Reading Response: May 18

Today's theme... well, there isn't one coherent theme. This is probably appropriate to the times, as the events in and around Israel/Palestine recently don't necessarily have one coherent theme, either. What I mean by that is that the Palestinians who demonstrated at the Syria-Israel border and the Lebanon-Israel border did different things, for different reasons, from protesters in East Jerusalem. Yes, the end goal of everyone might be the same, but the methods and the paths to that goal were different.

So what am I talking about?

Alona Nitzan-Shiftan's chapter "Seizing locality in Jerusalem," from the title alone, would appear to a geographer as a very straightforward tract on how different groups claim space in the city. But, obviously, she wasn't writing it for geographers, because the chapter instead revolves around the co-opting of "traditional" (or "native") Palestinian architecture by a movement of Israeli architects. However, what Nitzan-Shiftan sees as an inversion of structure and form imposed upon the landscape--wherein conqueror takes up the symbols and methods of the conquered--is actually, to me, a straightforward co-opting of culture by a colonial power. We see numerous examples of this aping of indigenous culture by colonial powers, producing something hybridized and not truly "indigenous" or similar to culture in the imperial heartland. Look at the architecture of the British Raj in cities like Lahore, Delhi, and Calcutta; the "mission" style in the American southwest; the baths and seraglios created by Turks (Seljuk, Ottoman, Mamluke, etc.) in Arab cities like Cairo. The creation of a colonizer/colonized fusion of culture, often expressed in architecture, to me seems to be a common occurrence.

Nitzan-Shiftan reads the sabra movement, in its abandonment of Modernism and its taking up of an "Arab" ideal, as something of an unconscious colonial apologia--as Modernist architecture looked/felt alien to the landscape of the state of Israel, the sabra designers sought a more authentic, a more fitting style for the land. Of course, this "fit" and "authenticity" was expressed in the native dwellings of indigenous Palestinians, and so by taking up this more "authentic" style of design, the sabra architects were actually affirming the place of Arabs, the "belonging-ness" of Palestinians to the landscape.

Though maybe I'm reading too much into the chapter--Nitzan-Shiftan repeatedly alludes to sabra architects and their efforts as a "yearning to be 'of the place,'" that is, the form and design ideas aped native building (or evoked Biblical or Mediterranean themes) because of the dislocation of Diasporic Jewry, and the need for Israelis to feel at home in what was, to them, the ancient homeland they had lost. A more cynical reading might argue that this "yearning to be 'of the place'" is coterminous with a need to establish "facts on the ground," that is, the more "authentic" the look and feel of a community, the more valid one's claim to the land, stretching back to antiquity.

I've noticed that I'm using a lot of quotation marks, commas, and shifty, vague terms like "look" and "feel." And then, there in that sentence, I've done it again: more commas and more quotation marks. That's a central problem when we're dealing with something ans inchoate and slippery as "culture." And isn't architecture, in a very fundamental sense, an expression of culture? Taking up notions of how a nation should build and what suits the landscape as well as human function, and then creating tangible icons of the nation and how its people function--that is architecture. Based on, and reflecting... or perhaps refracting culture. Then again, what is "culture"? More slipperiness and ambiguity.

I will say this: architecture is both an expression of, and expressive to, a nation's culture. Israel today sees itself as a fusion of Occident and Orient, and this is at least partly due to the uptake of native and Western design. Sort of like Disney's Epcot Center, or the Strip in Las Vegas--where you can walk through little compartmentalized versions of a dozen different countries, each designated by a style of design and some recognizably "authentic" landmarks--you can make a place feel a certain way, simply by building that way. To be clearer: build a shopping mall with stone, throw a few arches and shady promenades, maybe a dome somewhere, and it is "Middle Eastern." The shopping mall doesn't have to be in the Middle East, or evoke the Middle East for any purpose other than to divert shoppers' imaginations, so they feel like they're buying an "authentic" Middle East experience instead of just a new pair of shoes. One shopping mall designed in such a fashion is a gimmick; a hundred shopping malls, apartment complexes, suburban communities, and governmental buildings designed this way create a cultural notion that the place is the Middle East.

And so it went with the sabra architects. They were as much creating a connection with the landscape as they were forging an Israeli identity, an identity of having one foot in the West and one in the East. I would argue we hear that identity expressed every time someone invokes Israel as "the only democracy in the Middle East." But that's a can of worms for another occasion.

Oh, one last bit on Nitzan-Shiftan: for anyone interested in doing a doctoral dissertation, take careful note of the last block of text from the lead paragraph on page 232:

Why should architects Israelize a contested city with architectural forms of another nation? Moreoever, once such espousal of the Palestinian vernacular took place, what were the mechanisms that enabled Israelis to separate it from the culture that produced it in order to make it constitutive of 'an Israeli architecture'?

Those are research questions, folks--the big, sprawling, "what is going on?" and "under what conditions can this happen?" questions that you can build an entire dissertation around.

Reading Response: May 16

Sadly, the first thing that struck me when reading "Old and new walls in Jerusalem" was that the editing process at Political Geography must have gone haywire. PG is the flagship journal of political geography, and one of the most important and influential journals in human geography. But Klein's article was full of grammatical & spelling errors, and it was organized poorly (not to mention the literature review section was hard to follow and didn't really say much about how Klein was presenting his argument). Ansi Paasi is a very prolific and well-known geographer who specializes in borders and identity, and repeated misspellings of his name (Klein called him "Passi" in the text and in his references) really grated on me.

That said, Klein's stumbling through the rich trove of geographic thought on borders and boundaries did communicate some important ideas--even if others have articulated these ideas more clearly and trenchantly elsewhere (e.g., Paasi 1998, Newman 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006... in fact, come to think of it, it's odd that David Newman isn't cited more in Klein's paper, as Newman not only is a preeminent geographer, editor-in-chief of Geopolitics, and a scholar who writes exhaustively on borders and boundaries, but Newman is a faculty member at Ben-Gurion University, and frequently writes on Israel/Palestine issues--including via Op-Ed pieces in the Jerusalem Post).

First, borders aren't simply locations in space: they are social processes, and even further, they are social institutions. Saying that, we can posit the reverse, as well: social processes can be conceptualized as borders. Klein touches on this, particularly when he discusses the ethnic divisions within health services (both for employees and for patients) in the Jerusalem metropolitan area. It's worth noting that most, if not all, of the border processes Klein discusses are one-way: for example, Klein notes that it is not an uncommon occurrence for a Palestinian doctor to work in a hospital in West Jerusalem, but it would be very unusual for an Israeli/Jewish doctor to work in East Jerusalem.

