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Materializing the nation in everyday life: on symbols and objects in the Palestinian refugee diaspora

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Abstract

This article considers the nationalizing practices of everyday life among Palestinian refugees in Jordan. Concerned with what some scholars call banal or everyday nationhood, it examines how particular objects within the ordinary lives of Palestinian refugees articulate conceptions of national belonging and difference. Attending to the discursive and the material, this article argues that understanding Palestinian national practice among refugees in Jordan requires specific attention to the material objects consumed and displayed within the homes and institutions of Palestinian life. As icons productive of a national sensorium, these objects are critical for understanding the constitution of nationhood and what I call a national visualscape. Embedded within the routine spaces of ordinary life, this paper argues that national practice is often visible yet unseen, articulated yet unheard. Palestinian nationhood in Jordan is thus an ordinary affair; it is the practical accomplishment of ordinary people engaged in the production of nationhood without a nationalist movement.

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Notes

  1. To protect the identities of my participants, all names have been changed.

  2. UNRWA defines Palestinian refugees as “persons whose normal residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict.”

  3. Although the colors of the Jordanian flag match those of the Palestinian flag, according to Warda, her bracelet was nonetheless an affirmation of her Palestinian identity. This is a plausible claim given the widespread knowledge of ancestry among people in Jordan. Seen alongside of the stickers on her notebooks, it would be fairly clear to her peers that she was expressing her Palestinian identity rather than her loyalty to Jordanian nationalism.

  4. For a discussion of the pre-1970 rule of King Hussein and the process of integration, see Lion of Jordan: The Life of King Hussein in War and Peace by Avi Shlaim (2009), King Hussein of Jordan: A Political Life by Nigel Ashton (2010), and From Abdullah to Hussein: Jordan in Transition by Robert Satloff (1994).

  5. It should be noted that many Transjordanians joined Palestinian forces during the clashes and, similarly, there were numerous Palestinians who offered their support to Jordanian forces. Furthermore, although Palestinian guerrillas managed to gain widespread support among refugees, in particular, many Palestinians did not support the war and refrained from taking either side.

  6. The Jordanian claim over the West Bank and the Palestinians was made abundantly clear following the war when, in 1972, Hussein launched a new political offensive against the PLO announcing a plan for the creation of a “United Arab Kingdom” linking the East and West Banks under his crown (Cobban 1985, 52).

  7. Deemed a silent protest, protestors turned off their houselights for 1 h during the evening in order to express their opposition.

  8. Fellah is often translated as “peasant” or “rural” person.

  9. For Palestinians, Nakba refers to the tragedy of the 1948 war, which resulted in the displacement of over 700,000 Palestinians and the creation of the State of Israel.

  10. Recent calls by Israeli politicians for the US President, Donald Trump, to shift the location of the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem often invoked this idea to support the change.

  11. https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2004/04/20040414-3.html

  12. http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/UNRWA-should-be-dismantled-Netanyahu-says-he-told-Nikki-Haley-496503

  13. In GIS-based visual analysis, a visualscape refers to the “spatial representation of any visual property generated by, or associated with, a spatial configuration (Llobera 2003).” Modifying this concept, I take a visualscape to mean a spatial configuration resulting from particular objects with certain visual properties.

  14. Except, of course, when an anthropologist wants to know about them.

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Funding

Research for this article was funded by the Wenner-Gren Dissertation Fieldwork Grant, the Fulbright Institute of International Education Grant, and the Council of American Overseas Research—American Center of Oriental Research Senior Fellowship.

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  1. Department of Anthropology, The University of Memphis, 316 Manning Hall, Memphis, TN, 38152, USA

    Michael Vicente Pérez

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Correspondence to Michael Vicente Pérez.

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Pérez, M.V. Materializing the nation in everyday life: on symbols and objects in the Palestinian refugee diaspora. Dialect Anthropol 42, 409–427 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10624-018-9505-x

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