Refugees of the revolution : experiences of Palestinian exile /

In this intriguing study, anthropologist Allan provides a fascinating study of Palestinian identity in exile, specifically in the Shatila camp in Lebanon in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict, with a focus on the mundane, day-to-day material life that continues to open up political possibilities and pragmatics of survival for the refugees. The dilemma is how national identity in exile can be constructed while any form of assimilation is perceived as abandoning the hope of return to the pre-1948 homeland and, as Allan explains, "legitimizing historical dispossession." Her study shows that identity and belonging are less about ideology based on nationalistic politics and ultimately about localized practices, wherein new forms of political subjectivity emerge to creatively form a community with complex bonds of affinity. At its core is how "home" should be understood in everyday senses of "lived conditions" of the experiences and material realities of camp life to manage dispossession and poverty. Identity, Allan therefore argues, lies in the local, wherein emotions and cognitions of sociability mark felt experiences of embodied practices. Allan's methodology of "ethnographies of the particular" underlines this everyday aspect of lived experiences and, in many ways, identifies the book's major contribution to anthropology and Middle Eastern studies. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above. B. Rahimi University of California San Diego

A stern look at how the crippling effects of material deprivation have ground down the will of the Palestinians in Lebanese exile. A British anthropologist doing her doctoral work at Harvard on Nakba ("catastrophe") testimonies, Allan imbedded herself in a Palestinian camp in Lebanon and a suburb of Beirut over several years in the mid-2000s to record and observe the lives of the Palestinians there. The results are stark and troubling. Having been displaced since their expulsion from Palestine by Jewish militias in 1948, about 750,000 refugees were forced into neighboring states, with Lebanon absorbing most of these; their long, troubled relationship with their hosts, in the form of PLO provocation during the civil war of 1975-1990, including a horrendous "War of the Camps" between 1985 and 1988, did not ingratiate them with the Lebanese, and the Palestinians are still a people in limbo, with no citizenship and no right to return. Pawns in the political chessboard of the Oslo Accords of 1993 and Taif Agreement of 1989, frustrated by the failure of the Intifada and lack of Israeli-Palestinian agreement, many have migrated elsewhere for a better life, underscoring the remainders' sense of betrayal and isolation. Employing a methodology called "ethnographies of the particular," Allan delves closely into the daily life and narratives of these haunted, destitute people. Through many moving examples, the author explores their basic survival and coping strategies--e.g., the use of collective memory, the reliance on communal credit alliances, the ubiquitous stealing of electricity, the practice of "dream talk" to access a future they have no agency over and the desire for the right to live over the right to return. Deeply conscious of its "solidarity rhetoric," this valuable study provokes essential questions about the conflicted Palestinian identity in exile.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.