A Companion to the Anthropology of the Middle East presents a comprehensive overview of current trends and future directions in anthropological research and activism in the modern Middle East. Featuring contributions from a wide range of distinguished contemporary scholars of Middle East anthropology, chapters encompass the entire breadth of the regions cultural, social, political, and religious diversity.

Table of Contents

• Introduction: Theoretical and Conceptual Issues
• Enduring Concerns, Resilient Tropes, and New Departures: Reading the Companion
• Troubled Legacies: Knowledge Production in the Middle East
• Post-Area Studies Scholarship: Sources of Inspiration
• The Power of Paradigms and the Place of Ethnography
• Mind the Gap: Integrating Political Economy
• Cross-Overs and Cross-Fertilization
• Theory and Thematics in the Anthropology of the Middle East
• Part I Locating the Middle East in Anthropology
• Part II Middle East Anthropology Theory and Thematics—Late 1970s to 2014
• Part III Lacuna, Silences, Absences
• Part IV Next Generation of Middle East Anthropologists
• Structure/Agency and the Anthropology of the Middle East
• The Shift to “Macro-Anthropology” and Post-Structuralism
• Structure and Agency in Some Classic Works on the Anthropology of the Middle East
• Contentious Collective Action
• Reflections on the Politics of Middle East Studies
• Culture and Everyday Life
• The Politics of Aesthetics in the Muslim Middle East
• Dreams and the Miraculous
• Defining the Terms
• Notes on Methodology
• The Ordinariness of the Extraordinary
• Power and Politics
• Religious/Secular
• Looking Ahead, or: The Emergent
• Acknowledgments
• Refiguring Islam
• Islamic Tradition: Theoretical Intervention
• Early Elaborations of Islamic Tradition: Historical–Ethnographic Investigations
• Second Wave
• Aspiration and Challenges to Coherence for Practitioners
• Coherence as Aspiration of Tradition: Transformation, Orthodoxy, and Authority
• Conclusion
• Acknowledgments
• In the Garden of the Sexes: Of Men, Women, Gaze, and Hair
• A Cosmic Gender Encounter
• The Breach: Patriarchy, Power, and Gender
• The Crisis: Garden Contested
• Redressive Action; Arranging a Marriage?
• Reintegration: Garden Appropriated
• Some Reflections
• Trajectories of Gendered Labor
• Stories, Work, and Questions
• The Emplotment of Labor
• Exhaustion
• Conclusion
• The Politics of Poetry
• Ethics: Poetry and Values
• Form: Politics of Non-Poetry
• Subjectivity: Plurality and Interdependence
• Recitation: Temporalities of Repetition
• Conclusion
• Acknowledgments
• Social Relations and Social Movements
• Medical Anthropology in the Middle East and North Africa
• Introduction
• Competing Medical Systems
• The Anthropology of Reproduction
• The Biotechnological Turn: Infertility and Assisted Reproduction
• Religion and Bioethics
• Future Directions
• Acknowledgments
• Glossary of Acronyms
• From Rural Development to Environmental Anthropology
• Rural Development
• Rural Development and Agricultural Development
• Middle East Ecology
• Mode of Production
• Testour and Ghanima
• Musha
• Water and Development in Central Tunisia
• Morocco's Eastern Province (Oriental)
• Sustainability and Environmental Threats
• Water-Borne Pollution (Blue Agenda)
• Broad Issues
• Displacement and Dispossession in the Middle East
• Origins of the Field of Displacement and Forced Migration Studies
• Critical Anthropological Concepts in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies
• Classic Studies of People Who Have Been Forced to Move in the Middle East
• Anthropology of Forced Migration in the Contemporary Middle East: Recalling the Past
• Conclusion
• Anthropology and Humanitarianism in the Middle East
• Themes in the Anthropology of Humanitarianism
• Ethics and Politics of Humanitarian Action
• Humanitarian Worlds
• Humanitarianism in the Middle East
• The Case of Palestine
• New Directions in Humanitarian Practice and Research: Islamic Humanitarianism
• Conclusion
• Anthropologies of Middle Eastern Diasporas
• Diasporic Affiliation
• The Ethnographer's Task
• The Worlds (Not) Left Behind
• Diasporic Ecumene
• Abject Subjects and Flourishing Citizens
• Conclusion
• The Invention of the Mizrahim
• Islam, Mizrahim, and Zionist Historiography
• The Aporias of Nationalism
• The Making of Mizrahi Identity
• Reconceptualizing Identity: Toward Mizrahi Studies
• The Mizrahi Cinema of Displacement
• The Mizrahi Cinema of Displacement
• Social Movements and Revolution
• What are Social Movements? Theoretical Trends
• Debates in Social Movement Theorizing
• Anthropology and Social Movements
• Social Movements and the MENA: Debates and Questions
• Protest Movements, Public Mobilizations, and Revolutions
• Post-2010 Uprisings in MENA—the so-called Arab Spring
• New Social Movements—Collective Identity
• Conclusion
• Acronyms
• Law, Politics, and the State
• Justice between Islamic Sharia and Liberal Law: Remarks on the Egyptian Context
• Introduction: A Framing of the Question
• Justice from the Standpoint of Action
• Presuppositions and Styles of Judging
• The Problem of Violence for Justice in Liberal Law
• Some Preliminary Observations on ‘Adl
• Notes on Nineteenth-Century Transformations of ‘Adl
• Comparison
• Concluding Thoughts
• The Notion of Arab Culture and the “Colonial Present”
• Introduction
• Colonialism, Culture, and Development: Literature Review
• Development in Aqaba
• Culture as Impediment
• Culture as Asset
• Culture as Business
• Culture as Political Ideology
• Culturalization of the Economy
• Resistance from Below
• Conclusion
• Rethinking Anthropology of Neoliberalism in the Middle East
• Anthropologies of Neoliberalism in the Middle East
• Neoliberalism and the Origins of Market Society
• Anthropology of Value, Markets, and Violence in Africa and the Middle East
• A World without Price: Value, Visibility, and the Calculation Debate
• Rationality and the Market: Rethinking the Gift and the Market
• Finance, Banks, and Creation of the Public Sector
• Invisible and Tacit Knowledge just before Neoliberalism
• The Calculation Debate Comes to Egypt
• Economic Anthropology of the Middle East
• Making Market Society after Iraq
• Acknowledgments
• “States of Aspiration”: Anthropology and New Questions for the Middle East
• Where Is the State? (Ayna al-dawla?)
• Between Welfare and Domination: State–Society Relations
• States of Aspiration: Hope and Desire for the State
• New Anthropologies of the State in the Middle East
• Acknowledgments
• Rethinking the “Post-Ottoman”: Anatolian Armenians as an Ethnographic Perspective
• The Scope
• Intertwined Histories: The Balkans
• Overlapping Territories: The Kurds
• Conclusion
• Acknowledgments
• Reframing the Middle Eastern City: Thoughts on New Research
• The Spatial Turn
• Smaller Towns
• The Gendered City
• The Politics of the Poor
• Land and Infrastructure
• Conclusion
• Pop Culture and New Media
• Middle Eastern Music and Popular Culture
• Family Resemblances
• Anthropology in Middle Eastern Popular Culture and Music
• The People Demand Sustainable and Authentic Cultural Futures
• New Media and Electronic Networks
• Media Practices and the Arab Uprisings
• What Makes Media “New”?
• Media Ecologies
• Changing Media Practices
• Nations, Nationalism, and New Media
• Global Networks and Diasporas
• Conclusion