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Beyond Exception: New Interpretations of the Arabian Peninsula

Ahmed Kanna, Amélie Le Renard, and Neha Vora

Over nearly two decades during which they have each been conducting fieldwork in the Arabian Peninsula, the authors have regularly encountered exoticizing and exceptionalist discourses about the ... More

Over nearly two decades during which they have each been conducting fieldwork in the Arabian Peninsula, the authors have regularly encountered exoticizing and exceptionalist discourses about the region and its people, political systems, and prevalent cultural practices. These persistent encounters became the springboard for the book, a reflection on conducting fieldwork within a “field” that is marked by such representations. The book's focus is on deconstructing the exceptionalist representations that circulate about the Arabian Peninsula. It analyzes what exceptionalism does, how it is used by various people, and how it helps shape power relations in the societies studied. The book proposes ways that this analysis of exceptionalism provides tools for rethinking the concepts that have become commonplace, structuring narratives and analytical frameworks within fieldwork in and on the Arabian Peninsula. It asks: What would not only Middle East studies, but studies of postcolonial societies and global capitalism in other parts of the world look like if the Arabian Peninsula was central, rather than peripheral or exceptional, to ongoing sociohistorical processes and representational practices? The book explores how the exceptionalizing discourses that permeate Arabian Peninsula studies spring from colonialist discourses still operative in anthropology and sociology more generally, and suggest that de-exceptionalizing the region within their disciplines can offer opportunities for decolonized knowledge production.Less

Building a House in Heaven: Pious Neoliberalism and Islamic Charity in Egypt

Mona Atia

Building a House in Heaven uses Islamic charity as a lens through which to understand the relations between the economy, state and religion in Mubarak era Egypt. My approach links questions of ... More

Building a House in Heaven uses Islamic charity as a lens through which to understand the relations between the economy, state and religion in Mubarak era Egypt. My approach links questions of governance, authority, economy and polity with questions of identity, subjectivity and ways of knowing. The first geographical account of its kind, it considers how Islamic associations enact Islamic economic practices and how these practices changed relations between the state, voluntary and private sectors. I explore the practices of Islamic charities and their associated sites, neighborhoods, ideology, sources of funding, projects, and broad social networks. Throughout the book, I map the landscape of charity and development in Egypt, moving back and forth between ethnographic stories of specific organizations and reflections on patterns across the sector. I chart numerous factors that changed the nature of Egyptian charitable practices including: the state’s intervention in social care and religion, an Islamic revival, political economic trends that intensified economic pressures on the poor, and the emergence of the private sector as a key development actor.Less

Cairo Collages: Everyday Life Practices after the Event

Mona Abaza

In Cairo collages, the large-scale political, economic, and social changes in Egypt brought on by the 2011 revolution are set against the declining fortunes of a single apartment building in a ... More

In Cairo collages, the large-scale political, economic, and social changes in Egypt brought on by the 2011 revolution are set against the declining fortunes of a single apartment building in a specific Cairo neighbourhood. The violence in Tahrir Square and Mohamed Mahmud Street; the post-January euphoric moment; the increasing militarisation of urban life; the flourishing of dystopian novels set in Cairo; the neo-liberal imaginaries of Dubai and Singapore as global models; gentrification and evictions in poor neighbourhoods; the forthcoming new administrative capital for Egypt – all are narrated in parallel to the ‘little’ story of the adventures and misfortunes of everyday interactions in a middle-class building in the neighbourhood of Doqi.Less

Cairo Pop: Youth Music in Contemporary Egypt

Daniel J. Gilman

This book represents the first scholarly engagement with shababiyya, the genre of popular music that dominates consumption in the Arab world in general and Egypt in particular. This genre is hugely ... More

This book represents the first scholarly engagement with shababiyya, the genre of popular music that dominates consumption in the Arab world in general and Egypt in particular. This genre is hugely popular among the contemporary youth generation of Egypt, yet scorned and ignored by their elders and scholars alike. The book analyzes the changing trends in musical tastes in Egypt over the last fifty years, and reveals a shift in the underlying aesthetic criteria of music reception that influences, among other things, the kind of political rhetoric to which these youth are receptive. The book is the most thickly ethnographic study to date of the relationship between mass-mediated popular music, modernity, and nationalism in the Arab world. The book is the first of its kind to be based upon sustained ethnographic research among a large number of youthful music listeners in the Arab world. It is also one of the earliest anthropological monographs to be published based on ethnographic research conducted amid the 2011 Egyptian revolution. The book is targeted primarily at cultural anthropologists, but also to other social scientists who study the Middle East and the Arab world.Less

