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Manuel Castells
USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism
Larry Gross
USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism
Associate Editors
Jennings Bryant
University of Alabama
Susan Douglas
University of Michigan
Oscar Gandy
Annenberg/ University of Pennsylvania
Kathleen Hall Jamieson
Annenberg/ University of Pennsylvania
Robin Elizabeth Mansell
London School of Economics
Alejandro Piscitelli
University of Buenos Aires
Marshall Scott Poole
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
N. Bhaskara Rao
Centre for Media Studies, New Delhi
Ellen Seiter
USC Cinematic Arts
Book Review Editors
Gustavo Cardoso
University of Lisbon
Josh Kun
USC Annenberg School
Jack Linchuan Qiu
Chinese University of Hong Kong
Advisory Editors
Jonathan David Aronson
USC Annenberg School
Sandra Ball-Rokeach
USC Annenberg School
Svetlana Balmaeva
Liberal Arts University
Sarah Banet-Weiser
USC Annenberg School
Howard S. Becker
San Francisco
Yochai Benkler
Harvard Law School
Bruce Bimber
UC Santa Barbara
Pablo Javier Boczkowski
Northwestern University
William Dutton
Oxford University
Richard Dyer
University of London
Dilip Gaonkar
Northwestern University
Sergio Godoy
Universidad Catolica de Chile
Trudy Govier
University of Lethbridge
Larry Grossberg
University of North Carolina
James Hamilton
Duke University
Henry Jenkins
USC Annenberg School
Steve Jones
University of Illinois-Chicago
Elihu Katz
Annenberg/ University of Pennsylvania
Douglas Kellner
UCLA
Marwan M. Kraidy
Annenberg/ University of Pennsylvania
Robert McChesney
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Toby Miller
University of California, Riverside
William John Mitchell
MIT
Peter R. Monge
USC Annenberg School
Thomas Nakayama
Arizona State University
Horace Newcomb
University of Georgia
John Durham Peters
University of Iowa
Dana Polan
NYU
Adam Powell
USC Engineering
Monroe Price
Annenberg/ University of Pennsylvania
Michael Renov
USC Cinematic Arts
Michael Schudson
Columbia University
John Thompson
Cambridge University
Ingrid Volkmer
University of Melbourne
Simon J. Wilkie
USC Economics
Barbie Zelizer
Annenberg/ University of Pennsylvania
Yuezhi Zhao
Simon Fraser University

University of Southern California

International Journal of Communication, Vol 3 (2009)

Multiple Meanings, Identities, and Resistances: Egyptian Rural Women’s Readings of Televised Family Planning Campaigns

Sahar Khamis

Abstract


This feminist, ethnographic audience study analyzes how different groups of Egyptian rural women struggled to construct and reflect their subjectivities and identities, both as women and mothers, while making meaning of the messages in a televised governmental family planning campaign. The study investigates the complexity of factors which formed and transformed these women’s multiple identities, and which were, in turn, reflected in their multiple readings of the televised family planning messages, as well as in their multifaceted resistances on different levels: resistance to the traditional reproduction norms embedded in their own socio-cultural context; resistance to the dominant figures in their own families; and resistance to the dominant family planning ideology proposed by the government. In explaining why and how the women in the Egyptian village of Kafr Masoud came up with dominant, oppositional, or negotiated readings around the themes in the televised family planning messages, the study pays special attention to the impact of the process of social change on the transformation of these women’s gendered identities. It also explores the effects of these women’s social networks, their household structures, the oral forms of communication in their community, as well as the collective pattern of television viewing in the village on forming these women’s views and attitudes towards the issue of family planning, in general, and towards the televised family planning messages, in particular.

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