Next, Klein touches on the notion that borders are far from static--they are fluid and change with the political climate. So, when a Likud administration is in power, there are stronger barriers (and more of them) to movement and circulation (circulation being an old geography term, borrowed from French, that encompasses economic and social activity), and then when a Labor or Kadima administration comes in, those barriers change.

It is interesting to note that Klein sees the "taboo" on a united Jerusalem being broken through permanent status negotiations. I was never aware that serious talks were undertaken regarding Jerusalem and its final borders--I had thought that Jerusalem was such a complex, contentious issue that it had been pushed to the end of negotiations, that is, after all the other stuff got resolved. I suppose that the mere mention of a possible end-state for Jerusalem would indeed seem to break the "taboo," but the latest Netanyahu administration would seem to have re-instated the taboo. And, given progress on settlements surrounding Jerusalem, and evictions/demolitions in East Jerusalem, it would appear that Netanyahu wants that taboo to be stronger than ever--to the point of never being broached again.

I found it interesting when Mount Scopus was brought up--I had taken a bus tour of Jerusalem, and the narration on the tour was (expectedly) jingoistic: the Israelis on Mount Scopus were portrayed as noble survivors, standing watch and operating the hospital under the most trying conditions, holding out against Jordanian/Palestinian violence and recriminations (I find that this mind-set informs a lot of the settlement movement, as well). But if/when Palestinians "hold out" against the Israeli siege, their portrayed as stubborn refuseniks, obstacles, and/or cowards.

The final point in Klein I feel worth noting is the total lack of responsibility Israel takes in regards to East Jerusalem. Treating Palestinian areas like slums, withholding trash removal and policing Palestinian areas only to keep crime and violence from reaching Jewish areas (and not to enforce laws and pursue criminals who engage in Palestinian-on-Palestinian violence)... it smacks of the experience of Diasporic Jews in European ghettos.

Klein, along with Bernard Avishai, comes across as scathingly opposed to the occupation and the continued Israeli appropriation of East Jerusalem. It's something that amazes me in politics outside America--in the US, such strident opposition to the regime, particularly concerning national security, would provoke such a backlash (by the true 'patriots') as to all but stifle any real debate on the issue. In Israel, however, there are loud & prominent voices opposing the occupation and the subjugation of the Palestinians, and these voices are not silenced or even seemingly discriminated against. Of course, at times it seems that advocates of Palestinian rights are shouting their voices raw and accomplishing little. But at least there is a vocal opposition to power.

Peteet's study of graffiti is notable for a host of reasons, not the least of which is her conceptualization of graffiti as not only a vehicle of communication, but a shaper of those who participate in it (the viewer and the writer). But beyond that, I find it troubling that graffiti was so dangerous. I did not know how deep the oppression was before Oslo; I didn't know that Israeli censorship applied to all "publications... brought in, sold, printed, or kept in someone's possession in the West Bank unless a permit has been obtained for them."

That is stunning. Any publication or writing was subject to this censorship and confiscation.

I'll just let that sit there. The fact that if the IDF found a book that they didn't like--for any reason--they could confiscate it (and charge the owner), as every publication, under this order, required a permit. Even a copy of the J-Post, or Ha'aretz (more likely the latter than the former), would thus require a permit. This order by itself provided carte blanche to the IDF to stop and arrest just about any Palestinian. All you have to do is find one bit of printed paper--a pamphlet, a map, a photocopy of some document--and they've violated the order.

OK, aside from that...

Peteet is analyzing something critically important; though it isn't too much of an innovative thought to see graffiti (particularly in the Occupied Territories) as a form of political expression and even political resistance, it is an innovation to see that graffiti as a self-reflexive dialogue within the Palestinian community. It's all too easy, all too common, for us (as scholars, or just as people) to see political movements as monolithic: e.g., it's "the Israelis" versus "the Palestinians." Peteet shows that the Palestinian resistance wasn't singular; it was multifarious and fractious and contentious, even as it was united in opposition to the occupation.

There's a lot more to Peteet, but I don't want to beat a dead horse on this (plus, this is a long post already). I'd just suggest that anyone interested check out more graffiti.

Reading Response: May 9

I think in my hyperverbosity (my spell-check is telling me that I made up that word, and if so, hooray!) in my questions for Galit Hasan-Rokem expresses a lot of my response to the readings for today, and I don't want to repeat myself too much here.

So I'll talk a bit about recent history and its absence from narratives about Jerusalem.

Like we noticed in Armstrong, it seems that the recent history of Israel/Palestine is often given short shrift: the ancient history, with its religious monuments and milestones, takes up much of our understanding of the region and the current situation. Alternatively, we think about the wars of the 20th century--1948, the Suez Crisis, the Six Days War, 1973, the invasion of south Lebanon, the (first) Intifadeh...and, more recently, the Al-Aqsa Intifadeh, 2006, and Operation: Cast Lead.

What's lost is much of the history during the reconciliations and negotiations of the 1990s. It's as if history didn't happen when there was hope and potential for a peaceful resolution. When the 1990s do get mentioned, it's often in the context of obstacles to the peace process--cafe & bus bombings, settlement construction--as if history is only made up of a series of "flashbulb memories" and spinning newspaper headlines.

Which is why Suad Amiry's vignettes are so critical to understanding not just the lives of Palestinians under occupation (and during closure), but this portion of "missing" history. As an aside, it really threw me off-balance, reading Amiry and recognizing landmarks and roads in Ram'allah.

What is most important is that Amiry is filling in the gaps in the dominant narratives of Israel/Palestine--not just the gaps in history, "filling up" the void of the 1990s, but also "filling in" the void of what people's lives were like--particularly Palestinian lives--on a day-to-day basis.

Reading Response: May 2

The three chapters from Salim Tamari's Mountain against the Sea provide a brilliant counterpoint to top-down political narratives about the Israel/Palestine dispute. One of the primary weaknesses of the dominant political narrative is one of scale: the actors in the dispute are groups and their political leadership; Tamari's chapters re-introduce the individual as the site and the object of these larger geopolitical narratives. In other words, Tamari skillfully demonstrates the lived experiences of people who were the pawns of geopolitics, the very people who were most affected by the dispute, querying sources and individuals far removed from the circles of power, from the typical descriptions of Jerusalem before and after the 1948 war. What results is a very different picture of Israeli/Palestinian relations--indeed, a completely different topography of Jerusalem.

