Political Geography: Middle East / Topic: Ethnography

Author:: Sarah Anne Minkin
Publication Date:: 03-2022
Content Type:: Working Paper
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: This essay takes as its starting place the “present absentee” status of Palestinians in U.S. and Jewish discourse and engagement with Israel/ Palestine. Ethnographic fieldwork in Jewish American communities demonstrates practices that reiterate a dynamic of Jewish belonging against the presence of Palestinian absence. The essay explores different initiatives to challenge this systemic exclusion of Palestinians, including public programs that amplify Palestinian voices and normalize hearing Palestinians as experts in their own lives and an experimental study group with Jewish American leaders that centers Palestinian perspectives in an effort to cultivate radical empathy. Insights gained in these initiatives point to the importance of articulating fuller visions of community and belonging in engagement with Israel/Palestine.
Topic:: Ethnography, Anti-Semitism, Identity, Belonging, Jewish community, Present Absentee, Empathy, and Political Education
Political Geography:: Middle East, Israel, Palestine, and United States of America

Author:: Sa'ed Atshan
Publication Date:: 12-2021
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: This article traces the rise of anthropological scholarship on Palestine and/ or Palestinians from 2011 through the present, providing readers with a comprehensive bibliography of anthropological publications related to Palestine over that period. Drawing upon the author’s experience as a scholar of Palestine and a publicly engaged anthropologist, it accounts for the factors fueling the proliferation of this domain of knowledge production and the implications this has for representations of individual and collective Palestinian human conditions. The article argues that contemporary anthropological research and writing provide Palestinians with intellectual tools for discursive enfranchisement. Such anthropological engagement also makes possible global solidarity wherein Palestinians are recognized as epistemic equals, rendering legible the heterogeneity and complexities of Palestinian lived experiences.
Topic:: Research, Solidarity, Anthropology, Ethnography, Academia, Epistemology, and Palestinians
Political Geography:: Middle East and Palestine

Author:: Romain Huët
Publication Date:: 03-2015
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Cultures & Conflits
Institution:: Cultures & Conflits
Abstract:: This article presents the findings of a sixty-days ethnographic research in a group of Free Syrian Army’s fighters in Aleppo and its region (July 2012, January 2013) and in a group of Mujahedeen affiliated with the Islamic Front in the Hama region (May 2014, September 2014). Literally embedded in these brigades, our research allowed us to describe "the ordinary life" of these combatants who were engaged into the battle for more than three years. Adopting ethnographical tools (interviews, observations), this article discusses how fighters explain the legitimacy of their engagement and the processes of radicalization.
Topic:: Sociology, Arab Spring, Ethnography, Armed Conflict, and Free Syrian Army
Political Geography:: Middle East and Syria

Refine your search