Transnationalism and Refugee Studies

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Journal of Refugee StutBes Vol 9. No. 1 1996

Transnationalism and Refugee Studies:

Rethinking Forced M igration and Identity in

the Middle East

SETENEY SH M I

epartment of Anthropology. Yarmouk University ordan

The current enthusiasm in anthropology for the concepts of transnationalism and

globalization has significant implications for Refugee Studies as an emergent field,

for understandings of the contemporary Middle East, and for the practice of

ethnography. In discussing forced migration in the Middle East the argument is

made for the importance of retaining the analytical concern for forms and forces

of regionalism, while at the same time rethinking them in the light of global

changes. This entails a consideration of two problematic topics: Arab

nationalism, or rather al- uruba (which translates best as Arabness, and which

highlights the identity rather than the ideology); and contemporary Islamic

identity, which is better conceptualized as transnationalism rather than

fundamentalism. A critical reading of the life history of a Somali woman offers

a commentary on the place of ethnography in the context of these analytical

concerns, and highlights the problem of using static concepts of Islam and

tradition to interpret lives that are transnational.

Introduction

In the past decade or so, anthropologists have been forced by many changes,

not least the international mobility of the peoples that they have traditionally

studied, to step back and take a broad view of the world which they seek to

describe. Through this process, the inadequacies of ethnographic and world-

historical formulations have become increasingly exposed. Dissatisfaction with

previous representations has led to a focus on the global interpenetration of

peoples and societies on the one hand and the local construction of cultural

practices on the other.

In many ways, this new framework for the analysis of social processes

and cultural change has helped anthropology out of the impasse, or at least

the malaise, with which it struggled in the 1970s, as exemplified by such

texts as Reinventing Anthropology (Hymes 1974/1969), In Search of the

•Revised text of the Seventh Elizabeth Colson Lecture, delivered at the Refugee Studies

Programme, University of Oxford, on 8 March 1995.

C Oxford Ura venity Prera 1996

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Seteney Shami

Primitive

(Diam ond 1974) and

To See Ourselves

(Weaver 1973). In a world

where yesterday's 'primitives' were now engaged in complicated labour

disputes or were driving their herds in pick-up trucks or had become

refugees, anthropology appeared to have lost its object and, with that, its

purpose. Anthropology would have to transform itself or to disappear

together with the 'disappearing world' of the well-known ethnographic film

series, which privileged the primitive as a reservoir of knowledge about

humanity and its nature. Even the possible transformation of anthropology

threatened its demise: if it turned to the ethnography of industrialized

societies it would become sociology; if it elaborated on the incorporation of

non-western peoples into the world market system it would become social

history. Today, anthropology appears to have been given a new lease of life

as it turns to study social formations and cultural forms in the context of

transnationalism and globalization. Although the fields of cultural studies

and literary criticism in many ways lead the way in which these new

concerns are articulated and investigated, anthropology reassures itself and

impresses its widened audience by asserting its authority as the field that

monopolizes the understanding of Culture, especially in its comparative

sense, as well as the articulation of cultural construction with social

reproduction.

Following a brief discussion of the concept of transnationalism, this paper

will situate the category of the refugee within this analytical context.

Examples of forced migration in the Middle East show that a focus on

globalization may obscure the place of regionalism in structuring population

movements. Linkages, such as those w rought by Arab nationalism, are salient

in shaping identity, allocating mutual responsibility and hence informing the

geographical trajectories and consequences of migration. In spite of this, it is

Islam that remains as the main focus of scholarship on the Middle East. Here

the problem is reversed, where fundamentalism (conceptualized as a local and

archaic identity) obscures Islam's contemporary and historical transnational

character. Finally, how refugee movements, identity and transnationalism are

reflected in the central practice of anthropology, that of ethnography, will be

discussed.

As I pondered on the link between this paper and Professor Colson's w ork,

beyond the obvious references to forced migration and my own biography and

intellectual shaping as her student, it came to me that it was the spirit of the

enterprise that is inspired by her legacy from the classroom. The question that I

inherited from Professor Colson, and with which I embark on this enquiry into

the currently fashionable exegesis of

the

state of the contemporary world, is the

following: 'What exactly, if anything, is new in this?' Not a dismissive question,

although it may have sometimes appeared cynical to a graduate student

enthusiastic about a theoretical paradigm recently discovered. It is a question

that highlights the necessity to seek linkages, between past thoughts and

present ones, between past behaviours and present outcomes. It is also a

reminder to continually review past paradigms and present assumptions, not

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Transnationalism and Refugee Studies 5

merely to critique them gratuitously but because, as Elizabeth Colson puts it,

'What counts is quality of thought' (1989:4).

Anthropology and the Remapping of the World

Transnationalism as a concept and perspective emerges, as Rouse (1995)

points out, from the synthesis of two modes of thought dominant during the

1980s: firstly postmodernism, which emphasized the new relationships

between knowledge and power brought about by the 'information age';

and secondly Marxist critiques, that attempted to situate the dialectic of

knowledge and power within broader transformations in the character of

global capitalism. Transnationalism, thus, is an analytical perspective that

privileges as its object of study, as well as its primary premise, the

accelerating circulation of goods, people, money, information and ideas

through and across national borders and cultural boundaries. As many have

noted, the circulation itself is not new in the world (Abu-Lughod 1989, Wolf

1982), although its scope and speed have become remarkable. This

acceleration, in conjunction with contemporary changes in the nature of

boundaries, production and power, constitute the main issues of investiga-

tion. Thus what has been termed 'flexible accumulation' in the late capitalist

era is characterized by the replacement of multinational corporations with

transnational ones (Rouse 1995)

1

. This challenges the ability of states to

control production and consumption processes within their borders, as well

as leading to new types of population dislocation and movement. The

tensions between economically dominant corporations, powerful supra-

national political organizations, embattled 'national' states

2

and the

strategems of restless populations, structure the world as it is today. Called

into question by this inability of territorial states to sustain their ideological

hegemony and economic supremacy, are vested notions of class, ethnicity,

nationalism, race, citizenship and modernity.