In chapter 5, "A Musician's Lot," Tamari lays out his fundamental departure from "conventional narratives" about Jerusalem. As history books tend to short-hand the city into the quarters (Jewish, Christian, Armenian, and Muslim), individual identities and lived experiences are subsumed into these "ethno-confessional divisions"--divisions that can be simply circumscribed and described in diagrams and neat paragraphs by historians, sociologists, etc.

Tamari complicates this through the writings of a Jerusalem musician from the early 20th century, and shows that the socio-cultural map of Jerusalem was far more complex, fluid, and hybrid than allowed for in conventional narratives. Identity itself is (and was) a fungible thing, and in Wasif Jawhariyyeh's narrative, individuals and groups with multiple identities shared the same spaces, creating not only a complex map of overlapping group identities, but a creolized culture that bridged differences.

Interestingly, in his brief biography of Jawhariyyeh, Tamari illustrates many of the problems of conventional narratives: Jawhariyyeh's life story was complex and irreducible to a single sentence--even the parts before his music career. If one individual's life is so deep and rich, imagine the injustice done when entire communities are so treated, reduced to a single sentence in a footnote of a 400-page history book.

But then, one of Tamari's points is that the division of the city into four "confessional" quarters was a retroactive reduction by the British during the Mandate, and this fits well with how we see imperial/colonial re-writings of history and geography. There is a deep need to simplify and create realities that correspond to (and support) colonial mappings of conquered/administered territory--and colonial imaginations of the homeland and the roles of its people. In other words, the British simplified the geography and history of Jerusalem in order to administer it, to "create" a new past that fit the present (at the time) geography and history, and to reify their roles as administrators of the Mandate.

I could say a lot more about chapter 5, but rather than spend too much time on this one chapter, I'll skip ahead to chapter 6, "Lepers, Lunatics and Saints." In this chapter, Tamari discusses the (interwar) ethnographic writings of Tawfiq Canaan, a Jerusalem physician.

One of the most brilliant points Tamari makes is how "the process of ethnic exclusion and demonization had sunk" to the point that Arab and Jewish lepers were segregated after the war of 1948--even members of a group typically shunned by society were subject to, and objects of, the divisions caused by the territorial dispute-cum-war. Leprosy's provenance is given little thought anymore, despite the religious connotations of the disease and thus its role in the religious histories of the region--because Canaan was so very successful at helping eradicate the disease from the region.

But the contribution that Tamari makes with this chapter that I think is most important to our perceptions and study of disputed Jerusalem is his discussion of nativism and how Canaan and his contemporaries in the Journal of the Palestine Oriental Society anticipated and to some degree presaged Said's notion of Orientalism and the reductions and violences Orientalism entails. Tamari seems to indicate that Canaan and his circle valorized the peasantry to no small degree, but despite this problematic elevation of the peasant as the repository of culture and history, Tamari sees Canaan's work as ethnography unsullied by later folklore revivalism--a revivalism that was both insincere and inaccurate in its representation of Palestinian life.

Tamari points out that revivalism--and, by extension, the Orientalist-tainted histories and geographies of the region--was a reaction to Zionist history, and thus surrendered authenticity and representation to Zionist claims. Thus, Tamari sees Canaan's writings as being descriptive of quotidian Palestinian life, rather than a reactive movement that simply argued with counter-histories about "who was here first," or "whose culture is most authentic to the region."

To wrap up (prematurely) what has turned into a very labyrinthine meta-discussion of the readings within the readings, I'll just touch on the ethnographic details of Tamari--details left out of histories like Armstrong's. For example, despite Armstrong's love for digging into the details of religious belief and practice, revelations like Canaan's detailing of the relationship between madness and demonic possession, the attachment of religious meaning to the darwish and the practices of djinn--these are little tidbits, samples of life during the interwar period that Armstrong skips over. And for good reason: Armstrong isn't interested in the peculiarities of religious belief among Palestinian peasants in the interwar period. By this time, Armstrong doesn't feel that the reader needs more details about Baal or local demons, etc., Armstrong has decided that the political climate of the interwar period is more important to relate than the substance and details of the lives of people.

And thus it is all too easy to lose sight of the fact that people were living, and continue to live, in this region, and their daily lives are subject to--but oddly, not relevant to--the political tides of the day.

Reading Response: April 25

I said this in my last post about Armstrong: Jerusalem (the book) is a maelstrom of historical detail, to the end of illustrating how these details matter to those who contend with each other over the fate, over the meaning of Jerusalem (the city). Yes, those details are important in and of themselves (not to quote Santayana's "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," but yeah, that might apply, too), but my one of my main points of contention with Armstrong is that she seems to miss that these details are precisely the weapons each side uses against the other.

That said (again), let me hit some highlights of chapters 14-18, and the whole book overall.

First, I think Armstrong has really hit on something when she identifies building as a political act. She didn't bring this up until, oh, maybe the Roman period or thereabouts, but the last 1000 years' worth of history have really hammered this point home. As an aside, it's rare that you can say about a city "well, for most of its history this didn't matter, but over the past 1000 years or so, this new thing was important."

Anyway, destruction is obviously a political act. As Norman Schwarzkopf pointed out in 1991, armies are made to "kill people and break things." And in the course of killing people, the things that are often broken are the buildings and urban spaces where the people live. On this topic, Stephen Graham's Cities, War, and Terrorism is a brilliant book. In his Introduction and chapter "Cities as Strategic Sites: Place Annihilation and Urban Geopolitics," Graham points out how for most of history, cities and civilians were not spared from the ravages of war, and instead were the targets of warfare. Only for a brief period of "civilized" warfare did armies try to minimize damage to civilians and cities. For more on the topic, and specific to Israel/Palestine, his chapter in the same book titled "Constructing Urbicide by Bulldozer in the Occupied Territories," is very compelling.

So anyway, armies conquer and break things, particularly the cities that are the targets/objects of conquests. Many times when this happens, buildings are--necessarily--destroyed. When a conquering army destroys the holy places, government offices, and/or walls of a city, it's obviously a political act--the erasure from history (and the city) of any notion of resistance to the conqueror. We can have no idea how many civilizations once existed, because many conquerors obliterated any record of their conquered foes. Similarly, as in Egypt, often the successes and achievements of past regimes are erased from history (in ancient Egypt, pharaohs would sometimes chisel from monuments the cartouches of predecessors, and put their own names instead).