The Calligraphic State: Textual Domination and History in a Muslim Society

Brinkley Messick

This combination of anthropology, history, and postmodern theory examines the changing relation of writing and authority in a Muslim society from the late nineteenth century to the present. The ... More

This combination of anthropology, history, and postmodern theory examines the changing relation of writing and authority in a Muslim society from the late nineteenth century to the present. The creation and interpretation of texts, from sacred scriptures to administrative and legal contracts, are among the fundamental ways that authority is established and maintained in a complex state. Yet few scholars have explored this process and the ways in which it changes, especially outside the Western world. The book brings together intensive ethnography and textual analysis from a wealth of material: Islamic jurisprudence, Yemeni histories, local documents. In exploring the structure and transformation of literacy, law, and statecraft in Yemen, it raises issues that are of comparative significance for understanding political life in other Muslim and nonwestern states as well.Less

Everyday Sectarianism in Urban Lebanon: Infrastructures, Public Services, and Power

Joanne Randa Nucho

What causes violent conflicts around the Middle East? All too often, the answer is sectarianism—popularly viewed as a timeless and intractable force that leads religious groups to conflict. This book ... More

What causes violent conflicts around the Middle East? All too often, the answer is sectarianism—popularly viewed as a timeless and intractable force that leads religious groups to conflict. This book shows how wrong this perspective can be. Through in-depth research with local governments, NGOs, and political parties in Beirut, the book demonstrates how sectarianism is actually recalibrated on a daily basis through the provision of essential services and infrastructures, such as electricity, medical care, credit, and the planning of bridges and roads. In a working-class, predominantly Armenian suburb in northeast Beirut called Bourj Hammoud, the author conducted extensive interviews and observations in medical clinics, social service centers, shops, banking coops, and municipal offices, and explores how group and individual access to services depends on making claims to membership in the dominant sectarian community. The author examines how sectarianism is not just tied to ethnoreligious identity, but also class, gender, and geography. Life in Bourj Hammoud makes visible a broader pattern in which the relationships that develop while procuring basic needs become a way for people to see themselves as part of the greater public. Illustrating how sectarianism in Lebanon is not simply about religious identity, as is commonly thought, this book offers a new look at how everyday social exchanges define and redefine communities and conflicts.Less

Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society

Nadia Abu El-Haj

Archaeology in Israel is truly a national obsession, a practice through which national identity—and national rights—have long been asserted. But how and why did archaeology emerge as such a pervasive ... More

Archaeology in Israel is truly a national obsession, a practice through which national identity—and national rights—have long been asserted. But how and why did archaeology emerge as such a pervasive force there? How can the practices of archaeology help answer those questions? This book addresses these questions and specifies for the first time the relationship between national ideology, colonial settlement, and the production of historical knowledge. It analyzes particular instances of history, artifacts, and landscapes in the making to show how archaeology helped not only to legitimize cultural and political visions but, far more powerfully, to reshape them. Moreover, the book places Israeli archaeology in the context of the broader discipline to determine what unites the field across its disparate local traditions and locations. Boldly uncovering an Israel in which science and politics are mutually constituted, this book shows the ongoing role that archaeology plays in defining the past, present, and future of Palestine and Israel.Less

Far from the Caliph's Gaze: Being Ahmadi Muslim in the Holy City of Qadian

Nicholas H. A. Evans

How do you prove that you're Muslim? This is not a question that most believers ever have to ask themselves, and yet for members of India's Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, it poses an existential ... More

How do you prove that you're Muslim? This is not a question that most believers ever have to ask themselves, and yet for members of India's Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, it poses an existential challenge. The Ahmadis are the minority of a minority—people for whom simply being Muslim is a challenge. They must constantly ask the question: What evidence could ever be sufficient to prove that I belong to the faith? This book explores how a need to respond to this question shapes the lives of Ahmadis in Qadian in northern India. Qadian was the birthplace of the Ahmadiyya community's founder, and it remains a location of huge spiritual importance for members of the community around the world. Nonetheless, it has been physically separated from the Ahmadis' spiritual leader—the caliph—since partition, and the believers who live there now and act as its guardians must confront daily the reality of this separation even while attempting to make their Muslimness verifiable. By exploring the centrality of this separation to the ethics of everyday life in Qadian, the book presents a new model for the academic study of religious doubt, one that is not premised on a concept of belief but instead captures the richness with which people might experience problematic relationships to truth.Less

Food and Power: A Culinary Ethnography of Israel

Nir Avieli

Drawing on ethnography conducted in Israel since the late 1990s, this book considers how power is produced, reproduced, negotiated, and subverted in the contemporary Israeli culinary sphere. The book ... More