Within this general framework of transnationalism are found differing

contentions, varying according to discipline and ideological orientation: some

emphasize the waning of national sentiments and boundaries, others the

retrenchment of state power and the rise of ethnonationalism; some extol the

cultural hybridity brought about by population mobility as well as by

unexpected combinations and juxtapositions of media consumption, others

bemoan reactive cultural and religious fundamentalisms. Some argue for the

specificity of the present moment while others favour a historicity which sees

societies and states as always existing within wider contexts and populations

that have always been mobile.

Ethnographic research, although full-length monographs are still few,

focuses on such instances of transnationalism as the lobbying of Caribbean

politicians for votes in New York, the consumption of second-hand western

designer clothing in street marke ts of Lusaka, the circulation of 'gifts' between

migrant families and their kin back home, and the 'public culture' created by

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6 Seteney Shami

entertainment industries (Basch et al. 1994; Glick Schiller et al. 1992; Hannerz

1987;

Hansen 1994).

Within this powerful new image of the world, where is the refugee?

The

refugee

in a

Transnational

World

Interesting chronological parallels can be found between the concerns of

transnationalism outlined above and the emergence of refugee studies. Until

recently, refugees were barely acknowledged as an object, or subject, of

sustained scholarly in teres t Although there is a literature dating back to World

War II, in 1981 Stein and Tomasi could still note that 'Traditionally viewed as

localized, nonrecurring and isolated flows, refugees and refugee movements

stand singularly undefined and notably undocumented' (1981:5). In contrast,

the past decade has seen the emergence of refugee studies as a field. Institutions

such as the Refugee Studies Programme at the University of Oxford, have

played the determining role in developing this varied, multidisciplinary field

which requires imagination, compassion and acuteness as it straddles scholarly

and practitioner communities, and encompasses a literature spanning social

scientific writings, literary representation, journalistic reports, development

agency documents and political speeches. Refugee studies have shown the

complexity of the experience endured by the refugee as well as the range of

phenomena relevant to developing an understanding of this experience. It is

now clear that there is a need to take into account not just the demographics

and policy aspects of refugee movements, not just the contextual issues and the

impact of dislocation on individuals, communities and collectivities, but also,

to transpose Fou cault's well-worn phrase, the 'governmentality' of refugees ,

that is the 'mentalities that govern'—govern the state of refugees, as well as

governing the states that govern the refugees.

Yet in spite of these theoretical and empirical accomplishments, in spite of

the increasing numbers of refugees n the world, estimated at 16,255,000 at the

beginning of 1994 (US Com mittee for Refugees 1994), in spite of the

proliferation of organizations concerned with refugees and the actual volume

of output in print and visual media representing refugees, the category of 'the

refugee' continues to be invisible, or at least tangential a nd /or superfluous, in

scholarly mappings of the world as it nears the 21st century.

As noted by Stein and Tomasi above, this could largely be attributed to the

perceived 'transience' of the refugee phenom enon. However, this in itself arises

from a more basic bias in the understanding of society, such th at in a world of

rooted, stable societies, refugees who are mobile and dislocated are seen as the

anomaly, the aberration. Liisa Malkki has delivered a trenchant critique of

what she terms 'the rooting of peoples and the territorialization of national

identity' (1992:24). Based on her work among the Hutu refugees in western

Tanzania who fled the 1972 massacres in B urundi, she contests what she terms

'the national order of things' (1992:32). Arguing from the perspective of

transnationalism, she states that


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Transnationalism and Refugee Studies

7

There has emerged a new awareness of the global social fact that, now more than

perhaps ever before, people are chronically mobile and routinely displaced and

invent homes and homelands in the absence of territorial, national bases

(1992:24).

Yet, Malkki asserts, scholars and common-sense understandings continue to

treat stability as the norm and depict the world as 'composed of sovereign,

spatially discontinuous units' (1992:26). Structured by ideologies of

nationalism, in this representation, 'one country cannot at the same time

be another country' (1992:26) and the world looks 'much like any school

atlas with yellow, green, pink, orange, and blue countries composing a truly

global m ap with no vague or fuzzy spaces and no bleeding boundaries'

(1992:26).

The language in which this world is represented rests upon metaphors of

roots and trees (the British oak for example) that serve to naturalize and

essentialize the congruence of place, society and culture (cf. Gupta and

Ferguson 1992). Through what Malkki terms a 'sedentarist metaphysics'

(1992:31) refugees fall into the narrow cracks between borders, between

societies and between cultures. They effectively disappear into the liminal world

of the aberrant where they are depicted as impure, immoral, terroristic and

criminal in a 'pathologization of uprootedness' (1992:32). This insistence upon

the 'externality of the refugee' in the 'family of nations' (1992:33) also

emphasizes the unstable status and the destabilizing impact of the refugee.

This eloquent critique enables us to situate the scholarship on refugees since

World War II, which has overwhelmingly focused on the so-called 'practical'

issues of repatriation and integration, or on social-psychological aspects of

'assimilation ' in 'host cultures ' (Schechtman 1963; Zwingm an and Pfister-

Ammende 1973). In this way, solutions could be divorced from the causes and

contexts of displacement. If, as Malkki shows, the natural/national order is

represented in metaphors of trees, the refugee (dis)order is represented as

virulent disease, attacking roots, shoots and fruits. At best, the refugee is

grafted onto the social body of the host society.

