Palestine, Israel, and the Politics of Popular Culture

This important volume rethinks the conventional parameters of Middle East studies through attention to popular cultural forms, producers, and communities of consumers. The volume has a broad historical scope, ranging from the late Ottoman period to the second Palestinian uprising, with a focus on cultural forms and processes in Israel, Palestine, and the refugee camps of the Arab Middle East. The contributors consider how Palestinian and Israeli popular culture influences and is influenced by political, economic, social, and historical processes in the region. At the same time, they follow the circulation of Palestinian and Israeli cultural commodities and imaginations across borders and checkpoints and within the global marketplace.

The volume is interdisciplinary, including the work of anthropologists, historians, sociologists, political scientists, ethnomusicologists, and Americanist and literary studies scholars. Contributors examine popular music of the Palestinian resistance, ethno-racial "passing" in Israeli cinema, Arab-Jewish rock, Euro-Israeli tourism to the Arab Middle East, Internet communities in the Palestinian diaspora, caf culture in early-twentieth-century Jerusalem, and more. Together, they suggest new ways of conceptualizing Palestinian and Israeli political culture.

Contributors. Livia Alexander, Carol Bardenstein, Elliott Colla, Amy Horowitz, Laleh Khalili, Mary Layoun, Mark LeVine, Joseph Massad, Melani McAlister, Ilan Papp , Rebecca L. Stein, Ted Swedenburg, Salim Tamari

Author: Rebecca L. Stein
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 07/13/2005
Pages: 424
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.30lbs
Size: 9.32h x 6.12w x 1.10d
ISBN: 9780822335160

Review Citation(s):
Choice 02/01/2006 pg. 1087

About the Author

Rebecca L. Stein is Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University. She is a coeditor of The Struggle for Sovereignty in Palestine and Israel (forthcoming).

Ted Swedenburg is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. He is the author of Memories of Revolt: The 1936-39 Rebellion and the Palestinian National Past and a coeditor of Displacement, Diaspora, and Geographies of Identity, also published by Duke University Press.