Lara Deeb, Jessica Winegar

Anthropology's Politics

Disciplining the Middle East

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Lara Deeb is Professor of Anthropology at Scripps College. Jessica Winegar is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Northwestern University.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Stanford University Press
• Seitenzahl: 288
• Erscheinungstermin: 11. November 2015
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 231mm x 152mm x 20mm
• Gewicht: 499g
• ISBN-13: 9780804781237
• ISBN-10: 0804781230
• Artikelnr.: 42796434

Autorenporträt

Lara Deeb is Professor of Anthropology at Scripps College. Jessica Winegar is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Northwestern University.

Inhaltsangabe

Contents and Abstracts
Introduction: Academics and Politics
chapter abstract
The introduction highlights key tensions at the core of academic practice
in the context of rising U.S. imperialism and neoliberalism since World War
II. It discusses the national and global forces - political, economic, and
social - which have given rise to these tensions, marked by gender,
race/ethnicity, class, generation and political viewpoints. Pointing out
how the study of the Middle East encapsulates these frictions, it argues
that they play a central role in both enabling and inhibiting critical
scholarship and teaching.
1The Politics of Becoming a Scholar
chapter abstract
This chapter examines the multiple reasons that individuals become scholars
of both anthropology and the Middle East and North Africa, in relationship
to U.S. engagements with the region. Through analysis of life histories, it
tracks the gendered, racialized, classed, and generational aspects of this
process. Anthropologists choose MENA and the discipline to work out
tensions between dominant views of the region (e.g., Orientalist fantasy
vs. terrorist hotbed) and personal experiences of privilege or racism, as
well as general experiences of being out of place in dominant society.
2The Politics of Making it Through Graduate School
chapter abstract
This chapter examines the perils of academic professionalization and
socialization. Using interview and other data related to graduate school
and job market experiences, it shows how Middle East anthropologists have,
over time, faced significant sexism, racism, and compulsory Zionism in
their graduate training. As a result, many have learned to navigate
gendered and racialized disciplinary and academic frameworks for
legitimizing (or delegitimizing) scholarly work. Such frameworks are
fraught with pressures that lead to the development of strategies of
self-preservation, including self-monitoring and self-censorship, that
persist across generations and become especially intense during the War on
Terror.
3Politicized Conflicts on the Job
chapter abstract
This chapter focuses on how Middle East scholars engage different publics,
including students and lecture audiences, as well as publishers in both
academic and non-academic venues. It argues that they face racialized and
gendered challenges and attacks influenced by national and global politics,
and that college and university administrators cannot be counted on to
support them. Scholars thus find themselves carefully enacting the
self-protection practices into which they were socialized as graduate
students. It shows how when colleges and universities let external
pressures affect the learning process, many faculty become reluctant to
share their expertise on the region, yet many also find ways to push
against this silencing. U.S. involvement in the region has thus created an
opportunity and imperative to share academic knowledge, juxtaposed with the
recognition that doing so may come at serious cost to one's professional
life.
4Institutionalizing MENA Anthropology, 1945-2001
chapter abstract
This chapter examines the institutionalization of Middle East anthropology
during the period of the region's move to the center of U.S. foreign
interests - from the end of World War II, through Vietnam, up until the War
on Terror. It shows how this institutionalization embodied, yet never
resolved, tensions at the heart of anthropology regarding the ethics of
government and military engagement, relationships with research subjects,
and political advocacy. Such tensions transform over time in relationship
to increasing bureaucratic proceduralism and shifting demographics of
gender and generation, which also impact how and if regional expertise is
represented in the larger discipline. It argues that the Middle East was
treated as a disciplinary exception, both as an area of research interest
and as an exception to anthropology's longstanding commitment to the
oppressed and marginalized.
5The War on Terror, Israel, and Anthropology's Institutional Politics
chapter abstract
This chapter examines how with the War on Terror, MENA anthropologists'
academic institutional commitments face new challenges, from the
discipline's expanding relationships with the U.S. state, including in the
government, intelligence, and military realms. It argues that MENA
anthropologists have continued to be excluded from the discipline's
discussions about anthropology's engagements with various military
conflicts in the region - from Israel-Palestine to the Iraq War, from
whether or not to condemn state violence against civilians to whether or
not to participate in clandestine and/or military research. Bureaucratic
proceduralism has continued to be a tool of depoliticization in the
discipline.
Conclusion: Undisciplining Anthropology's Politics
chapter abstract
This chapter explores the potential future of academic engagement with the
Middle East within anthropology and in higher education more broadly.
Focusing on the movement to boycott Israeli academic institutions complicit
in the occupation of Palestine, it argues that the tensions surrounding the
Middle East, political advocacy, and generation persist in anthropology.
Yet it also suggests that a new era of public advocacy may be emerging that
links Middle East human rights struggles with those in other regions,
including in the U.S.