Today we are forced to confront a world characterized by the increasing

permeability, dislocation and disappearance of borders and a disjuncture

between the conceptual mapping of the world-as-stable and the actual state

of its inhabitants-as-ambulatory. It would appear that refugee studies would

emerge as a most appropriate

fin de siecle

discipline. Yet, oddly enough,

even in the approach that brings to the centre of its analytical gaze the

movement and dislocation of peoples, the refugee once again disappears.

This time they are the norm in a world that is uprooted and fluid. Just like

everyone else, if more so, the refugee is mobile, uprooted, dislocated and

lonely. If the world is a 'nightmarish postmodern landscape of homelessness'

(Harvey 1989:77) then the refugee is simply one of many who travel this

landscape, together with tourists, guestworkers, exiles, business consultants,

expatriate experts, roving academics and the like. The fact that the refugee



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Seteney Shami

appears as a term couched between other terms of mobile existence is

erasure

through

inclusion.

Even for Malkki, who is specifically basing her interpretation of

transnationalism upon the study of refugees, refugee narratives are simply

either ones of deterritorialized nationalism or of cosmopolitanism, depending,

respectively, upon residence in the refugee camp or the town. The value of

studying refugees is that it 'illuminates the complexity of the ways in which

people construct, rem em ber, and lay claim to particular places as hom elands

or na tions ' (1992:25). In other words, the refugee is assimilated into other

categories and is simply the extreme case that reveals the power of the.

deterritorialized imagination.

Malkki argues against states, organizations and scholars that constitute

refugees 'differently from other kinds of deterritorialization' (1992:25). Yet

the challenge that refugees pose to territorial states is quite particular and

structured by their appeal to humanitarian (inter-national) regimes, to

global (trans-national) responsibilities, and to universal (trans-cultural)

human rights. There are certainly strong arguments to be made for a more

interconnected understanding of the parallel experiences of, for example,

war refugees, development oustees and disaster displaced (cf. Cernea 1993;

Hansen and Oliver-Smith 1982; Shami 1993, 1994). Yet this should be

clearly acknowledged as a compatibility between the

victims

of dislocating

forces and a search for an understanding of how power realizes itself though

the dislocation of people in different ways (cf. Asad 1993:10). While the

agency and creativity of such dislocated peoples should be in no way

minimized, there is little justification for celebrating their cosmopolitanism

as they bear the burden of global capital accumulation (cf. Bright and

Geyer 1987). One of the ways in which to critique celebratory notions of

modernity and to re-insert the actuality of inequality, dislocation and

suffering is through a global mapping of shifts in borders and the

accompanying reinscription of boundaries (Gupta and Ferguson 1992) as

well as through tracing the physical trajectories of mobile peoples rather

than only their cultural itineraries.

Refugee Flows: Structures and Representations

For refugee studies today, two relevant shifts in boundaries and borders are the

disintegration of the former Soviet Union and the waning of asylum in

Western Europe (Frelick 1994). In the literature on transnationalism and

globalization, all too often, the end of the Cold War and of the Soviet Union is

discussed in terms of the collapse of ideologies and the (presumably)

consequent rise of ethnonationalism (cf. Laclau 1994), instead of through

the dislocation of borders and people. How semantics guides demography is

also reflected in the strange 'fact' of the declining number of refugees since

1993.

As Frelick points out, it is not that people are dislocated in lesser

numbers than before but that



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Since the end of the Cold War, refugees have been devalued in the eyes of

governments, which will seek to shirk their responsibilities on the refugees'

behalf. We have seen a variety of methods to do so: facilitating the return of

refugees before it is safe for them to go home; denning refugees out of existence,

by, for example, offering them second-class statuses like temporary protection;

creating 'orderly procedures' such as visa regimes and in-country refugee

processing programs that cannot begin to protect desperate people needing to

flee immediately; and either creating planned internal displacement in the form

of 'safe haven zones' or simply saying that internal flight alternatives exist

(1994:9).

W e see here the creation of a new vo cabu lary— often w ith subverted usag es of

i ts terms—through which new types of terr i tories and spaces come into being

as legit imated by world bodies. Thus, the UN Securi ty Council has 'designated

safe ar ea s tha t easily rated as the most unsafe places in the Ba lkan s, if no t

the world' (Frelick 1994:5).

3

Powerful global forces, then, structure refugee movements, define the nature

of the spaces they inhabit and textualize their experience. In spite of this, it is

interest ing if saddening, that , whether seen through the framework of

nationalism or transnationalism, refugees exist as a concept but disappear as

a category and as a collectivi ty in global representat ions. This may appear

preposterous given the space that the refugee, and more generally war and

armed conflict, gets in the media. On the one hand, this may indicate that the

media do not shape other discourses as powerfully as is commonly assumed.

On the other hand, i t may be a result of how the media manage and structure

our ' inat tent ion '

4

as much as our at tention. The dissemination of repeti t ive

images of refugees and violence from around the world may be blurring

perceptions and creating indifference rather than awareness. Nowhere is this

truer tha n in coverage of the M iddle East . A goo d exam ple is provided by Fisk

concerning the use of a videotape cl ip of a young Palest inian from Gaza

throwing stones at an Israeli patrol. Fisk writes that

. . . the script by CN N reporter Bill Delaney described the boy as protesting

against the peace process. No reference was made to the fact that his protest was

at the deliberate destruction by the Israeli Army of 17 homes. When I took this up

the same day with CNN's Jerusalem bureau chief, he said that the tape had been

'generic' and had in any case been taped by an outside agency (1995:15).

