The dispossession and forced migration of nearly 50 per cent of Syria's population has produced the greatest refugee crisis since World War II. This new book places the current displacement within the context of the widespread migrations that have indelibly marked the region throughout the last 150 years. Syria itself has harbored millions from its neighboring lands, and Syrian society has been shaped by these diasporas. Dawn Chatty explores how modern Syria came to be a refuge state, focu...

Dispossession and forced migration in the Middle East remain even today significant elements of contemporary life in the region. Dawn Chatty's book traces the history of those who, as a reconstructed Middle East emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century, found themselves cut off from their homelands, refugees in a new world, with borders created out of the ashes of war and the fall of the Ottoman Empire. As an anthropologist, the author is particularly sensitive to individual exper...

A powerful contribution to ongoing debates on refugees, borders, and camps and the politics of waitingThe Lebanese–Syrian borderscape is predominantly porous and ambiguous, without an actual border control, and is incessantly contested. Repeated internal displacement and refugee crises have been a pervading political condition in Lebanon since the early twentieth century, but the most destabilizing refugee and displacement crisis stems from the regional influx into...

An intimate portrayal of protest through images during the Syrian warNever before in history has a conflict been so extensively filmed by its own warring parties, generating a wealth of sound and image. From the start of the Syrian revolt in 2011, several million videos were posted online by demonstrators, activists, and militant fighters. Their prime objective was to work around the media blackout imposed by the regime of Bashar al-Assad, as well as its calling in...

Comment un modeste quartier résidentiel, né à l’époque du Mandat français, est-il devenu un des centres de la vie intellectuelle et politique syrienne des années 1950-1960, puis un conservatoire de l’architecture et de l’espace urbains modernes ainsi que le principal lieu de commerces et de loisirs du centre ville de Damas ? Chaalan, quartier cosmopolite et espace de modernité sociale et architecturale dès sa formation, occupe en effet une place particulière dans l’évolution générale de la...

The substantially revised and updated third edition of Everyday Life in the Muslim Middle East focuses on the experiences of ordinary men, women, and children from the region. Readers will gain a grassroots appreciation of Middle East life, culture, and society that recognizes the impact of wars and uprisings as well as changes to Islamic practice due to advances in technology. The book also explores the influence of social media on politics and labor relations and the changing status of w...

This volume combines ethnographic accounts of fieldwork with overviews of recent anthropological literature about the region on topics such as Islam, gender, youth, and new media. It addresses contemporary debates about modernity, nation building, and the link between the ideology of power and the production of knowledge. Contributors include established and emerging scholars known for the depth and quality of their ethnographic writing and for their interventions in current theory.

The Sahrawi and Afghan refugee youth in the Middle East have been stereotyped regionally and internationally: some have been objectified as passive victims; others have become the beneficiaries of numerous humanitarian aid packages which presume the primacy of the Western model of child development. This book compares and contrasts both the stereotypes and Western-based models of humanitarian assistance among Sahrawi youth with the lack of programming and near total self-sufficiency of Afg...

The second edition of this remarkable volume updates the immense advances in policy and soft international law with regards to the rights of mobile indigenous peoples in conservation.The contributors to this book examine the interface between conservation and indigenous communities who are forced to move or settle elsewhere to accommodate environmental policies and biodiversity concerns. The case studies investigate successful and not so successful community-manage...

With the creation of the modern nation-state in the Middle East and North Africa, women have been and continue to be manipulated to represent a cultural ideal of perfect womanhood. This is often greatly at odds with the realities of women's lives and aspirations. However, individual women, through careful manipulation of gender relations, often succeed in casting aside the culturally accepted bonds which diminish their lives.Even so, women in groups are deemed unacceptable unless they conf...

This edited collection situates the migration of children and young people into Europe within a global framework of analysis and provides a holistic perspective that encompasses cultural media, ethnographic research and policy analysis. Drawing on a unique study of young unaccompanied migrants who subsequently became ‘adult’ within the UK and Italy, it examines their different trajectories and how they were impacted by their ability to secure legal status. Divided into three interlinked se...