Drawing on ethnography conducted in Israel since the late 1990s, this book considers how power is produced, reproduced, negotiated, and subverted in the contemporary Israeli culinary sphere. The book explores issues such as the definition of Israeli cuisine (a defining element of which is large portions of “satisfying” dishes made from mediocre ingredients), the ownership of hummus, Israel's Independence Day barbecues, the popularity of Italian food in Israel, the privatization of communal Kibbutz dining rooms, and food at a military prison for Palestinian detainees to show how cooking and eating create ambivalence concerning questions of strength and weakness and how power and victimization are mixed into a sense of self-justification that maintains internal cohesion among Israeli Jews. The book concludes by presenting two culinary trends in contemporary Israel that emerge at the intersection of food and power.Less

Government of Paper: The Materiality of Bureaucracy in Urban Pakistan

Matthew S. Hull

In the electronic age, documents appear to have escaped their paper confinement. But we are still surrounded by flows of paper with enormous consequences. In the planned city of Islamabad, order and ... More

In the electronic age, documents appear to have escaped their paper confinement. But we are still surrounded by flows of paper with enormous consequences. In the planned city of Islamabad, order and disorder are produced through the ceaseless inscription and circulation of millions of paper artifacts among bureaucrats, politicians, property owners, villagers, imams (prayer leaders), businessmen, and builders. What are the implications of such a thorough paper mediation of relationships among people, things, places, and purposes? This book explores this question in the routine yet unpredictable realm of the Pakistani urban bureaucracy, showing how the material forms of postcolonial bureaucratic documentation produce a distinctive political economy of paper that shapes how the city is constructed, regulated, and inhabited. Files, maps, petitions, and visiting cards constitute the enduring material infrastructure of more ephemeral classifications, laws, and institutional organizations. The author develops a fresh approach to state governance as a material practice, explaining why writing practices designed during the colonial era to isolate the government from society have become a means of participation in it.Less

The Graves of Tarim: Genealogy and Mobility across the Indian Ocean

Engseng Ho

This book narrates the movement of an old diaspora across the Indian Ocean over the past five hundred years. Ranging from Arabia to India and Southeast Asia, the book explores the transcultural ... More

This book narrates the movement of an old diaspora across the Indian Ocean over the past five hundred years. Ranging from Arabia to India and Southeast Asia, the book explores the transcultural exchanges—in kinship and writing—that enabled Hadrami Yemeni descendants of the Muslim prophet Muhammad to become locals in each of the three regions yet remain cosmopolitans with vital connections across the ocean. At home throughout the Indian Ocean, diasporic Hadramis engaged European empires in surprising ways across its breadth, beyond the usual territorial confines of colonizer and colonized. A work of both anthropology and history, the book demonstrates how the emerging fields of world history and transcultural studies are coming together to provide groundbreaking ways of studying religion, diaspora, and empire. The book interprets biographies, family histories, chronicles, pilgrimage manuals, and religious law as the unified literary output of a diaspora that hybridizes both texts and persons within a genealogy of Prophetic descent. By using anthropological concepts to read Islamic texts in Arabic and Malay, it demonstrates the existence of a hitherto unidentified canon of diasporic literature. The book's conceptual framework and use of documentary and field evidence are combined to present a vision of this vital world region beyond the histories of trade and European empire.Less

Heroes of the Age: Moral Fault Lines on the Afghan Frontier

David Edwards

Much of the political turmoil that has occurred in Afghanistan since the Marxist revolution of 1978 has been attributed to the dispute between Soviet-aligned Marxists and the religious extremists ... More

Much of the political turmoil that has occurred in Afghanistan since the Marxist revolution of 1978 has been attributed to the dispute between Soviet-aligned Marxists and the religious extremists inspired by Egyptian and Pakistani brands of “fundamentalist” Islam. In a significant departure from this view, this book contends that—though Marxism and radical Islam have undoubtedly played a significant role in the conflict—Afghanistan's troubles derive less from foreign forces and the ideological divisions between groups than they do from the moral incoherence of Afghanistan itself. Seeking the historical and cultural roots of the conflict, it examines the lives of three significant figures of the late nineteenth century—a tribal khan, a Muslim saint, and a prince who became king of the newly created state. The book explores the ambiguities and contradictions of these lives and the stories that surround them, arguing that conflicting values within an artificially created state are at the root of Afghanistan's current instability. Building on this foundation, the book examines conflicting narratives of a tribal uprising against the British Raj that broke out in the summer of 1897. Through an analysis of both colonial and native accounts, it investigates the saint's role in this conflict, his relationship to the Afghan state and the tribal groups that followed him, and the larger issue of how Islam traditionally functions as an encompassing framework of political association in frontier society.Less

