Insaniyyat Talks: Fall 2022
Crossing a Line: Laws, Violence, and Roadblocks to Palestinian Political Expression
عبور خط: القوانين والعنف والحواجز في طرقات التعبير السياسي الفلسطيني
Wednesday, October 19th, at 7PM (Palestine time) - Anthropologist Amahl Bishara
In Conversation With Anthropologist Rhoda Kanaaneh
Join us via Zoom.
Abstract
Palestinians living on different sides of the Green Line make up approximately one-fifth of Israeli citizens and about four-fifths of the population of the West Bank. In both groups, activists assert that they share a single political struggle for national liberation. Yet, obstacles inhibit their ability to speak to each other and as a collective. Geopolitical boundaries fragment Palestinians into ever smaller groups. Through ethnography in her new book (Stanford, 2022), Bishara enters these distinct environments for political expression and action of Palestinians who carry Israeli citizenship and Palestinians subject to Israeli military occupation in the West Bank, and considers how Palestinians are differently impacted by dispossession, settler colonialism, and militarism.
Bishara looks to sites of political practice—journalism, historical commemorations, street demonstrations, social media, in prison, and on the road—to analyze how Palestinians create collectivities in these varied circumstances. She draws on firsthand research, personal interviews, and public media to examine how people shape and reshape meanings in circumstances of constraint. In considering these different environments for political expression and action, Bishara illuminates how expression is always grounded in place—and how a people can struggle together for liberation even when they cannot join together in protest.
Amahl Bishara, Associate Professor and Chair of Anthropology at Tufts University, looks in her new ethnography (Standord, 2022) to sites of political practice—journalism, historical commemorations, street demonstrations, social media, in prison, and on the road—to analyze how fragmented Palestinians create collectivities in distinct environments, impacted by dispossession, settler colonialism, and militarism.
In conversation with Dr. Rhoda Kanaaneh, anthropologist and author of several books and articles in Palestinian anthropology, who has taught anthropology and gender and sexuality studies at a number of universities, including NYU, Columbia University and most recently Fordham University.
Palestinian Refugees in Syria: The Politics of Identity, Citizenship, and Return in the Wake of the Syrian War
اللاجئون الفلسطينيون في سوريا: سياسات الهوية والمواطنة والعودة إثر الحرب في سوريا
Wednesday, November 23rd at 7PM (Palestine time) – Anthropologist Nell Gabiam
Join us via Zoom
Abstract
Before the ongoing war in Syria, the country’s Palestinian refugee population was considered the most integrated of all Arab host countries. Despite this high level of integration, the majority of Syria’s Palestinian population continued to emphasize their Palestinian identity, to live in areas referred to as “camps,” and to advocate for the right of return to the Palestinian homes. In my earlier research I focused on how UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees) plans to promote sustainable development in Palestinian refugee camps triggered debate and reflection among Palestinian refugees about the meaning of Palestinian refugee identity and the role of the Palestinian refugee camp. Similar debates and reflections have re-emerged in the wake of the now 10-year-long Syrian war, a war that has resulted in the displacement across borders of at least 20% of Syria’s Palestinian population and that has consolidated Europe’s role as a space of exile for Palestinian refugees. A new dimension of these debates is the issue of citizenship, including the acquisition of citizenship within a European country and how it might affect Palestinian identity and the political claims linked to this identity. Drawing on earlier fieldwork in Syria’s Palestinian refugee camps and more recent fieldwork among Palestinians displaced by the war in Syria, I reflect on the politics of identity, citizenship, and return among Palestinian refugees before and in the aftermath of the war in Syria.
From Crown Anemone to Bushy Bean Caper: A Field Guide to Wildflowers of Palestine
من الشــقيق إلى الرطريط: دليل ميداني للنباتات البرية في فلسطين
Wednesday, December 14th, at 7PM (Palestine time) - Anthropologist Rema Hammami
In Conversation with Anthropologist Anne Meneley
Join us via Zoom
Abstract
Palestine encompasses a wide range of ecological zones resulting in a wide diversity of botanic life within its very small geography. In this conversation, anthropologist and life-long wild plant enthusiast, Rema Hammami will discuss her recently published bi-lingual field guide to wildflowers of Palestine: From Crown Anemone to Bushy Bean Caper (Qattan Foundation 2022). Based on more than seven years of field research and covering more than 450 wild plants photographed across Palestine’s diverse geography, the guide engages the botanic, the historical, the cultural, and political life of Palestine’s botanic heritage past and present. In an era when Palestine’s human and non-human life forms (and the relations between them) are increasingly threatened, the book aims to contribute to a wider popular trend already underway: of younger generations of Palestinians who are re-connecting with the natural environment and re-acquainting themselves with their natural heritage.
Rema Hammami is a founding member of the Institute of Women’s Studies at Birzeit University where she is Associate Professor of Anthropology and currently directs the PhD Program in Interdisciplinary Social Sciences. She serves on the editorial boards of the Arab Studies Journal, Jerusalem Quarterly, Middle East Report, Development and Change, and the University of California Press book series, New Directions in Palestine Studies. She is co-editor with Lila Abu Lughod and Nadera Shalhub-Kevorkian, of the forthcoming book, The Cunning of Gender Violence: Feminism and Geopolitics (Duke University Press 2023) and is a founding member of Insaniyyat, the Society of Palestinian Anthropologists.
In conversation with Anne Meneley, Professor of Anthropology at Trent University, whose book on women’s competitive hospitality in Yemen, Tournaments of Value: Sociability and Hierarchy in a Yemeni Town (1996) was released in its 20th Anniversary Edition (2016). She has published in various journals including American Anthropologist, Annual Review of Anthropology, Cultural Anthropology, Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, Ethnos, Food, Culture & Society, Food and Foodways, Gastronomica, History and Anthropology, Jerusalem Quarterly, PoLar, and Religion and Society. Her current work is on the anthropology of consumerism, anthropology of food, particularly olive oil, walking (quantified and nature walking), mobilities, cities, and human-nonhuman interactions in plant materialities.