But the notion that construction, rather than destruction, is a political act--well, not that that's novel among social scientists, but it's worth pointing out in a history, and it's of paramount importance in Israel/Palestine, and especially in Jerusalem. Constructing something is not only an establishment of a group's presence in the city, but it's also a claiming of space. And particularly where space is at a premium--within a walled city, proximate to holy sites--claiming space is not just a political act, it is an aggressively political act.

I wish that Armstrong would've taken a few pages out of each chapter to apply some social theory. She applies (or tries to apply) psychological concepts, and uses a lot of religious/theological theory, but some social theory would've been helpful. Most particularly, especially in the right historical frame (say, the last 300 years), she could've taken some time to examine Western notions of property ownership, and/or Eurocentric ideas of territory and territoriality. Because a lot of what she's talking about is ground that has been trod by social scientists (particularly, geographers) for a long time now: the notion that property must be improved to be rightfully owned. This is prominent in Locke, but it traces back to Grotius (late 16th - early 17th century philosopher). In short, if you don't make land more productive, you essentially lose your right to it. This isn't just a quaint historical notion: it survives in present-day American residential zoning (e.g., if you put a fence up on the wrong side of your property line, on your neighbor's property, and your neighbor doesn't contest this, after a set amount of time--usually something like seven or eight years--you can legally claim that property is yours).

This idea is how colonial powers justified their appropriations of land and the incorporation of territory into their empires. As Rashid Khalidi has pointed out, the Zionist settlers imagined Ottoman Palestine as "a land with no people for a people with no land." How did this come to be? Well, yes, as Armstrong has pointed out, the decline of the Ottoman empire ran concomitant with a decline in the economy and population of Jerusalem. But more importantly, the indigenous people in Ottoman Palestine were largely pastoralists, moving their livestock over large areas. What sedentary agriculture there was, was largely olive tree groves--which didn't require active maintenance or irrigation. So, when Zionist settlers arrived, they saw a land that was "sparsely populated" and not being utilized to its capacity. They formed their kibbutzim, and "made the desert bloom." By investing time and capital in the land, through irrigation systems and sedentarized agriculture (complete with permanent housing and infrastructure), the immigrants were thus improving the land, giving them claim to it that superseded any Arab claims. After all, the reasoning went, if the Arabs really owned and valued the land, they would have improved it long ago. They're just squatters, scraping a living off of land they don't own (and therefore don't have the right to improve, either).

This is an important bit of history and theory that certainly applies. And I think it makes a lot clearer the politicization of construction in the region. Building a new structure--be it a religious site or a marketplace or an apartment complex--is not just political because it establishes "facts on the ground," but because it establishes (and/or reinforces) a claim to that land that abrogates previous claims.

Next point about Armstrong, particularly in 14-18. She really pins the blame on the Crusaders. She even goes so far--in the Israel chapter, I think, or maybe Zion?--to say that the Crusades "broke" relations between the three great monotheisms. I don't dispute that the Crusades did a lot of long-term damage; a lot of very deep wounds were cut during this period. But during the Ottoman period--particularly during Suleiman's rule--relations were pretty good. Yes, there were undercurrents of hostility, and lingering grudges, but if things had kept up the way they were going during Suleiman's reign, perhaps those hostilities and grudges would've smoothed themselves out and healed over time.

And honestly, the British really bolluxed things up during the Mandate. Particularly in the wake of WWII, they were unwilling to say 'no' to the Israeli proto-state. And the bombing of the King David Hotel seemed to just give the British another reason to wash their hands of the Mandate, instead of doing something to solve the growing dispute. And then, particularly after 1967, the US took Britain's place as the power that contributed to the problem, rather than to the solution (for example, compare the US response to the Suez Crisis with the US response to the Six Days War, or the Yom Kippur War).

So yeah, the Crusades were a brutal period and established some dysfunctional relations between the three faiths. But to lay everything at the feet of the Crusades is not only too simple, but it absolves modern powers from their roles in creating and exacerbating the dispute.

This post is turning into a book, so I'll be brief with my two remaining points.

Third, the little people get left out of Armstrong's history. This is pretty much a necessity in any broad history of ancient times and even antiquity--accounts of quotidian life by the commoners are unlikely to survive hundreds or thousands of years. Instead, we get lists of rulers, conquerors, and priests. I understand this. But records from the Crusade on are pretty good--especially so from the Arab Islamic Empire, and the literally dozens of famous social scientists and travelers who chronicled the world (e.g., Ibn Battuta, Ibn Khaldun, etc.). This is one thing the Living Jerusalem project "gets" that Armstrong (as well as historians like Bernard Lewis) misses: people live in these histories. Armstrong goes to great lengths telling us about how Jews, Christians, and Muslims contended over sites like the Holy Sepulcher or the "Upper Room," but she simplifies the opinions of all these groups into a monolithic stance. Surely the common folk who lived in the city didn't all think the same way and hold the same opinions about these disputes--disputes that often involved mainly the wealthy & powerful.

Not only are the opinions of these unheard lives important, but their lives themselves are important. The intro video for the Living Jerusalem project tells more about the history and impact of the Israel/Palestine dispute in the story of the two bakers, than Armstrong does in Chapters 17 & 18.

Which brings me to my fourth (and final, for this post) point: Armstrong seems to have run out of gas by Chapter 16. The 20th century has seen more "history," more bloodshed and conflict, more danger and potential ruin, than previous centuries. The complexities of politics and dispute in the 20th century are deeper and more tightly imbricated than those of previous periods, because they carry the baggage of these periods, as well as contemporary issues. Armstrong does a lot of short-handing and eliding of very important events. For example, the 1973 Yom Kippur/Ramadan War gets a couple sentences, despite it provoking the OPEC boycott--which itself broke the world economy and prompted a restructuring that we're still feeling today--and damn near causing World War III. And let's not forget that the 1973 war pushed Israel to the brink of destruction, and there was the real threat that the IDF would nuke Cairo and/or Amman as a desperation measure. All that absolutely is germane to discussions of Jerusalem today--if only because military solutions are off the table, simply because of the threat Israel's military (and nuclear weapons) pose to Arab countries.

I also think Armstrong missed out on discussing more implications and fallout of the Camp David Accords, and though she was writing too early to really see the ramp-up of settlement activity in the West Bank during the Oslo period, she did touch on settlements, and this again would've been a great opportunity for her to employ some social theory and discuss the potential problems on the wind.

Like Armstrong, I started this post strong and verbose, and then ran out of gas and short-handed my last few points. I guess it's a hazard of writing about Jerusalem, eh?