Popular and scholarly 'generic' representat ions have made of the Middle East a

region synonymous with confl ict and war. Portrayed by media images of the

refugee victims and terrorist perpetrators of violence, different types of

conflicts and situations are lumped together, and causes, effects, contentions

and political nuances become irrelevant in a seemingly endemic state of

mayhem. Such representations certainly reflect an aspect of the lived experience

of the inhabitants of the region. The predicament and numbers of people

trapped in, or fleeing, arenas of military confrontation and civil unrest in the

Middle East should not be minimized.

5

The issue does not lie in evaluating



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Seteney Shami

methods for enumerating displaced populations and their accuracy, or in

debating comparative proportions of violence in different regions of the world.

It is impossible to assess the numbers of those who are victimized by any

conflict, and numbers themselves are usually an essential ingredient of the

conflict and its management (cf. Asad 1994). Instead, conceptualizing violence

and displacement in the region requires the mapping of linkages and

temporality to replace the reiteration of unending parallel images.

The Arab Middle East: Towards Theory of l inkages

I f the phenomenon

of

forced m igration

is

situated within

the

issues h ighligh ted

by transnationalist perspectives (global shifts

in

product ion

and

accum ulat ion,

deterr i torial izat ion

and

contested n ationalism ,

the

reinscription

of

boundar ies ,

territories

and

spaces), then

the

impor tance

of

retaining

a

concern

for

forms

and forces

of

regionalism becomes apparent .

For

example, when considering

the geographical trajectories

of

displacemen t from

and in the

A rab s tates ,

the

continuing salience

of

regional politics

and

identities emerges

(cf.

Bocco

and

Djalili 1994). While global forces play

an

im por ta nt role

in

structuring refugee

movements

and

pop ulation m ovemen ts generally,

the

causes

and

consequences

of displacement cannot

be

unders tood

in

isolation from

the

meanings that

are

reinforced, contested

and

created thro ug h such massive movem ents. These

constructions inform people's decisions, within

the

space allowed them,

concerning where

to

move, how

and

when.

The

'why '

is

also mediated throug h

such cultural meanings

and the

poli tics that shap e

and

reproduce them.

Linkages of Arabness

Writ ing

in the

Manches ter

Guardian

dur ing

the

Gul f W ar

in

1991, Edward Said

commented:

It

is

curious,

but

profoundly symptomatic

of the

present conflict, that

the one

word that should

be

tediously pronounced

and

re-pronounced

and yet

left

unanalysed was linkage,

an

ugly solecism that could only have been invented

in

the late twentieth century America. Linkage meant

not

that there was,

but

that

: there

was no

connection. Things which belonged together

by

common

association, sense, geography, history, were sundered, left apart

for

convenience

sake

and for the

benefit

of

imperious United States policy makers, military

strategists,

and

area experts. Everyone his own carver, said Jonathan Swift. That

the Middle East was linked

by all

sorts

of

ties, that was irrelevant. That Arabs

might

see a

connection between Saddam

in

Kuwait

and

Israel

in

Lebanon, that

too

was

futile, this

was the

forbidden topic

to

broach, least

of all by

pundits

whose role wasn 't to question

but

to manage popular consent

for

war, one which

never actually emerged... (Said 1991).

SaH

is

referring,

of

course,

to the

stateme nt repeatedly m ade

by

George Bush

dur ing

the

Gulf conflict that there

was no

double s tandard employed

in the

'world' response

to the

Iraqi invasion

of

Kuw ai t.

At

the very least, this position



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ignored the powerful fact that much of the popular support for Saddam

Hussein outside Iraq was by Arabs (and not just Palestinians) who saw a

moment of hope for Palestine or at least a less humiliating position

vis-d-vis

Israel and the West. It also ignored the resentment, that was actually widely

reported in the press, felt by m any Arabs from the labour-exporting countries

towards the Gulf countries concerning inequalities in the distribution of wealth

and resources in the region. Unreported was another sentiment that was

echoed widely, at least in Jordan and at least at the beginning of the crisis, tha t

even given what Saddam Hussein was, if

his

incorporation of Kuwait into Iraq

was a step towards Arab unity then it should be supported.

This last position is morally, strategically and politically untenable and

shows that the Gulf War brought out the worst in everybody concerned,

leading political actors and publics to reactive positions of xenophobia and

jingoism. What is significant, however, in this context, is that the sentiments

described above are instances of Arab nationalism, although an embattled

and defensive one. One of the indicators of nationalism is the mobilization of

sentiment around instances of perceived injustice, such as the case of

Palestine (Amin 1978). Even after the divisive Gulf War, even after the PLO

accords and the Jordanian peace treaty with Israel, Arab leaders are still

being judged by their publics in terms of the Palestinian cause. A suggestive

cartoon published in the Jordan Times recently showed two unidentified

Arab leaders duelling with olive branches, competing over which one is

making the better peace.

Such sentiments are all shot through with assumptions concerning a l- uruba,

a term encompassing many m eanings: Arabness, a way of being Arab, cultural

authenticity, a set of responsibilities and rights that comes with being Arab. In

other words it expresses an identity, that is reinforced or violated or challenged

or ignored by various events. However contingent and informed by realpolitik

particular political positions and statements may be, there is constant reference

to a universe of discourse which is identified as 'Arab'.

As any identity, however, Arabness has to be constantly reinvented and is

constantly threatened. Its discourse is reshaped by historical events as it

simultaneously provides the vocabulary with which to interpret these events.