Imagining the Arabs: Arab Identity and the Rise of Islam

Peter Webb

Who are the Arabs? When did people begin calling themselves Arabs? And what was the Arabs’ role in the rise of Islam? Investigating these core questions about Arab identity and history by marshalling ... More

Who are the Arabs? When did people begin calling themselves Arabs? And what was the Arabs’ role in the rise of Islam? Investigating these core questions about Arab identity and history by marshalling the widest array of Arabic sources employed hitherto, and by interpreting the evidence with the aid of theories of identity and ethnicity, Imagining the Arabs proposes new answers to the riddle of Arab origins and fundamental reinterpretations of early Islamic history. It is revealed that the time-honoured stereotypes which depict Arabs as ancient Arabian Bedouin are entirely misleading because the essence of Arab identity was in fact devised by Muslims during the first centuries of Islam. Arab identity emerged and evolved as groups imagined new notions of community to suit the radically changing circumstances of life in the early Caliphate. The idea of ‘the Arab’ was a device which Muslims utilised to articulate their communal identity, to negotiate post-Conquest power relations, and to explain the rise of Islam. Over Islam’s first four centuries, political elites, genealogists, poetry collectors, historians and grammarians all participated in a vibrant process of imagining and re-imagining Arab identity and history, and the sum of their works established a powerful tradition that influences Middle Eastern communities to the present day.Less

An Invitation to Laughter: A Lebanese Anthropologist in the Arab World

Fuad I. Khuri

Sonia Jalbout Khuri (ed.)

For the author of this book, a distinguished career as an anthropologist began not because of typical concerns like accessibility, money, or status, but because the very idea of an occupation that ... More

For the author of this book, a distinguished career as an anthropologist began not because of typical concerns like accessibility, money, or status, but because the very idea of an occupation that baffled his countrymen made them—and him—laugh. “When I tell them that ‘anthropology’ is my profession…they think I am either speaking a strange language or referring to a new medicine.” This profound appreciation for humor, especially in the contradictions inherent in the study of cultures, is a distinctive theme of this book, the author's memoir of life as an anthropologist in the Middle East. A Christian Lebanese, the author offers up in this autobiography both an insider's and an outsider's perspective on life in Lebanon, elsewhere in the Middle East, and in West Africa. He entertains and informs with insights into such issues as the mentality of Arabs toward women, eating habits of the Arab world, the impact of Islam on West Africa, and the extravagant lifestyles of wealthy Arabs, and even offers a vision for a type of democracy that could succeed in the Middle East. In his life and work, as these essays make evident, the author demonstrated how the discipline of anthropology continues to make a difference in bridging dangerous divides.Less

Islamic Charities and Islamic Humanism in Troubled Times

Jonathan Benthall

This book is the fruit of twenty years’ reflection on Islamic charities, both in practical terms and as a key to understand the crisis in contemporary Islam. On the one hand Islam is undervalued as a ... More

This book is the fruit of twenty years’ reflection on Islamic charities, both in practical terms and as a key to understand the crisis in contemporary Islam. On the one hand Islam is undervalued as a global moral and political force whose admirable qualities are exemplified in its strong tradition of charitable giving. On the other hand, it suffers from a crisis of authority that cannot be blamed entirely on the history of colonialism and stigmatization to which Muslims have undoubtedly been subjected – most recently, as a result of the “war on terror”. The book consists of seventeen previously published chapters, with a general Introduction and new prefatory material for each chapter. The first nine chapters review the current situation of Islamic charities from many different viewpoints – theological, historical, diplomatic, legal, sociological and ethnographic – with first-hand data from the United States, Britain, Israel–Palestine, Mali and Indonesia. Chapters 10 to 17 expand the coverage to explore the potential for a twenty-first century “Islamic humanism” that would be devised by Muslims in the light of the human sciences and institutionalized throughout the Muslim world. This means addressing contentious topics such as religious toleration and the meaning of jihad. The intended readership includes academics and students at all levels, professionals concerned with aid and development, and all who have an interest in the future of Islam.Less

Land of the Unconquerable: The Lives of Contemporary Afghan Women

Jennifer Heath and Ashraf Zahedi

Reaching beyond sensational headlines, this book offers a three-dimensional portrait of Afghan women. In a series of wide-ranging, deeply reflective essays, scholars, humanitarian workers, ... More