Reading Response: April 20

We've been slogging through Armstrong for a while now--and I say slogging not because it's not a well-written, enjoyable book, but because there is a lot of detail and Armstrong is prone to excursion--and I've come to a couple conclusions about Jerusalem.

First, Armstrong is trying to illustrate the history of Jerusalem by giving us a history of the three religions that consider it the Holy City. This point bears emphasis. Armstong is trying to illustrate the history of Jerusalem by giving us a complete history of the three religions--from their origins to the present--of the three religions that consider it the Holy City. This explains most of her excursions, wherein we learn details that hardly seem relevant to the politics of contested modern-day Jerusalem.

So what does it mean that Armstrong thinks that a history of Jerusalem is lacking without a full history of the three great monotheisms? Several things, really: first, that arguments about modern Jerusalem are rooted in the history of religion; second, religion and religious history is used in arguments about modern Jerusalem, and so it behooves everyone to know the history involved; third, details matter. This last point is most problematic. Because yes, I think it's important that we get a full idea of the history and the development of the three religions, so we know Jerusalem's place in all this history. But if the details really matter, then we're surrendering ground to those who use those details as wedges, as points of contention. And worse, Armstrong, while very thorough and drawing on a gamut of sources, leans very heavily on scripture for history--and as problematic as historical texts are for accuracy and reliability, scripture even moreso, if only because scripture is meant to enlighten believers about the nature of the religion, not to provide an accurate historical record of events.

So when I read today's chapters about early Christianity and the beginnings of Islam, and the Crusades, I'm troubled that an account like this does work against its primary objective. People can easily seize on factoids in the book, or entire chapters or even themes, and use those to bolster their exclusionary claims. Not only do we open the door to the inevitable "who got there first?" questions/arguments, but we also open the door to "who was treated the worst, and by whom?" claims--wherein whichever group suffered the most has the most puissant claim to the city now, and whichever group was the greatest victimizer has the weakest claim.

On these grounds, then, the Jews have the greatest claim to Jerusalem: they were present in the city and the region so far back in antiquity that it is difficult (if not impossible) to separate their presence from that of the progenitors of the Palestinians, and they suffered repeatedly at the hand of conquerors and rulers from afar--to an extent never known before (Armstrong repeatedly notes that the Jews were the first people to be persecuted for their religious beliefs and practices).

Again, this is a very problematic direction, because it closes down the possibility for dialogue. Israelis use this history as justification for their claims, while Palestinians point to evidence that their progenitors were in the region at the same time as the progenitors of modern Jewry, and that the Palestinians or the Muslims were not the great persecutors in Jewish history, and therefore they (Palestinians and/or Muslims) shouldn't suffer penalties today. These are the terms by which the argument is framed so often, without deep histories of religion. So giving us the deep histories doesn't serve to defuse or to deconstruct those terms.

The second conclusion I've reached is not so deep (or long-winded), and one I've stated in class as well as above. Armstrong relies too heavily on scriptural sources to flesh out her "history." At one point--I think in describing the Bar Kokhba Revolt, but I'm a bit foggy on where exactly--Armstong cites... maybe Josephus, saying that the Legions swept through and killed something like 585,000 people in the scouring of Judea. That number is preposterous--there's no way a half a million people were living in the region, let alone that many being killed in the sub-province (and leaving any survivors behind to populate it, even sparsely). I've read a few critiques of Josephus, who, as a "historian" is problematic and not very reliable. So if Josephus isn't entirely reliable, and (at the very least) exaggerates numbers, what about scriptural writers? Armstrong is right to point out the very anti-Jewish themes in the gospels of Matthew and John, but despite acknowledging this bias, she never questions the historical veracity of their writings. This is beating up chapters that we read prior, but the point is still valid, because establishing scripture as a reliable history undermines the (more recent) history of Muslim presence in the region--a history that has greater support and more sources.

So coming to the expansion of the Arab Islamic Empire, and the clash with European Crusaders, the Jewish presence is not entirely written out of Jerusalem, but then Armstrong replicates some of the violence down to conquered peoples--but focusing on the contests between the powerful, between the armies and rulers of the two newer religions. Even more than in the bloody history of Babylonian, Assyrian, Persian, Macedonian, and Roman conquests, the Crusades stand out for the cruelty and violence--not because the Crusaders were necessarily more villianous than previous conquerors, but because we have more detailed records of the cruelty that survive to the present--often because the Crusaders themselves bragged of their (mis)deeds as if they were virtues.

And I'm not sure that Armstrong acknowledges that problem.

I was going to write something else about Armstrong, but not only have I forgotten my point--I've written a bunch already, and don't want to write a book here. Oh, and did anyone else despair at finding the Ellwood chapter? I couldn't find a link or anywhere to download it.

April 18 Reading Response, Part II

To clarify and reiterate: I don't think that the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra or any similar cultural exchange programs are bad ideas, or wasteful, or that the money & efforts would be better spent elsewhere. I simply think that we should be cautious with our expectations, and we should be cognizant of the political implications (or lack thereof) of such programs.

Because (and here I tie this to the rest of the readings) images of Other-ness are powerful and entrenched so deeply in the collective (and individual) psyche that it takes a huge amount of counter-programming to overcome those ingrained images and perceptions.

Stereotypes rule how we think and how we react, even when we deny it (see Fiske, et al 2002. "A Model of (Often Mixed) Stereotype Content: Competence and Warmth Respectively Follow From Perceived Status and Competition." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and Morton, et al. 2006. "We Value What Values Us: The Appeal of Identity-Affirming Science." Political Psychology). Our ingrained preconceptions are powerful, and often determine how we'll react and perceive others. So we're pre-conditioned by all of our experiences and knowledge to act sympathetically (or not) to people outside our own (perceived) group. Certainly for the participants in cultural dialogue programs (including the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra), the exchange deconstructs some of their ingrained stereotypes. But how much do programs like these affect people outside the program?

