Home and homeland : the dialogics of tribal and national identities in Jordan / Linda L. Layne.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Layne, Linda L.

Series:

Princeton Legacy Library

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Bedouins--Jordan--Ethnic identity.

Bedouins.

Jordan--Social life and customs.

Jordan.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (207 p.)

Edition:

Course Book

Place of Publication:

Princeton, N.J. : :Princeton University Press, c1994.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In this provocative examination of collective identity in Jordan, Linda Layne challenges long-held Western assumptions that Arabs belong to easily recognizable corporate social groups. Who is a "true" Jordanian? Who is a "true" Bedouin? These questions, according to Layne, are examples of a kind of pigeonholing that has distorted the reality of Jordanian national politics. In developing an alternate approach, she shows that the fluid social identities of Jordan emerge from an ongoing dialogue among tribespeople, members of the intelligentsia, Hashemite rulers, and Western social scientists. Many commentators on social identity in the Middle East limit their studies to the village level, but Layne's goal is to discover how the identity-building processes of the locality and of the nation condition each other. She finds that the tribes create their own cultural "homes" through a dialogue with official nationalist rhetoric and Jordanian urbanites, while King Hussein, in turn, maintains the idea of the "homeland" in ways that are powerfully influenced by the tribespeople. The identities so formed resemble the shifting, irregular shapes of postmodernist land-scapes--but Hussein and the Jordanian people are also beginning to use a classically modernist linear narrative to describe themselves. Layne maintains, however, that even with this change Jordanian identities will remain resistant to all-or-nothing descriptions.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Figures and Table

Preface

A Note on Transliteration

Chapter 1. Rethinking Collective Identity

Chapter 2. A Generation of Change

Chapter 3. 'Arab Architectonics

Chapter 4. Capitalism and the Politics of Domestic Space

Chapter 5. National Representations: The Tribalism Debate

Chapter 6. The Election of Identity

Chapter 7. Constructing Culture and Tradition in the Valley

Chapter 8. Monarchal Posture

References

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [161]-178) and index.

ISBN:

9786612751752

9781400816934

1400816939

9780691194783

0691194785

9781282751750

1282751751

9781400820986

1400820987

9781400812486

1400812488

OCLC:

700688645