Reaching beyond sensational headlines, this book offers a three-dimensional portrait of Afghan women. In a series of wide-ranging, deeply reflective essays, scholars, humanitarian workers, politicians, and journalists—most with extended experience inside Afghanistan—examine the realities of life for women in both urban and rural settings. They address topics including food security, sex work, health, marriage, education, poetry, politics, prisoners, and community development. Eschewing stereotypes about the burqa, the contributors focus instead on women's empowerment and agency, and their struggles for peace and justice in the face of a brutal ongoing war. A fuller picture of Afghanistan's women past and present emerges, leading to social policy suggestions and pragmatic solutions for a peaceful future.Less

Lawrence of Arabia: A Film's Anthropology

Steven Caton

Combining ethnography, film criticism, and extensive knowledge of the Middle East, this book presents an examination of the classic film, Lawrence of Arabia. The book is interested in why this epic ... More

Combining ethnography, film criticism, and extensive knowledge of the Middle East, this book presents an examination of the classic film, Lawrence of Arabia. The book is interested in why this epic film has been so compelling for so many people for more than three decades. In seeking an answer, it draws from situations in life, biographies of the film's key participants, and analyses of issues relating to class, gender, colonialism, and cultural differences. The result is a book that poses important questions of ethnographic representation and the discourse of power. The book's approach is dialectical, and readings of the film are situated within different historical periods, from the early 1960s to the present. Among the subjects it highlights are travel and colonialism in fieldwork and filmmaking, orientalism in the representation of the Other, and the film's ambiguous handling of masculinity and homosexuality. The book looks at personal reactions to the film at various stages in a life and offers an account of the film's reception by today's high school and college students.Less

Mass Mediations: New Approaches to Popular Culture in the Middle East and Beyond

Walter Armbrust (ed.)

Offering a diversity of perspectives, this collection examines how popular culture through mass media defines the scale and character of social interaction in the Middle East. The contributors ... More

Offering a diversity of perspectives, this collection examines how popular culture through mass media defines the scale and character of social interaction in the Middle East. The contributors approach popular culture broadly, with an interest in how it creates new scales of communication and new dimensions of identity that affect economics, politics, aesthetics, and performance. Reflected in these essays is the fact that mass media are as ubiquitous in Cairo and Karachi as in Los Angeles and Detroit. From Persian popular music in Beverly Hills to Egyptians' reaction to a recent film on Gamal Abdel Nasser; from postmodern Turkish novels to the music of an Israeli transsexual singer, the chapters illustrate the multiple contexts of modern cultural production. The unfolding of modernity in colonial and postcolonial societies has been little analyzed until now. In addressing transnational aspects of Middle Eastern societies, the contributors also challenge conventional assumptions about the region and its relation to the West.Less

Memories of Absence: How Muslims Remember Jews in Morocco

Aomar Boum

Once a thriving community, by the late 1980s, 240,000 Jews had emigrated from Morocco. Today fewer than 4,000 Jews remain. Despite a centuries-long presence, the Jewish narrative in Moroccan history ... More

Once a thriving community, by the late 1980s, 240,000 Jews had emigrated from Morocco. Today fewer than 4,000 Jews remain. Despite a centuries-long presence, the Jewish narrative in Moroccan history has largely been suppressed through national historical amnesia, Jewish absence, and a growing dismay over the Palestinian conflict. Memories of Absence investigates how four successive generations remember the lost Jewish community. Moroccan attitudes toward the Jewish population have changed over the decades and a new debate has emerged: Where does the Jew fit in the context of an Arab and Islamic monarchy? Can Jews simultaneously be Moroccans and Zionists? Drawing on oral testimony and stories, on rumor and humor, Aomar Boum examines the strong shift in opinion and attitude over the generations and the increasingly anti-Semitic beliefs in younger generations, whose only exposure to Jews has been through international media and national memory.Less

A Nation of Empire: The Ottoman Legacy of Turkish Modernity

Michael Meeker

This study of modern Turkey is the result of many years of ethnographic fieldwork and archival research. The author combines anthropological and historical methods to examine the transition from the ... More

This study of modern Turkey is the result of many years of ethnographic fieldwork and archival research. The author combines anthropological and historical methods to examine the transition from the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic in a major region of the country, the eastern Black Sea coast. His most significant finding is that a state-oriented provincial oligarchy played a key role in successive programs of reform over the course of more than two hundred years of imperial and national history. As the author demonstrates, leading individuals backed by interpersonal networks determined the outcome of the modernizing process, first during the westernizing period of the Empire, then during the revolutionary period of the Republic. To understand how such a state-oriented provincial oligarchy was produced and reproduced along the eastern Black Sea coast, the author integrates a contemporary ethnographic study of public life in towns and villages with a historical study of official documents, consular reports, and travel narratives. The book provides a new understanding of the complexities and contradictions of modern Turkish experience.Less