And, to complicate things a bit further, there's evidence to suggest that what is happening to participants in programs such as these isn't necessarily a dismantling of stereotypes of Others, but in fact a rearrangement of perceptions of who is part of the in-group, and who is part of the out-group (see Dovidio & Gaertner 2008. "Commonality and the Complexity of 'We'" Social attitudes and Social Change." Personality and Social Psychology Review and Fischer & Roseman 2007. "Beat Them or Ban Them: The Characteristics and Social Functions of Anger and Contempt." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology). In other words, quite often when we're talking about "breaking down barriers" between groups, it's not about actually deconstructing stereotypes, it's about taking some people of a perceptual out-group and turning them into members of the in-group. We see this in the Parallels and Paradox extracts, where Israeli and Arab musicians are portrayed as excluding each other from their group, or their conversations. After some time and interaction, the Israelis and Arabs include each other--but this isn't necessarily any tremendous breakthrough, any re-organization or destruction of stereotypes. What is more likely is that the musicians re-organized how they perceived the "Us vs. Them" grouping. For the Lebanese musicians who excluded the Israeli from their Arab jam sessions, they didn't see the humanity common to all people, Lebanese or Israeli: they saw the Israeli as part of the Orchestra, a musician like them. If the Israeli musician had a friend who wanted to sit in on the jam session, it's not very likely that the Lebanese musicians would feel very welcoming. The out-group/in-group dynamic had changed from "Lebanese vs. Israeli" to "Orchestra musician vs. other."

I don't mean to trample all over the successes and meaning of the Orchestra, but to instead frame the mission of the Orchestra against harsh reality. I'm reminded of what Stalin said when warned that he might run afoul of the Vatican. Stalin said, "How many tank divisions does the Pope have?" So, despite the powerful influence of the Catholic church, the realipolitik boils down to who has the most guns.

To bring this bad to Said, geographers trade quite heavily one two (related) concepts from Said's works. They're deceptively simple when you look at them, but they're very deep, and the influence of these on our thinking is even deeper. First, is the notion of the Other. The idea that we group people into "Us" and "Them" is pretty facile. Sociology and psychology affirms this grouping: to shorthand it, we tend to sort people into groups in order to save brain processing power, to simplify the world and our reactions to others. We have positive feelings towards our in-group, and negative towards the Others. Edward Said articulated all of this in his seminal work Orientalism, but he applied it specifically to the knowledges ingrained in Western history and cultural studies, and delved deeply into the implications of this Other-ing process.

To put it in a nutshell, Said argued that we define ourselves in and by the very act of defining Others. That is, we don't form a concept of ourselves and our in-group in a vacuum, and then perceive Other-ness. Instead, through our encounters and interactions with others, we discover and define difference, and create a Self from this difference perceived among the Other. Then, we ascribe all sorts of positive traits to "Us," while ascribing their opposites, their negatives, to Others. The Other, for Said's work, was the Eastern world--the Middle East in particular. This Other-ing allows for and justifies all sorts of violences against the Other: not just physical violence, but the cultural violence of "writing out" of history subject peoples.

The second idea of Said's that geographers use is the notion of "imaginative geographies." This is plainly put: imaginative geographies are the mental, imaginary terrains we populate with people--people whose traits and characteristics are determined by what we have learned via acculturation from our schooling, our peers, and our culture. Thus, the average American populates her/his imagination of the "Middle East" with turban-wearing zealots. These imaginative geographies color our actual geographies: Derek Gregory has written at length (see his The Colonial Present for a brilliant example) about how imaginative geographies are transformed into geographies of violence.

Finally, the last bit I have time for is a commentary on Noura's thesis. I know that time & space constraints limited the breadth of her argument, but I can't help but think that yes, it's possible to construct the notion of "homeland" without exclusion, without creating in-groups and out-groups that vie for territory in a zero-sum game. But is it likely? Especially when the exclusionary narratives established by each side are rooted in and justified by the violent conquest of the land?

David Newman is a giant in my field, and he has published a lot about these notions of territory and attachment, of nationalism and its expression on the land. Ghazi Falah (who was the chair of the session I presented in at my conference last week; I chaired a session he presented in at our national conference in 2007) is very forthright in his application of these notions in the Israel/Palestine dispute--Falah reads the landscape as an exercise in Israeli nationality and Palestinian dispossession. Derek Gregory knits together Newman's base, Falah's reading, and Said's fundamental notions of Other-ness (particularly in his 1995 Progress in Human Geography piece, "Imaginative Geographies," which was an intimate portrait of Edward Said and his dislocation from his homeland), and the result is a damning indictment of Orientalism and its direct descendant, imperialism.

To boil it down, geographers sometimes joke about "the geography of hope," but the joke conceals something geographers feel very acutely: the geopolitical realities we analyze and critique are very powerful, entrenched, and continue to do their violence upon the world (especially the disadvantaged). We can rail and research and posit alternatives, but in the end, we're whistling past the graveyard, aren't we? The alternities that we posit are fractional and subject to the inertia of the world, and the prejudices of power. So yeah, we can posit possibilities and we can light those candles instead of cursing the dark, but I would be happier if we could make those possibilities happen.

Reading Response: April 18

First, questions for Miriam Said:

1) Since the peace process stalled and began deteriorating in the mid-1990s, attitudes among politicians and segments of the public on both sides of the Israel/Palestinian divide have hardened. As time goes on and the distance from/to a peaceful settlement grows, has the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra had difficulty with the logistics of practice and performance? That is, I am wondering if the performers are able to get together and practice outside of the yearly meetings in Spain. As a addendum, I'd also be curious to find out what Israeli/Palestinian government or public attitudes toward the project are. It seems ironic that the Orchestra meets and performs so facilely outside the region, but performances in Israel/Palestine are so rare.

2) Related to the mission of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, and drawing on the influential work of Edward Said: Particularly among the politically powerful on both sides of the Israel/Palestine dispute, images of the Other have increasingly become ossified over time. While the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra is a compelling project in and of itself, what (if anything) might result politically? That is to say, it is a noble and worthwhile effort to break down the walls between individuals--particularly young people--but the walls exist and continue to grow because of the actions of the powerful. And the politically powerful rely on tropes regarding the Other, tropes that generate support for their political agenda domestically. For example, Netanyahu cannot (publicly) characterize Palestinians as anything other than intransigent intruders, lest he lose support from the Israeli right; Abbas cannot talk productively about Israel without losing support to Hamas. So as a political engagement, I don't know if the project will bear fruit.


My overall impressions of the cultural exchange and dialogue among Israeli and Palestinian youth are unguardedly enthusiastic. I am firmly of the school that it is "better to light a candle than curse the darkness," and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra project is the exact sort of the interpersonal exchange--among young people--that I think that the Israel/Palestine dispute needs. But my enthusiasm wanes quickly when I recall the reality of the geographic and political divide between the two sides. I despair that a cultural exchange will ever have a significant impact on the entrenched positions of the (politically) powerful, and I wonder about class issues, as well.

