Nina Gren

Occupied Lives (eBook, ePUB)

Maintaining Integrity in a Palestinian Refugee Camp in the West Bank

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

Intense media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict does not necessarily enhance one's knowledge or understanding of the Palestinians; on the contrary they are more often than not reduced to either victims or perpetrators. Similarly, while many academic studies devote considerable effort to analyzing the political situation in the occupied territories, there have been few sophisticated case studies of Palestinian refugees living under Israeli rule. An ethnographic study of Palestinian refugees in Dheisheh refugee camp, just south of Bethlehem, Occupied Lives looks closely at the attempts of the camp inhabitants to survive and bounce back from the profound effects of political violence and Israeli military occupation on their daily lives. Based on the author's extensive fieldwork conducted inside the camp, including a year during 2003-2004 when she lived in Dheisheh, this study examines the daily efforts of camp inhabitants to secure survival and meaning during the period of the al-Aqsa Intifada. It argues that the political developments and experiences of extensive violence at the time, which left most refugees outside of direct activism, caused many camp inhabitants to disengage from traditional forms of politics. Instead, they became involved in alternative practices aimed at maintaining their sense of social worth and integrity, by focusing on processes to establish a 'normal' order, social continuity, and morality. Nina Gren explores these processes and the ambiguities and dilemmas that necessarily arose from them and the ways in which the political and the existential are often intertwined in Dheisheh. Combining theoretical readings with field-based case study, this book will be invaluable to scholars and students of social anthropology, sociology, international relations, refugee studies, religious studies, and Middle East studies, as well as to anyone with an interest in the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Verso
• Seitenzahl: 250
• Erscheinungstermin: 20. November 2015
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781617976728
• Artikelnr.: 56825894

Autorenporträt

Nina Gren holds a PhD in social anthropology and is employed as a researcher at the Centre of Middle Eastern Studies, Lund University and as an external lecturer at the Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen. Her research focuses on Palestinian refugees and diaspora, social memory, gender, home, and politics.

Inhaltsangabe

Preface
Acknowledgments
A Note on Transliteration
Maps
Chronology of Events
Ch. 1. Introduction
-Focus and Purpose
-Being Camp Refugees under Violent Occupation
-Integrity and Constrained Agency
-Why a Focus on Everyday Life?
-'Normality' in a Violent and Prolonged Refugee Situation
-Social Continuity: New Homes and Re-established Family Lines
-A Moral Crisis on Repeat
-Doing Fieldwork in Dheisheh
-Overview of Chapters
Ch. 2. Dheisheh as a Social and Political Place
-Introduction
-The Order of Things in Dheisheh
-Earlier Political Affiliations and Activism in Dheisheh
-Political Disengagement at the Time of Fieldwork
-Concluding Remarks
Ch. 3. Living with Violence and Insecurity
-Introduction
-Experiencing On-going Crisis
-The Presence of Extraordinary Deaths
-Extending the Limits of Normality
-Remaining Patient and Hopeful
-Negotiating Trust
-Concluding Remarks
Ch. 4. The Making of New Homes
-Introduction
-To Build a House is to Make a Life
-Imprisonment Delaying Life
-Children as Normality, Resistance and Recovery
-Reframing Home to a Political Stage
-Getting by Together
-Concluding Remarks
Ch. 5. Reconstituting a Moral Order
-Introduction
-A Chain of Catastrophic Events
-The Camp as a Moral Community
-Palestinian Moral Superiority and the Immoral Others
-Moral Contamination
-A Shaken Political Morality
-Concluding Remarks
Ch. 6. Concluding Discussion
-Maintaining Integrity in the Face of Violation
-Struggling Against Temporariness
-Having a Life or Being a True Patriot?
-How May One Remain a Political Subject?
-Existence and Politics
References
Index