An interesting example is the term 'the Arab Arabs' utilized by King Hussein

of Jordan during the Gulf conflict, extolling those holding on to the principle

of Arabness (by seeking a negotiated solution) as opposed to A rabs who were

being less than Arab (by attacking Iraq). Significantly, negative reactions to

this term did not dispute the discourse itself but only disputed King Hussein's

right to appropriate it.

Nationalism, therefore, is not only a political ideology and strategy and a

means to an end, which is a political state. It is also a discourse, which leads to

and results from the construction of identity, an identity which the nationalist

discourse itself takes for granted. Anderson 's (1992) felicitous phrase of nations

as 'imagined communities' is well known; however, it has been little applied in

the study of Middle Eastern identities, which are seen as 'age-old' and


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Seteney Shami

unchanging ones. Anderson rightly emphasizes that the national community is

'imagined' because its members cannot know one another except in the

imagination and through the print-languages which manage this imagination.

However, of course, encounters do take place, in daily life, in ceremonial,

through migratory circuits and in situations of crisis. The nature of these

encounters and the actors involved play the decisive role in continually

transforming the nature of the communities to which individuals imagine

themselves as belonging.

National Identity and its

Boundaries

In the same piece quoted above, Edward Said goes on to say:

Above all, Arab nationalism hasn't died, but has all too often resolved itself into

smaller and smaller units. Here too linkage comes last in the Arab setting. I do

not want to suggest that the past was better, it wasn't. But let us say that it was

more healthily inter-linked so to speak, people were actually connected to each

other, rather than staring at each other over fortified frontiers (Said 1991:6).

Here there is less to agree with, although it certainly is no t a matter of whether

the past was better or worse, and the relevant issues are precisely those

concerning the mobility of people and permeability of boundaries. However,

the sentiment Said voices concerning the size of political units is one of

standard Arab nationalism. One that gives little weight to the discursive force

of nationalism, or the vehicles through which it is disseminated, or the identity

politics that it involves, but judges success or failure and connectedness in

terms of political unity as embodied in a state.

A plethora of books in Arabic have appeared in the past 15 or 20 years abou t

the failure of Arab nationalism and the retrenchment of what is called in

Arabic al-dawla al-qutriyya. This term is difficult to translate but may be

glossed as the 'regional state', or the 'country-state', or the 'territorial state'.

6

Thus each A rab state is seen as a regional, part-state of the wider Arab nation

(Hopkins and Ibrahim 1985). Embedded in the term itself

is

the idea that each

of these states is transient, incomplete, local, while the natu ral/national state is

the unified Arab one.

Nationalism seeks a mechanistic congruence of place and person, of state

and nation, of means and ends. As discussed above, via Liisa M alkki's critique,

a de-linking of territory and nation may open our eyes to a phenomenon that

has been obscured throu gh a fetishization of borders. Ara b nationalism , since

it is a nationalism, an ideology inspired by West European models, conceives of

its ultimate fulfilment in the establishment of a unified natio n-sta te (what

Anderson has termed 'the modular state'). As scholars interested in

interpreting ideologies but also practices, what we should examine is if, and

how, Arab nationalism, as ideology and discourse and political strategy, has

led to the construction of a sentiment, an identity, and an imagined community

despite

the multiplicity of borders.


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It is important to no te, at the same time, that the present political moment is

one of significant changes for these territorial-states: some states are being

strengthened ideologically at the same time that they are being weakened

materially through structural adjustment programmes and unfavourable

bargaining positions in the world economy. While world attention is focused

on the dramatic creation of a Palestinian mini-state, negotiations and conflicts

are marking the delimitation of frontiers between various Gulf states, in the

southern Arab peninsula, between Jordan and Saudi Arabia and between

Egypt and Sudan. Almost daily, what sorts of relations should obtain between

the Arab states within the 'Arab World' are variously interpreted and

negotiated. The defection of Hussein Kamel Hassan, Saddam Hussein's son-in-

law and adviser, and his being granted 'refuge' by Jordan in August 1995

presents an intriguing example. Asked by reporters whether he would use

Jordan as a base for toppling the Iraqi regime, he replied that 'the whole extent

of the Arab arena' would be his field of action

(Al-Dustur

16/8/1995). This

stated confidence in the freedom of political and physical movement w ithin an

Arab arena somehow coexists with official Jordanian statements that this event

has no political implications for the brotherly relations between Iraq and

Jordan.

7

At the very same time, the League of Arab Nations is celebrating its

50th anniversary and, in a bid to heal rifts after the Gulf War, its secretariat

has proposed establishing a 'Code of Honour' to regulate future inter-Arab

relations. This is accompanied by fierce debate, in local and regional

publications, over whether the Arab League has promoted or retarded Arab

unity throughout this half-century (Sayigh 1995).

The point here is that 'Arabness', as any other identity, obtains its power

through its very ambiguity and ability to contain different meanings at the

same time. These meanings, however, can only be arrived at by theorizing

boundaries and linkages within the 'Arab arena*. This is not simply to

document empirical phenom ena but to reach a theoretical understanding about

how mobility and the encounters between people engender transformative

relationships. There are many examples that can constitute a starting point:

how labour migration, in all its forms, has reinforced the sense of Arabness

while at the same time heightening tensions—tensions that are heightened

precisely because Arabs expect better, demand better, from fellow Arabs. How

expulsion from Palestine has led to the imbrication of the Palestinian people, as

refugees, labour m igrants, intellectuals and exiles, into every Arab state. How

Egyptian professional migration has led to a certain 'Egyptianness' in

bureaucracies and institutions of higher learning in many Arab countries.

