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“An exciting and intellectually fluent work that avoids most of the clichés of contemporary anthropological thought.” —Gregory Starrett, coeditor of Teaching Islam: Textbooks and Religion in the Middle East

Despite a rich history of ethnographic research in Middle Eastern societies, the region is frequently portrayed as marginal to anthropology. The contributors to this volume reject this view and show how the Middle East is in fact vital to the discipline and how Middle Eastern anthropologists have developed theoretical and methodological tools that address and challenge the region’s political, ethical, and intellectual concerns.

The contributors are students of Paul Dresch, an anthropologist known for his incisive work on Yemeni tribalism and customary law. As they expand upon his ideas and insights, these essays ask questions that have long preoccupied anthropologists, such as how do place, point of view, and style combine to create viable bodies of knowledge; how is scholarship shaped by the historical context in which it is located; and why have duration and form become so problematic in the study of Middle Eastern societies?

Special attention is given to understanding local terms, contested knowledge claims, what remains unseen and unsaid in social life, and to cultural patterns and practices that persist over long stretches of time, seeming to predate and outlast events. Ranging from Morocco to India, these essays offer critical but sensitive approaches to cultural difference and the distinctiveness of the anthropological project in the Middle East.

Indiana University Press

Public Cultures of the Middle East and North Africa

The Scandal of Continuity in Middle East Anthropology: Form, Duration, Difference

Jane E. Goodman

An anthropologist recounts an Algerian theater troupe’s 2016 US tour, detailing the highs and lows of the cross-cultural exchange.

Staging Cultural Encounters tells stories about performances of cultural encounter and cultural exchange during the US tour of the Algerian theater troupe Istijmam Culturelle in 2016. Jane E. Goodman follows the Algerian theater troupe as they prepare for and then tour the United States under the auspices of the Center Stage program, sponsored by the US State Department to promote cross-cultural dialogue and understanding.

The title of the play Istijmam produced was translated as “Apples,” written by Abdelkader Alloula, a renowned Algerian playwright, director, and actor who was assassinated in 1994. Goodman take readers on tour with the actors as they move from the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. to the large state universities of New Hampshire and Indiana, and from a tiny community theater in small-town New England to the stage of the avant-garde La MaMa Theater in New York City.

Staging Cultural Encounters takes up conundrums of cross-cultural encounter, challenges in translation, and audience reception, offering a frank account of the encounters with American audiences and the successes and disappointments of the experience of exchange.

“This is a ground-breaking and beautifully written work in the anthropology of performance as well as an intervention in experimental anthropology, wherein theater play is both ethnographic subject and method. The book is accompanied by a detailed website of audio-visual examples, making this a hyper-text, a multi-modal way of knowing. It is a tour de force.” —Deborah Kapchan, author of Theorizing Sound Writing

“In this engrossing ethnography [Goodman] brings to life the excitements, hopes and disappointments of their staged cultural encounter. We are shown in fascinating detail what lies behind and before the tour: the actors’ intense disciplined dedication to avant garde theatre practices, the political and economic constraints of contemporary Algeria, the labour of translation, the performance traditions of the Algerian market place. . . . Subtle, searching and empathetic, with touches of wry humor, Goodman’s study will become an instant classic in anthropology, theatre and performance studies.” —Karin Barber, London School of Economics, author of A History of African Popular Culture

Staging Cultural Encounters: Algerian Actors Tour the United States

Nell Gabiam

With a focus on the residents of three refugee camps, “Gabiam’s nuanced study of Syria’s Palestinian community is an engaging and informative read” (Journal of Palestine Studies).

The Politics of Suffering examines the confluence of international aid, humanitarian relief, and economic development within the space of the Palestinian refugee camp. Nell Gabiam describes the interactions between UNRWA, the United Nations agency charged with providing assistance to Palestinians since the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, and residents of three camps in Syria. Over time, UNRWA’s management of the camps reveals a shift from an emphasis on humanitarian aid to promotion of self-sufficiency and integration of refugees within their host society.

Gabiam’s analysis captures two forces in tension within the camps: politics of suffering that serves to keep alive the discourse around the Palestinian right of return; and politics of citizenship expressed through development projects that seek to close the divide between the camp and the city. Gabiam also offers compelling insights into the plight of Palestinians before and during the Syrian war, which has led to devastation in the camps and massive displacement of their populations.

The Politics of Suffering: Syria's Palestinian Refugee Camps

Zuzanna Olszewska

An ethnographic study of poetry and its place among young Afghan refugees living in urban regions of Iran.

The Pearl of Dari takes us into the heart of Afghan refugee life in the Islamic Republic of Iran through a rich ethnographic portrait of the circle of poets and intellectuals who make up the “Pearl of Dari” cultural organization. Dari is the name by which the Persian language is known in Afghanistan. Afghan immigrants in Iran, refugees from the Soviet war in Afghanistan, are marginalized and restricted to menial jobs and lower-income neighborhoods. Ambitious and creative refugee youth have taken to writing poetry to tell their story as a group and to improve their prospects for a better life. At the same time, they are altering the ancient tradition of Persian love poetry by promoting greater individualism in realms such as gender and marriage. Zuzanna Olszewska offers compelling insights into the social life of poetry in an urban, Middle Eastern setting largely unknown in the West.