To elaborate on this last point, though I have seen news items on individuals, groups, and NGOs that donate monies and instruments to youth in Palestine, by and large, developing the skills needed to play symphony instruments is largely a luxury. Not only are instruments expensive, but playing & practicing demand time and space that most Palestinian youth simply don't have. So the pool from which the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra draws from on the Palestinian side is probably not representative of Palestinians on the whole--I would guess that the Palestinians involved largely come from more affluent (and culturally more Westernized) backgrounds.

Similarly, on the Israeli side, though the higher standard of living and a tradition of musical aptitude (with Western symphony instruments) would lead me to believe that there would be a more representative sample of Israeli youth, I don't see many hard-right families allowing their children to perform in the Orchestra. I can imagine secular and/or leftist families being much more enthusiastic, and therefore I wonder if the political orientations of the participating performers are predisposed to dialogue with Palestinians.

So ultimately, I wonder if the project has that great of an impact. The critical side of me wonders if the youth involved are changing their own outlooks and perceptions (of Other-ness) that much--if they aren't already predisposed towards dialogic exchange, especially as far as music is concerned. And then, once established, I wonder how much the dialogue accomplishes on the wider scale. In other words, does it make a difference beyond the lives of the performers?

Again, I think it is noble and completely worthwhile. But I also am a realist, a pragmatist, and I don't think that the Orchestra is going to change any of the political realities. Actually, if anything, I think that the project makes for good propaganda by extremists on either side, sort of a "Well, of course we don't hate them--look, we let our kids play in an orchestra with them!" thing.

Reading Response: April 6

Reading the introduction and first four chapters of Armstrong's Jerusalem, three themes stand out for me. But before I get to these themes, I have to do a bit of excavation and explanation, introducing another historical work I think is very germane to our discussions of ancient history in the holy land.

David Rohl's Pharaohs and Kings is a compelling challenge to orthodox Egyptology & archaeology in the holy land. Rohl's central argument is that overlapping (and competing) pharaonic reigns in the Third Intermediate Period (TIP) have traditionally been seen as sequential, resulting in a timeline of Egyptian history that is artificially extended. Revising down the elongation of the TIP results in a different sequence of historical linkages between Egypt and Israel--in short, Ramses II ("Ramses the Great") is not the Pharaoh of the Exodus, and thus historians and archaeologists have been looking for biblical Israel during the wrong time period. Rohl argues that his revised dynastic timeline coincides with other historical accounts, and concludes that Solomon's rule didn't take place in the early Iron Age (ca 1000-900 BCE)--a period of impoverishment and decline--but up to 200 years earlier, during the late Bronze Age--a period of wealth and prosperity.

Rohl builds a very convincing case (though my understanding is that mainstream Egyptologists and archaeologists remain very skeptical of his radical adjustment to the pharaonic timeline), and with his new chronology, suddenly a great deal of biblical narrative finds congruence with other historical sources. The Amarna period of Egypt dovetails nicely with the unification of Israel by David.

I bring up Rohl's work--and the orthodox resistance to his conclusions--to illustrate how ingrained knowledges become, and how staunchly these knowledges are defended. The resistance to Rohl's revisionist chronology was staggering--I watched a Discovery channel series based on his research, and there were scenes of academics (their CVs with publication lists as long as my arm) dismissing Rohl's ideas out of hand, simply because he dared depart from "what everyone knew."

I'm not completely sold on Rohl, because he is one of a number of historians and archaeologists who seek to find "proof" of the Bible in archeological digs; I think he's too quick to accept elisions and logical leaps that support his theories, despite criticizing the orthodoxy for these same sorts of elisions and leaps.

But he makes a powerful argument--if only because through his revised chronology, there is a wealth of evidence that connects not only ancient Egypt, but biblical accounts with places that we can visit and apprehend with our own senses.

In Armstrong's terminology, Rohl gives us a connection to "sacred geography" that we are otherwise separated from by thousands of years. Rather than searching blind and relegating biblical stories to myth and symbolism (and not as Armstrong uses these terms, but more in the rougher vernacular), we suddenly have access to tangible proof of these stories. Rohl's work creates a powerful connection not only with the past, but with the biblical narrative that describes this past and gives it meaning.

So that's the first thing and the second thing all rolled together. First, that knowledge and power are (as Foucault argued) one in the same, and one cannot talk about one without the other. Thus, even Armstrong's very careful dissection of historical and biblical evidence about who lived where and who did what to whom (and why, and when, and where) is imbricated with power--her account can be used as justification for modern Israeli claims to territory (or as a refutation of those claims, depending on what passages one chooses to cite). There is no getting away from it--any exploration of the history of Israel/Palestine is fraught with the politics of contesting claims to modern Israel/Palestine.

The second thing is that even putting aside politics, when examining the history of the holy land and Jerusalem, we run into the concept of the sacred... and are confronted with the presence of the sacred. For believers, this can be a psychologically powerful experience. A devout Christian who visits the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is confronted with the very place s/he believes Jesus lay and was resurrected. Armstrong points out that this connection to deity results in a transcendent experience, and an attachment of meaning to place--in geographic terms, this is the fundamental notion of territory: land that has some (intrinsic or extrinsic) value, and can be contested. Thus, what is sacred is socially constructed through human experience; Jerusalem is valued, contested, and sacred because events transpired there that resonate with believers, creating a space where deity and humanity are closer to one another.

The third thing that occurred to me as I read the opening salvo of Jerusalem is the conditionality by which Armstrong writes, and the importance thus assigned to her account. That is, it borders on tautology to use biblical accounts as evidence for biblical history; ultimately, if one argues that the Bible--written centuries after many of the events described within--is not a historical account and at best is a collection of myths and allegories, then the historical account Armstrong is building is undermined significantly.

The ambiguity captured in Armstrong's opening chapters--who were the hapiru really? Who were the progeny of the Hurrians? Of the Jebusites?--is what I feel is the basis for why Jerusalem Project members believe Jerusalem is a balanced account. It's easy to identify "bias" when a writer makes definitive statements one way or another, when an author declares something (especially history) to be true beyond the shadow of doubt. But Armstrong is less challenging such declarations so much as declaring history to be muddy and murky.

Don't get me wrong--I think she's done a brilliant job synthesizing a lot of material thus far, and her repeated calls to social theory are very good at framing her historical narrative. But even with the level of detail (really, do we need all the monologues by Baal?) Armstrong provides, I think this history misses one of the most important points (if not the most important point) that get in the way of peaceful, productive dialogue about Jerusalem: histories are partial and contested, and everyone can roll out their experts who will provide definitive proof that their ancestors "were here first." No history, no matter how meticulous (and "balanced") can overcome willful ignorance of evidence that contradicts one's worldview. In other words, Armstong's doing a great job, but the only people who will appreciate all the peeling-back of history are those who haven't formed indelible opinions already.

