"Esmail Nashif of Birzeit University is organizing a session on Palestine and anthropology at the international Union for Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, 16th world congress, which will take place in Kunming, China. He welcomes paper proposals.
"Palestine: An anthropologically imagined site". The aim of the panel is to discuss the anthropological practices that focus on Palestine. By anthropological practices I mean the textual and ethnographic patterns that dominate the construction of 'Palestine' as an imagined generative anthropological site. While engaging critically with the
current problematics of writing 'Palestine' anthropologically, the discussion
will also aim at exploring new directions in anthropologically engaged research
on the colonial condition in 'Palestine', and based on that, extended comparatively to other neocolonial sites."
Allow me to translate:
"By anthropological practices I mean the textual and ethnographic patterns that
dominate the construction of 'Palestine' as an imagined generative anthropological site."
This is a sophisticated way of saying, "How do Anthropologists get around the fact that Palestine does not exist as a political entity?" He could have asked, "How do anthropologists study the Palestinian people?" but that would not accomplish the political goals of his proposed session. This is clear from the sentence that directly follows:
"While engaging critically with the current problematics of writing 'Palestine' anthropologically, the discussion will also aim at exploring new directions in anthropologically engaged research on the colonial condition in 'Palestine', and based on that, extended comparatively to other neocolonial sites."
The "current problematics" is basically a euphemism for "The existence of the State of Israel" and the "colonial condition" does not refer to the Ottoman or British periods, but rather to the present-day "neocolonialism".
This is confusing to me because my 2007 Textbook for Intro to Anthropology Window on Humanity: A Concise Introduction to Anthropology (2nd ed.) clearly defines "colonialism" as, "the political, social, economic, and cultural domination of a territory and its people by a foreign power." (p. 405) Since every State dominates its territory politically, economically and culturally the keyword in this definition is clearly "foreign".
By implying that Israel is a colonialist state, the session organizer is ipso facto arguing that the Jewish people are foreigners and hence no different than the British or Ottomans who preceded them. Unfortunately, this historical fiction is becoming a more and more common view - spread by precisely such people as Nashif and Abu El-Haj in their supposedly "neutral" and "academic" guises.
Since the conference is being held in China, the IUAES should consider doing a similar or joint session on Tibet. I think that such a forum would be a good place to discuss the "problematics" surrounding the desire and efforts of the Tibetan diaspora to "colonize" Tibet.