How 300,000 Jordanian citizens displaced by the Gulf War reconstitute

themselves as 'returnees' to a country in which most of them have never lived

before.

8

How displaced Nubians become part of the remaking of the city of

Cairo and how displaced Iraqis become part of the art scene in Jordan and

poetry circles in Yemen.

Furthermore, the region is marked by long histories of diaspora and

diasporic communities. What are the linkages maintained by descendants of


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14

Seteney Shami

those displaced peasants from Syria and Lebanon in the 1880s who emigrated

to Honduras, Argentina and the West Indies? How does the presence of non-

Arab peoples in Arab societies reinforce, heighten or challenge Arab identity?

For example, how does the presence of the Armenian diaspora in Middle

Eastern countries a rticulate with Armenian com munities world-wide? How are

we to situate the fact that in Jordan, since December 1994, the small Chechen

community, descendants of those displaced from the North Caucasus at the

turn of the century, have been keeping vigil and sending aid for the victims of

the Russian-Chechen war?

Equally important is how a North African film week in Amman, Jordan,

shocks its audience by presenting divergent ways of speaking Arabic and being

Arab. How a Lebanese diaspora in Europe produces an intellectual output for a

wider Arab audience. How a performance by the famous Lebanese singer

Fairuz in San Francisco is judged

by its

Arab audience in terms of how m any of

her songs were dedicated to Palestine versus Lebanon. How Algerian and North

African migration to Europe implicates the Islamic com ponen t of their identity.

Nationalism, of course, is not the only force and practice operating in the

Middle East, and the region does need to be seen in its global context. It is

important to locate nationalist discourses as only one particular type of

discourse of unity. There are others, some now defunct such as the

International, others in the ascendant such as Islamic 'fundamentalism', and

even the beginnings of ecological holism. These are discourses that seek unity

on completely different bases from that of nationalism. Rather than seeing one

displacing the other, what needs to be understood are the intersections of

identifications that may be mutually reinforcing or contending, but always

existing in relation to one another. What has been described for Arab

nationalism could be applied to other nationalisms in the Middle East, which

may challenge each othe r's geographical boundaries. These relations, however,

cannot be understood if the analytical emphasis is solely on fluidity and

mobility on a global scale without an adequate awareness of the regionalisms,

and their geographies, which shape the allocation of resources and wealth, of

mutual and collective responsibility, and of territorial integrity across a

multiplicity of borders and boundaries.

Islam as Transnationalism

Another obviously salient discourse, practice and force in the Middle East and

beyond, is that of so-called Islamic fundamentalism. Why talk about a

fragmented Arab nationalism a t all, given the mobilizing power of Islam in the

region today? Many would argue that 'secular' pan-Arabism is being replaced,

as identity and ideology, by Islamist movements. More generally, arguments

are being advanced that religious identities are overtaking local and national

ones,

especially in countries frustrated with their economic underdevelopment

(Kaplan 1994). Islam has become the prime example and the test case of this

view.


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Islam is being portrayed, especially by those engaged in drawing global

scenarios, as a newly virulent mobilization of an old rooted identity. Thus

Huntingdon, in his article The Clash of Civilizations? , talks about religion as

the most fundamental and indivisible of identities and draws global fault lines

that simultaneously mark religious divides, civilizational boundaries and the

battle-fronts of the coming world conflict between the West and the Rest

(1993:29,39). Critiques of Huntington s thesis point out the fault lines running

through his own argument: his definition of civilization, his assessment of

political trends and alliances, and the probity of his conclusions concerning

how to maintain Western hegemony Foreign

Affairs

1993). Equally proble-

matic is the forced neatness of his geography that supposedly rests upon an

understanding of long-standing historical formations that have produced

cultural entities .

Islam

and its

Boundaries

W h a t

is the

geography

of

Islam,

and

where

lie its

outer

and

inn er frontiers?

Would such an entity be t raced throu gh the historical reach of its empires, or

through the contemp orary d is tr ibut ion of the adherents to its faith? In cont ras t

to such territorial or demographic projects , Asad (1986) has persuasively

argued that Is lam, as an analytical category, can only be employed with

reference to

a

historically constituted discursive tradition, rather than

to a

geographical enti ty,

a

social structure

or a

collection

of

beliefs

and

practices.

Yet , a central concept in this tradit ion is tha t of the Islamic Umma, which

appears to collapse precisely all these asp ects into one 'civilizational ' u nity. For

Hunt ington and others, this unity is what provides the basis of contemporary

' fundamental ism' . Thus:

The sense

of

community is very much alive among Muslims today.

It

cuts across

regional, national and linguistic barriers to create a great brotherhood that

stretches from the shores of the Atlantic in M orocco to the Philippin es... (Adams

1976:36).

In spite

of

some exceptions,

The force of this community feeling may also be seen at the level of international

rela tion s... Again the affirmative attitude toward other Muslims is almost

instinctive, for religion and tradition have taught that Muslims are an ummah or

community different from all others (Adams 1976:37).

This ' inst inctive at t i tude' , according to the glossary of an int roductory volume

on Islam,

is

correlate d with definite political bou nd arie s,

if not

borders :

'Ummah: 'community'; a term with varying connotations in different times and

places, but most commonly used for the religo-political community of Islam as a

whole (Savory 1976:203).


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The question is , to which and whose 'common' usage of

umma

is reference

being made? It is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss the theological and

historical permutations of this term; however, a few points illustrate the

difficulties of 'fixing' its meaning and inscribing it in space. In the Qur an, the

references to

umma

could be read to m ean com m unity, bu t also people, na tion,

gr ou p, tribe, religion and model (to othe rs) and is certainly no t restricted to

Muslims only. I t is also open to interpretat ion what kind of community is

implied:

The passages in the Kur'an, in which the word umma (plur. umam) occurs are so

varied that its meaning cannot be rigidly defined. This much however seems to be

certain, that it always refers to ethnical, linguistic or religious bodies of people

who are the objects of the divine plan of salvation (Paret 1987:1015).

