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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

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

Two Arabs, A Berber, and A Jew: Entangled Lives in Morocco

Lawrence Rosen

Ordinary people have intellectual lives. By following the thoughts and experiences of four Moroccans – two Arabs, a Berber, and a Jew – it is possible to see how their views of history, religion, the ... More

Ordinary people have intellectual lives. By following the thoughts and experiences of four Moroccans – two Arabs, a Berber, and a Jew – it is possible to see how their views of history, religion, the marketplace, and interfaith relations have developed over the course of their lifetimes. In the process one sees how, from a country that a century ago did not have a single paved road and was on the edge of colonial domination, each of these men brings his knowledge to bear on his culture and its transformations. It is also an account of the anthropologist’s entanglement in their world, and as such it demonstrates how, in the process of decades of field research, the analysis of a culture remains foremost even as one’s own life is enmeshed in understanding that of another. The result is an account of a shared intellectual venture, one in which concepts of time and causation, negotiated relationships and contrasting cosmologies highlight the world of everyday life in an Arab society in ways that challenge both Western stereotypes and cultural explanation.Less

Varieties of Muslim Experience: Encounters with Arab Political and Cultural Life

Lawrence Rosen

This book focuses on Arab Muslims and aspects of their lives that are, at first glance, perplexing to Westerners. It ranges over such diverse topics as why Arabs eschew portraiture, why a Muslim ... More

This book focuses on Arab Muslims and aspects of their lives that are, at first glance, perplexing to Westerners. It ranges over such diverse topics as why Arabs eschew portraiture, why a Muslim scientist might be attracted to fundamentalism, and why the Prophet must be protected from blasphemous cartoons. What connects these seemingly disparate features of Arab social, political, and cultural life? The book argues that the common thread is the importance Arabs place on the negotiation of interpersonal relationships—a link that helps to explain actions as seemingly unfathomable as suicide bombing and as elusive as the interpretation of the Quran.Less