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  • Recent Publications

Prepared with assistance from Joseph Domingo Cataliotti and Tariq Kenney-Shawa.

ISRAEL

Continuity and Change in Political Culture: Israel and Beyond, edited by Yael S. Aronoff, Ilan Peleg, and Saliba Sarsar. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2020. 256 pages. $105 cloth; $45 e-book.

This volume on political culture with a focus on Israel is a Festschrift for Rutgers University professor Myron Aronoff, with contributions from scholars of political science, anthropology, and Middle East studies. The volume is divided into three parts: Section I focuses on Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, identity, and possible paths forward; Section II focuses on challenges to democracy in Israel and the creation of the American public in nineteenth-century cities; and Section III focuses on the role of art in creating national memory in Israel, the Basque Country, and Poland. Myron Aronoff himself writes a valuable epilogue that links together the variety of subjects. (JDC)

JORDAN

Minorities and State-Building in the Middle East: The Case of Jordan, edited by Paolo Maggiolini and Idir Ouahes. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. 284 pages. $89.99.

Catholic University of Milan research fellow Paolo Maggiolini and Marbella International University Centre researcher Idir Ouahes bring together a range of scholars to explore how fluid ethno-religious minority communities develop and endure in the context of the modern state system, with Jordan as a case study. By challenging the narrow state-centric approach to contextualizing minority groups and their minoritization, the contributors emphasize an approach to historical analysis that recognizes the constantly evolving balance of social forces in which the state is but one elevated player. This collection offers a dynamic and relational framework for understanding how the Hashemite monarchy has incorporated or excluded diverse ethnic, religious, and ideological communities. More broadly, it also provides an example of how scholars can reevaluate traditional social constructs and power structures throughout the region. (TKS)

Kinship, Islam, and the Politics of Marriage in Jordan: Affection and Mercy, by Geoffrey Hughes. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2021. 280 pages. $25 paper.

University of Exeter lecturer Geoffrey Hughes explores how rapid socioeconomic shifts in Jordan— and across the Middle East at large—have influenced and challenged traditional notions of marriage. Through extensive fieldwork and ethnographic research, Hughes structures the book around three themes: the home, the proposal, and the wedding. In part one, the book examines gender expectations and home ownership, often a barrier to marriage for all classes. Part two covers rituals surrounding marriage proposals in light of economic challenges and the central roles of the government and shari'a courts. Finally, Hughes considers the social significance of the wedding itself amid class conflicts and urban/rural divides. While some social scientists have predicted a rise of individuated family structures, Hughes argues that the making and breaking of kinship bonds in Jordan contribute to evolving concepts of romantic love and do not always result in putatively modern nuclear families. (TKS)

PAKISTAN

Who Is a Muslim? Orientalism and Literary Populisms, by Maryam Wasif Khan. New York: Fordham University Press, 2021. 272 pages. $35.

Maryam Wasif Khan, an associate professor at the Lahore University of Management Sciences, explores how the modern Urdu literary canon, from its British colonial roots to its present iterations in Pakistani culture, has become predicated around the question "who is a Muslim?" By analyzing over three centuries of literary history, Khan argues that this question has come to shape understandings of national identity, citizenship, and societal belonging while also elevating what the author warns are dangerous forms of religious populism. Khan provides a framework for how today's Urdu-language literary culture, shaped by the Orientalism that contributed to the standardization of modern Urdu and that continues to impose Western principles, serves to validate particular ideals of Islamic practice while discounting others. Khan's book shows how the ascendance of these religio-populist narratives can have dangerous consequences, often smothering preexisting cultural practices, local vernaculars, and minority rights. (TKS)

PALESTINE AND PALESTINIANS

Palestinian Refugees in International Law, second edition, by Francesca P. Albanese and Lex Takkenberg. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. 697 pages. $125 cloth; $49.95 paper.

Building on the 1998 first edition by former United Nations Relief and Works Agency official Lex...

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