Paret notes that the term is not even restricted to people but is applied to

jinn

and to all living creatures in so far as they are part of this divine plan.

Therefore

umma

always has to be qualified to clarify the precise collectivity

to which it refers. In early Islamic times, the term 'Mohammad's

Umma

at

first included the Jews of Medina, and then referred to Arabs, and then

excluded the former and expanded from the latter to include all Muslims (Paret

1987).

In later eras, as Hou ran i's (1970) overview show s, there were a variety o f

conceptualizations of the Islamic

umma

among Muslim philosophers: for some

it was the embodiment of the principles of Islam, for others it was the rule of

law, whereas for yet others it was a unity 'of minds and hearts, not of political

forms '

(1970:19). Still later, for Arab intellectuals of what Hourani calls the

'liberal age' (1798-1939), the issue was revitalized in connection with the

encounter with colonialism, imperialism and nationalism.

In spite of this diversity of interp retatio ns,

umma

a nd

umma Muhamm adiyya

are used interchangeably by Von Grunebaum (1955) throughout an

authori tat ive work on Islam as a 'cultural t radit ion' . Without presenting a

sustained interpretat ion of these terms, Von G run eb au m con sistently at tr ibutes

to 'the community' self-consciousness, needs, desires and purposes.

Whether or not Muhammad had in the course of his career come to envisage his

mission as addressed to all mankind, the Muslim community did so interpret

i t . . . die task of extending the realm of truth on earth will not be fulfilled as long

as non-Muslims remain in control of any part of this globe (1955:12).

It is precisely these types of summary statements (and the paranoia they seem

to invoke) that Asad (1986) seeks to replace with an understanding of Islam as

a discursive tradition, a concept that highlights the place of argument and

reasoning in striving for coherence and encompassing diversity. Islam as

discourse and practice has meant different things for the lives of Muslims

through different historical periods and successive empires. However, across

empires, geographical regions and cultures, there were (and are) institutions

engaged in the production and dissemination of a heterogeneous Islamic

discourse carrying within it an implied practice and a conception of historical



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17

continuity. Thus merchants, bureaucrats, scholars, mystics, nom ads, and other

mobile populations of the pre-modem world, would encounter in cities across

vast distances, familiar yet distinct institutions and languages, as has been

recorded in the genre of travel literature {adab

al-rihla).

9

Within Islam as a tradition, it is at least useful to distinguish between faith,

community, identity and political organization in order to emphasize the

heterogeneity of practices and institutions and geographies operating within

each of these categories. The scope and reach of the practices encoded in

Islamic tradition were always determined, and limited, by the nature of its

institutions and consequently differed across time and space. As Asad notes:

There has never been any Muslim society in which the religious law of Islam

has governed m ore th an a fragment of social life' (1986:13). Outside daily life,

however, there were and are certain practices, such as the pilgrimage to Mecca,

which assert for the pilgrims, during a moment of heightened sensibility, a

feeling of commonality and (imagined) community. The reorganization of

daily routines during Ramadan, the fasting month, carries a similar meaning.

Yet, again, at every such occasion, the 'Muslim O th er ' (Eickelman and

Piscatori 1990:xv) is also encountered.

Islam, therefore, does have a geography. Certa in spaces, buildings, cities and

locations all have their place in the construction of the imaginative domain of

dar ul-hlam (the house of Islam). However, this domain is better conceptua-

lized as one of interpenetrations rather than one of blocs and divides. Its

geography is made and remade through travel, movement and encounter. The

point is that, historically, Islam has been a trans-state, trans-societal

phenomenon reproduced, in its diversity, through a circulation of goods,

ideas and people.

10

Transnationalism, in this sense, is hardly new to Islam,

although the state entities concerned did not imagine themselves as nations.

What is new today is the expansion of the centres that produce Islam, perhaps

even the transference of these centres, to Western Europe and North America.

Islamic Fundamentalism

and the West

Provocative as it sounds, it may be useful to look at Islamic 'fundamentalism'

as a force being created in the West, and this in several different ways. First of

all, that an academic object of study called Islam was constructed in the West

has been definitively established by Edward Said 's (1978) work on Orientalism.

While more self-critical and divested of m any of its biases, 'Islamic Societies' as

a field of inquiry continues to hold centre stage in Middle Eastern studies

today. The historical distortion involved in ignoring the enduring presence of

Islam in Europe as well as the indigenousness of Judaism and Christianity to

the Middle East (Asad 1986) runs the risk of seeing East and West as

homogeneous categories, and reproducing them as metaphysical entities

opposed essentially in terms of Islam versus modernity.

Beyond scholarly constructions and more concretely, Islamist movements

have also certainly found their voice in the West, as political organization as


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18 Seteney Shami

well as an identity that unifies immigrants and labour migrants and the

generally disenfranchised across and between nationalities and ethnicities.

Many of the major actors in Islamist movements have lived in the West:

Ayatollah Khomeini in Paris, for example, and Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman

in New Jersey. Islam for many Arab, Asian and African migrants in the West is

a way of being global and transnational but not on Western term s. It would

appear importan t to engage in a comparative study of so-called fundamentalist

discourses in different settings, to trace the genealogies and contending visions

in this global discourse, instead of assuming that the source is in the Middle

East and that the West is simply at the receiving end. In other words, if Islamist

movements today are a result of transnational interaction, then the flows

cannot be assumed to be in one direction only.

