Nomads and nation building in the Western Sahara : gender, politics and the Sahrawi / Konstantina Isidoros.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Isidoros, Konstantina, 1976- author.

Series:

International library of African studies ; v. 62.

International library of African studies ; 62

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sahrawi (African people)--History.

Sahrawi (African people).

Sahrawi (African people)--Social conditions.

Sahrawi (African people)--Politics and government.

Political refugees--Western Sahara.

Political refugees.

Social conditions.

Politics and government.

History.

Western Sahara--Social conditions.

Western Sahara.

Western Sahara--Politics and government--1975-.

Physical Description:

xv, 288 pages : illustrations, map ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

London : I.B. Tauris, 2018.

Summary:

Fabled for more than three thousand years as fierce warrior-nomads and cameleers dominating the western Trans-Saharan caravan trade, today the Sahrawi are admired as soldier-statesmen and refugee-diplomats. This is a proud nomadic people uniquely championing human rights and international law for self-determination of their ancient heartlands: the western Sahara Desert in North Africa. Konstantina Isidoros provides a rich ethnographic portrait of this unique desert society in one of Earth's most extreme ecosystems. Her extensive anthropological research, conducted over eleven years, illuminates an Arab-Berber Muslim society in which men wear full face veils and are matrifocused toward women, who are the property-holders of tent households forming powerful matrilocal coalitions. Isidoros offers new analytical insights on gender relations, strategic tribe-to-state symbiosis and the tactical formation of 'tent cities'. This book sheds light on the indigenous principles of social organization - the centrality of women, male veiling and milk kinship - bringing positive feminist perspectives on how the Sahrawi have innovatively reconfigured their tribal nomadic pastoral society into globalizing citizen-nomads constructing their nascent nation state. This is essential reading for those interested in anthropology, politics, war and nationalism, gender relations, postcolonialism, international development, humanitarian regimes, refugee studies and the experience of nomadic communities. Book jacket.

Contents:

Overview 9

Fieldwork, methods and bias 15

Historical and literary précis 20

Note on translation and transliteration 27

Part I A Shimmering Mirage

1 Situating Sahrawi refugees between identity, place and sovereignty 31

Points of intersection: Sovereignty and solidarity 37

Points of divergence: Insecurity and the construction of an unruly terrain 45

Fragments 54

2 Overtures to scepticism 57

Refugeehood 59

Thesis to antithesis: The impossibility of a free gift and developmental humanitarianism 65

Non-place as centre: Silent peripheries and strategic silences 77

3 The logic of nomadic movement and dwelling 86

Between rhetoric and reality: Moving into the silent peripheries 93

Points of ethnographic departure: Moving into protective densities 98

The inner sanctum: moving into a private residential place 101

Khayam clusters: Imperceptible relationships between cents 105

Fleeting movement and protracted disinterest 107

Part II Harem: The Tent and the Breast

4 The other side of the mashrabiya 113

Women's tents and women as property holders 114

Love and marriage 131

5 Circulating males: female economies of affection 144

Warrior-nomads, soldier-statesmen 145

The contemporary ghazi 152

Women's menfolk: The flow of males through women's tents 154

Divorce and male residence 158

Milk brothers and unrestricted males 163

The patriline: The naming of children, tents and herds 165

6 Veiled males and unrestricted females 169

The male el-them 170

Women and the el-them 180

Signalling entry and female ululation: The regulation and assembly of circulating, veiled males 189

The female makhzan and the guarded male 201

Part III The Naked City

7 Tented cities and the tent-state 207

The naked city 208

Nomadism: Tactical sedentarization 218

Tribe: Strategic political symbiosis 221

8 Women as political architects 231

Frig and qsar: Tents in battle and economic configuration 232

Sahrawi tent cities and tent-state 235

9 Thresholds 241

Patriarchy and the state 243

Thresholds 245

A tented state 247.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 259-276) and index.

ISBN:

178831140X

9781788311403

OCLC:

991682750