The Poetics of Military Occupation: Mzeina Allegories of Bedouin Identity Under Israeli and Egyptian Rule - Softcover

Lavie, Smadar

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520075528 ISBN 13: 9780520075528

Publisher: University of California Press, 1991

Synopsis

The romantic, nineteenth-century image of the Bedouin as fierce, independent nomads on camelback racing across an endless desert persists in the West. Yet since the era of Ottoman rule, the Mzeina Bedouin of the South Sinai desert have lived under foreign occupation. For the last forty years Bedouin land has been a political football, tossed back and forth between Israel and Egypt at least five times.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

"Smadar Lavie, in creating this beautiful book, has accomplished something wonderful. An Iraeli Jew, she sojourned among the Mzeina Bedouin with an open heart and comprehending spirit . . . [and] deeply engaged their way of life and their oral literature."--Maxime Rodinson, Directeur d'Etudes, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes

"Speaking about a region where conflict, for all involved, has deepened divisions, separating 'us' from 'them, ' Smadar Lavie courageously seeks out the paradoxes and ambiguities in everyday life."--Renato Rosaldo, Stanford University

About the Author:

Smadar Lavie is a visiting fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, U. C. Berkeley, and a visiting professor at the Institute for Social Science in the 21st Century, University College Cork. Lavie spent nine years as Assistant and Associate Professor of Anthropology at the U. C. Davis. She specializes in the Anthropology of Egypt, Palestine, and the State of Israel, with emphasis on issues of race, gender, and religion. She authored The Poetics of Military Occupation, recipient of the Honorable Mention for the Victor Turner Award for Ethnographic Writing. She co-edited Creativity/Anthropology and Displacement, Diaspora, and Geographies of Identity. Lavie won the American Studies Association¹s 2009 Gloria Anzaldúa Prize and the 2013 "Heart at East" Honor Plaque for scholarship and service on behalf of Mizraḥi communities in the State of Israel.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0520075528
• ISBN 13: 9780520075528
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 412