Reading Response: April 4

As noted by many, in conversations about the Israel-Palestine dispute (in general, and Jerusalem specifically), the dialogue often devolves into a "who was here first?" argument.

The readings for Monday's class certainly tread upon this territory. Like many supportive of the Israeli side, Reba Rubin (in Jerusalem: The Holy City Through the Ages) draws upon biblical and historical support for ancient Jewish claims to Jerusalem. For Rubin, the Bible is proof of Jewish presence and thus historical claim to territory. Archaeological evidence fits neatly into this narrative--not necessarily 'archaeological fact,' because especially in the context of Israel/Palestine, political (and religious) agendas exert a great deal of influence on archaeological evidence ex post facto. In other words, evidence is tailored to suit explicit political/religious motives.

Counter to Rubin and other Zionist accounts, Khalidi (in The History of Jerusalem: An Arab Perspective) deconstructs the notion of objectivist history, and argues against many of the traditional pillars of Zionist argument for historical claims justifying contemporary Israeli control of Jerusalem. Interestingly, Khalidi leans on Enlightenment (particularly from Grotius) notions of property claiming and ownership--in that to truly retain a right to ownership of land, one must improve it and make it more productive--to create a context justifying Arab/Palestinian claims upon Jerusalem. As an example, Khalidi discusses Muslim architecture and monumental structures in Jerusalem, as evidence that not only was there a persistent and continuous Palestinian/Muslim presence in Jerusalem from antiquity, but that these ancestors of today's Palestinians weren't just itinerant and negligent squatters. They inhabited, ruled, and improved the land. This is in line with Khalidi's other writings on the subject, wherein he takes an aggressive anti-colonial/anti-imperialist stance, vilifying the notion that Palestine was ever "a land with no people for a people with no land."

The most "objective" piece of the readings for today, by Jeremy Pressman (A Brief History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict) strikes me as less objective than a neophyte might think. I won't go into a laundry list of the elisions that Pressman makes that gloss over some of Israel's bad behavior, but I will sum things up by saying: any historical narrative that puts on objectivist clothing is inherently dangerous. Though Bernard Lewis is a very knowledgeable historian, Edward Said argued very vehemently (and to me, convincingly) that the knowledge that Lewis shares as "objective" history is all couched in language and ideas that are themselves biased and partial.

Living Jerusalem: initial readings

My first reflections upon reading about the Jerusalem Project and the 1993 Folk Festival were that my impressions of Jerusalem and its contested nature were pretty much spot-on. I don't mean to pat myself on the back, because to me, the complexities of representation and perception regarding Jerusalem are palpable, omnipresent, and abrasive.

In other words, you can't spend 10 minutes in Jerusalem--especially in the Old City--without tripping over the tangled mess of how different people perceive Jerusalem, and how everyone's subjective position determines what they perceive as 'objectively' Jerusalem. My first day in Jerusalem, I saw a Palestinian shopkeeper being accosted by Israeli Police because he didn't have his trash can in the right place. Perhaps to the shopkeeper, Jerusalem is his livelihood. Perhaps to the police, Jerusalem is a dangerous place--a powderkeg of contrary political and economic realities. To the tourists giving a wide berth to the argument, Jerusalem is a holy city with a conflict that would just go away if everyone would just find Christ (italics indicate my sarcasm here). To me, the geographer looking for moments of contention between groups, Jerusalem is a battleground of quotidian conflicts.

So we each bring our respective baggage to Jerusalem, and see the city through tinted lenses--and many assume that everyone sees (or should see) the city the same way. This subjectivity isn't restricted to how we perceive the city and its denizens (and its visitors), but extends to the history and the folkways of the city, as well as how the city is represented thousands of miles away, in and around the halls of power in Washington, DC.

Enough of my musing; I should respond specifically to the readings for this week.

The Hasan-Rokem paper hit squarely on the target painted by Homi Bhabha's Location of Culture. As in my musings above, Hasan-Rokem spends a great deal of thought on representation and the performative aspects of culture. Israel (and especially Jerusalem) is a terrain populated by history and revanchist cultural practices--practices that, to one degree or another, seek to connect to and perpetuate history. Sukkot, Purim, and other holidays are important to Jewish culture and religious practice, but also gain importance through their commemoration on Israeli soil. I feel that Hasan-Rokem has captured quite a bit of the ambiguity and difficulty of representing Jerusalem and its polyglot culture, but I can't help but wonder if he simplified things a bit--because Jerusalem isn't just a contest between Israeli and Palestinian, Jew and Muslim: Jerusalem is also a product of Armenians and Orthodox, of wealthy tourists and dispossessed families, of first-world technology and economics clashing with Iron Age archaeology and 19th-century infrastructure.

The Representing Jerusalem piece from Middle East Report is remarkable to me most because the text shows its age. 1993 was a moment of hope and possibility, and there was a palpable feeling that things would only get better--and they did, to a degree, for a while. Thus, the "most difficult problem" of the project is contextualization, in order to keep the threads untangled and prevent the Jerusalem Project from becoming "a caricature of itself." Never mind the grinding reality of ongoing conflict in and around the city, especially in the 21st century: in 1993 we just had to figure out how to be equanimous, how to be "fair and balanced" without going overboard.

Which is why Researching East Jerusalem feels more in-tune with (my) reality: Amiry talks about peasant women, teenagers, drugs, and crime. Sometimes we focus so much on the elephant in the room, we forget that Jerusalem is a city with problems like other cities. And that context is important to keep and remember, as well.

Finally, one bit of Living Jerusalem: Cultures and Communities in Contention really stood out for me: defining and delimiting the research process, particularly in terms geographical boundaries (hey, I am a geographer) and what is "contemporary." Jerusalem is a place where "contemporary" is particularly problematic--not just because of the age of the city, but because (as I mentioned above) how groups and individuals bring historical practices (and myth) to the present in efforts to reinforce their claims on space in the present.

Overall, I find two themes tie together the readings for me. First, as I've blathered on quite a bit already, Jerusalem is a quagmire of meaning and contested context. Second, 18 years ago, we could spend time and energy worrying about the politics of representation in an academic setting; nowadays, the politics of representation is geopolitics. When Bibi pronounces that "East Jerusalem is not a settlement," it's clear that what is at stake is a lot more than getting an ethnographic project done right.