Anthropologies of Arab-Majority Societies

Abstract

This article reviews recent anthropological scholarship of Arabmajority societies in relation to geopolitical and theoretical shifts since the end of the Cold War, as well as conjunctures of research location, topic, and theory. Key contributions of the subfield to the larger discipline include interventions into feminist theorizing about agency; theories of modernity; analyses of cultural production/consumption that destabilize the culture concept; approaches to religion that integrate textual traditions with practice, experience, and institutions; and research on violence that emphasizes routinization and affect. Emerging work in the areas of race and ethnicity, secularism, law, human rights, science and technology, and queer studies has the potential to strengthen anthropology of the region as well as to contribute to the discipline more broadly.

Contemporary Youth Research in Arab Mediterranean Countries: Mixing Qualitative and Quantitative Research

“…If youth as a social group has become the undisputable emerging actor in Arab-Majority Societies after the so-called 'Arab Spring', youth as a research category has increasingly called the attention of researchers of all disciplines specialized in the area (Deeb and Winegar, 2012).…”

Being, doing and knowing in the field: reflections on ethnographic practice in the Arab region

“…With the exception of and since the edited volume Arab women in the field (Altorki & Fawzi El-Solh, 1988), this line of inquiry on methodology specifically has been conspicuously side-lined in literature on the region, as political struggles -both historical and emerging, within and beyond its recognized territory-prompted urgent discussion of the politics of representation. While a wealth of compendia addressing theoretical and thematic trends in light of such politics are available to us (Abu-Lughod, 1989;Deeb & Winegar, 2012;Hafez & Slyomovics, 2013;Altorki, 2015), we propose joining this discussion on knowledge production in the region by picking up the thread on ethnography both as a practical, descriptive and ultimately theoretical enterprise as well as a mode of analytical attention (Nader, 2011). We echo Dresch's understanding that 'Middle Eastern fieldwork' is not well described as observation nor as data collection but rather as 'listening for the unsaid' in the everyday and thereby producing sincere and reliable knowledge (2000, pp.…”

Labor and the Urban Landscape: Mobility, Risk, and Possibility amongSyrian Delivery Workers inBeirut

“…Moreover, in their workaday lives, delivery drivers move across a broader class and urban landscape than do most Syrian laborers, an experience that produces certain forms of precariousness that develop from the hazards of scooter driving, encounters with police, and being Syrian in Beirut, but one drivers also conceive of as a marker of status, if not a potential path to upward mobility. Importantly, just as Deeb and Winegar () note that labor movements represent a lacuna in the anthropology of Arab‐majority societies in their recent annual review of the field, the lived experiences of workers who migrate within these societies also remain an underexplored area of research. It is in this regard that I seek to deepen our understanding of Arab intraregional labor migration by considering how broader Arab‐Arab relations of class, culture, and politics shape the lives of workers.…”