Praise for The Pearl of Dari

“The Pearl of Dari offers the reader the precious pearl of a genuine reading and learning experience. Zuzanna Olszewska combines solid scholarship with uplifting sensitivity to create a lively narrative replete with joyful discoveries of genuine personhood, agency, and humanity in the midst of multiple marginalities, an account of growing up amid layer upon layer of tension, bravely defying overwhelming odds.” —Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak, University of Maryland

“Olszewska’s virtuoso study explores how young progressive Afghan intellectuals use the writing and performance of poetry as a prestigious discourse, to sustain community and claim dignity in exile. Her work makes an essential new contribution in Persian literary studies, ethnolinguistics, and refugee cultural studies worldwide.” —Margaret A. Mills, Professor Emerita of Persian and Folklore, Ohio State University

The Pearl of Dari: Poetry and Personhood among Young Afghans in Iran

Mara A. Leichtman

Mara A. Leichtman offers an in-depth study of Shi'i Islam in two very different communities in Senegal: the well-established Lebanese diaspora and Senegalese "converts" from Sunni to Shi'i Islam of recent decades. Sharing a minority religious status in a predominantly Sunni Muslim country, each group is cosmopolitan in its own way. Leichtman provides new insights into the everyday lives of Shi'i Muslims in Africa and the dynamics of local and global Islam. She explores the influence of Hizbullah and Islamic reformist movements, and offers a corrective to prevailing views of Sunni-Shi'i hostility, demonstrating that religious coexistence is possible in a context such as Senegal.

Shi'i Cosmopolitanisms in Africa: Lebanese Migration and Religious Conversion in Senegal

Samuli Schielke

“Illustrates the complex and contradictory impact of Muslim revivalism on the expectations and hopes of Egyptian youth . . . Recommended.” —Choice

Against the backdrop of the revolutionary uprisings of 2011–2013, Samuli Schielke asks how ordinary Egyptians confront the great promises and grand schemes of religious commitment, middle class respectability, romantic love, and political ideologies in their daily lives, and how they make sense of the existential anxieties and stalled expectations that inevitably accompany such hopes. Drawing on many years of study in Egypt and the life stories of rural, lower-middle-class men before and after the revolution, Schielke views recent events in ways that are both historically deep and personal. Schielke challenges prevailing views of Muslim piety, showing that religious lives are part of a much more complex lived experience.

“This wonderful book brings fresh insights into the anthropology of hope in general and Egypt in particular. It makes a rewarding read for scholars interested in how life and all its ambiguities and aspirations unfold under changing notions of religious commitment, new regimes of circulation, and emerging patterns of consumption.” —American Anthropologist

“An altogether innovative, compelling, and sensitive perspective on what is perhaps the most important question facing young people in the Middle East today: how to make a life in rapidly shifting, complex times whose future is uncertain.” —Jessica Winegar, author of Creative Reckonings: The Politics of Art and Culture in Contemporary Egypt

Egypt in the Future Tense: Hope, Frustration, and Ambivalence before and after 2011

Connections between Brazil and the Middle East have a long history, but the importance of these interactions has been heightened in recent years by the rise of Brazil as a champion of the global south, mass mobilizations in the Arab world and South America, and the cultural renaissance of Afro-descendant Muslims and Arab ethnic identities in the Americas. This groundbreaking collection traces the links between these two regions, describes the emergence of new South-South solidarities, and offers new methodologies for the study of transnationalism, global culture, and international relations.

The Middle East and Brazil: Perspectives on the New Global South

Emilio Spadola

“A theoretically sophisticated reading of the mediation of social and spiritual relationships in Fez.” —Gregory Starrett, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

The sacred calls that summon believers are the focus of this study of religion and power in Fez, Morocco. Focusing on how dissemination of the call through mass media has transformed understandings of piety and authority, Emilio Spadola details the new importance of once-marginal Sufi practices such as spirit trance and exorcism for ordinary believers, the state, and Islamist movements. The Calls of Islam offers new ethnographic perspectives on ritual, performance, and media in the Muslim world.

“A superb demonstration of anthropological analysis at its best. A major contribution to our understanding of the complicated nexus of religion, nationalism, and technology.” —Charles Hirschkind, author of The Feeling of History

“An instructive contribution to the literature on Morocco’s socio-cultural and political idiosyncrasies.” —Review of Middle East Studies

“Spadola’s dense but short study . . . manages admirably well to deal with a complex topic, skillfully balancing ethnographic and analytic elements.” —American Ethnologist

“[The] tension between social classes is subtly drawn out throughout this exemplary book, and Spadola also does a magnificent job tying local, national, and transnational contexts together. Although writing about a very specific place and time, he manages to capture post-millennial anxieties about Islam and belonging that are far reaching in their scope.” —Contemporary Islam

“Spadola’s book is theoretically sophisticated, skillfully constructed, and rich in detail.” —Journal of Religion

The Calls of Islam: Sufis, Islamists, and Mass Mediation in Urban Morocco

“[A] monumental contribution to Palestinian studies . . . an indispensable resource for those interested in Middle Eastern folklore, music, history, and politics.” —Journal of Folklore Research

 Drawing from a long history of indigenous traditions and incorporating diverse influences of surrounding cultures, music in Palestine and among the millions of Palestinians in diaspora offers a unique window on cultural and political events of the past century.

 From the perspective of scholars, performers, composers, and activists, Palestinian Music and Song examines the many ways in which music has been a force of representation, nation building, and social action. From the turn of the twentieth century, when Palestine became an exotic object of fascination for missionaries and scholars, to twenty-first-century transnational collaborations in hip hop and new media, this volume traces the conflicting dynamics of history and tradition, innovation and change, power and resistance.