Orphans of Islam

Jamila Bargach received her Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from Rice University. Currently she resides in Morocco where she is assistant professor of social sciences at the National School of Architecture.

Orphans of Islam portrays the abject lives and 'excluded body' of abandoned and bastard children in contemporary Morocco, while critiquing the concept and practice of 'adoption,' which too often is considered a panacea. Through a close and historically grounded reading of legal, social, and cultural mechanisms of one predominantly Islamic country, Jamila Bargach shows how 'the surplus bastard body' is created by mainstream society.

Chapter 1 Notes on Transliteration and Transcription Chapter 2 Preface and Acknowledgements Part 3 Introduction(s): Object/Subject, Discipline/Argument Part 4 I: Defining Moves: From Text to Script and From Script to Text Chapter 5 1 Legal Throes: Genealogies and Debates of Kafala, Adoption, and Abandoned Children Chapter 6 2 Counterpoints: The Idiom of Adoption between Theological Interpretation, the Rise of the Nation-State and the "Real" Part 7 II: Rootless Lives and Bloodless Ties: Bastards, Secret Adoptions, and Some Other Cultural Dialectics Chapter 8 3 Of Anthropology: Nature, Nurture, and Kinship Chapter 9 4 Of Rituals: Names, Affiliation, and Identity Chapter 10 5 Of Culture: Loci, Lore, and Stereotypes Part 11 III: Nothing Above Family: To Reflect on Marginality Chapter 12 6 News From the Art, Intellectual and Media Fronts: Reflections on and Representations of Marginality Chapter 13 7 Social Work at Work: Or What Politics for What Help? Chapter 14 8 Civil Society and Social Work: Or the Politics of What Help? (Continued) Part 15 Postface Chapter 16 Notes Chapter 17 Index