadens understanding of Mozabite society and its architectural and urban heritage. The empirical study surveyed women and conducted interviews with experts. This is valuable, particularly, given the challenges of studying gender in conservative cultural settings.
Details
Keywords
Thomas Pittz, Terry Adler and Carma Claw
This paper aims to offer fresh insight into new institutional theory in the context of Native American tribal sovereignty. This paper outlines the history of tribal sovereignty to…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to offer fresh insight into new institutional theory in the context of Native American tribal sovereignty. This paper outlines the history of tribal sovereignty to propose it as an 8th institution, express how it is differentially applied in Native Nations and discuss how conflicts between institutional logics have an impact on economic and cultural outcomes. While doing so, this paper provides a review of tribal sovereignty to contextualize how the institution has developed over time, how it is exercised today and how the complexity of economic logics continues to affect its attainment. The power of the institutional logics that undergird tribal sovereignty has shifted over time, and this paper highlights the ontological and practical consequences of this shift on the institution of tribal sovereignty itself.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper reviewed the literary history of Native American tribal sovereignty using the lens of institutional theory to uncover dynamics that have been previously overlooked. This study stems from this review and extends the understanding of neo-institutional theory by offering a fresh contextual perspective from the lens of tribal sovereignty. The inclusion of a historical perspective, as well as modern expressions of tribal sovereignty, enables the narrative to suggest that tribal sovereignty is better understood as an institution. This paper is also able to highlight how some of the tension within conceptualizations of tribal sovereignty relies, in part, upon the institutional logic of Hózhó, and why these tensions persist even today within the exercise of sovereignty. This study is akin to what Arseneault, Deal and Helms Mills (2021) call a “review with attitude” that provides an alternative view of Native American tribal sovereignty and its relationship with new institutional theory to suggest a new research agenda for organizational studies.
Findings
This paper demonstrates the challenges that tribal leaders face and enumerates the various strategies used by Native American nations to exercise sovereignty from the US Federal Government. It shows the conflicts between economic and cultural outcomes and the ways in which tribes struggle to balance these conflicts both from within the tribe and without. While all organizations face various forms of environmental pressures, tribal nations in the USA exercise sovereignty to achieve a balance that is unlike other, paradigmatically capitalistic and Western, institutional forms.
Originality/value
At a time when marginalization and inclusiveness have become more prominent themes in management discourse, this paper expands upon the background of tribal sovereignty in the USA to highlight these concepts. Much has been written about the legal and social aspects of Native American culture and integration, or lack thereof, within Western culture. What has been missing, however, is the way in which tribal nations rely on sovereignty as a social structure beyond the mere legal and formal aspects of being recognized as a “nation within a nation.” One of the contributions of this study is to link the concepts of tribal sovereignty and the study of institutional theory, providing a rich framework for distancing ourselves from traditional logocentric Westernized approaches to a more inclusive understanding of alternative social structures.