Abstract

Based on a historically informed comparative perspective, the chapter critically reviews topics and debates in research on the issue of family with a view to the Middle East and North Africa region. It outlines different trends in the field and discusses both the limits of specialized knowledge production on the topic as well as the potential contribution of area-specific perspectives in family studies more broadly. The chapter unfolds the complexity of findings from qualitative research in history as well as the social sciences and describes its uneasy relationship with macro-perspectives on family change and demography. Special attention is paid to critical concepts and new paradigms emerging from the field that tie in with feminist and gender theories.