Shopping in Jenin: Women, homes and political persons in the Galilee

For the past fifteen years, Palestinian women from the Galilee, who are citizens of Israel, have been going to Jenin, a large town in the West Bank, in order to shop. These excursions have profoundly modified home life, gender relations, and domestic and political identities. This paper examines the very processes by which women's shopping activities significantly contribute to the making and transformation of the household and social roles. Moreover, this new mobility among women has spurred both men and women in the Galilee to reflect upon citizenship, nationalism, and modernity. Thus an in-depth analysis of shopping provides insights on the relationship between consumption and social production, on the one hand, and political identities on the other. [Consumption, shopping, women, Israel, Palestinians].