Islam today

reflects

and participates in the making of a transna tional world. It

has an increased capacity of producing homogeneity through industrial-

capitalist means of communication (Asad 1986) and through mass education

(Eickehnan 1989), and it is shaped through the encounters between dislocated

peoples. It is not that migrants from Islamic countries 'carry' fundamentalism

with them to the 'new world', it

is

encounters and experiences across boundaries

that engender new interpretations of Islamic identity and faith. The above

discussion of umma serves as a word of caution against assuming a historical

homogeneity and solidarity based on Islamic identity. This argument may go

against the grain of most Islamic historians, who generally accept the view that:

When the question is posed, 'Who are you?', the Muslim may reply in terms of

family, regional associations or even national identity, but he will

find

a place also

for his 'Muslimness'. In the past his identity as a Muslim would likely have

loomed foremost in his mind (Adams 1976:37).

In place of such assumptions, a closer look at how empires, as opposed to

national states, constructed identity is clearly warranted . Keeping in mind th at

after the first century AH and the collapse of the Umm ayad Caliphate (750 AD),

there was no unified Islamic empire, how were identity and Islamic tradition

experienced at the local level, and how was the umma imagined?

It is against the background of this sort of historical investigation that one

must interpret the contemporary growth of a populist Islamic identity that

conceptualizes itself in terms of common blood across the face of the globe.

Demonstrators in Pakistan carrying a sign reading 'Yesterday Bosnia, Today

Chechnya, Tom orrow W ho?' are making a statement about the shedding of a

common Muslim blood. They are also concurring with Huntingdon's conclu-

sion, that 'Islam has bloody borders' (1993:35), although they would strongly

differ with Huntington in allocating the responsibility for this bloodshed.

Ethnography in a Transnational World

A transnationalist perspective highlights the interpenetration of peoples across

the world, which problematizes the relationship between boundaries,


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nationalism and other salient or emergent identities. This has been invaluable

in pointing out the static natu re of previous understandings of society, culture

and identity. Yet images of fluidity obscure much as well. Through semantic

manipulation, refugees become a declining phenomenon and disappear as a

category. Enduring regional forces of mobility and sentiment such as

'Arabness' are displaced by cultural configurations such as 'Islam'. Para-

doxically, situating Islam as

the

force in the Middle East fixes its contested

meanings and denies its historic transnational character. It also obscures the

intersection of religious and secular meanings in nationalist discourses, as for

example in the concept of the Arab

umma,

as well as how religious discourses

are informed by concepts of modernity.

12

How is this complex world of national boundaries, Islam, globalization and

transnationalism to be conveyed in ethnography? One way would appear to be

through recording life-histories, a textual device with a long tradition in

anthropology. Aman: The Story of a Somali Girl by Aman (Barnes and Boddy

1994) is advertised on the back cover as 'the true story of what life is like for a

woman in S om al ia ... while at the same time illuminating the female experience

everywhere.' This is obviously a story for today's world—in the first person

and local in its narrative form, global in its implications.

One Life and its

Boundaries

Aman's life-story takes us from her earliest childhood memories until she

reaches the age of seventeen. It is a detailed, well-written and lively narrative,

starting with an account of her grandmother's, and then mother's, life and

marriages. It is a story of women. Men as fathers, husbands, lovers, sons,

brothers, good and bad government officials and military personnel, are

present but transient.

Aman's mother goes through seven marriages, the first two arranged by her

father and the rest by herself. Aman's happy memories are of her pastoral

childhood. Aman, her mother and grandmother join a number of families that

make up the herding group. Her father drops in every now and then . Life while

moving around the pasture-lands of the Somali interior is presented as happy,

easy, beautiful and fun. Soon, however, there is a drought, the animals die of

disease, and Aman's mother moves to a village where she tries to sustain her

family by peddling vegetables, fruit and milk.

This is the first rupture, and Aman's life after that is a series of ruptures,

where every difficult situation is resolved by moving away or running away.

The economic situation of the family continuously wavers. At the age of

eight Aman decides to work as a maid and bakes bread to sell in the

marketplace. Around this time, she is circumcised, begins to go to school and

develops a taste for the movies. Then, at the age of twelve she falls in love with

Antony, an Italian

fifteen

year old. There is a fight, nstigated by Am an's young

male relatives, Antony is beaten badly and a relative who acted as the go-

between is killed. Antony is sent to Italy.


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20 Seteney Shami

After this , the R om eo an d Juliet plot takes a very local turn. Am an arranges

her own m arriag e to an older rich man , keeping i t a secret from her mother, but

with the encouragement of an uncle. In spite of this decision, taking the bride-

price herself, she runs away on her wedding night. After several unsuccessful

attempts by her family to affect a reconciliation with her husband, she finally

runs away to Mogadishu. There she goes from one relat ive's house to another,

meeting other runaways, getting to know girls from the wealthier classes, going

to pa rt ies , wearing western clothes, cutt ing her hair , putt ing on m ake-u p. Th ere

is a series of boyfriends and in the meantime, through the intercession of

several relatives, Aman arranges her divorce from her first husband. Soon

after, she marries Paul, a half-Indian, half-Arab Adenese guitarist in a rock

band in Mogadishu.

When Somalia is rocked by Siyaad Barre's coup in 1969, Paul is deported

together with all other foreigners, and Aman is denied a passport. The passport

official tells her that she shouldn't be married to a white man. He says 'We're

not pimps, that we should give you passports so you can go and sell your

b o d y . . . Go f ind a man w ho is black l ike you an d leave the whi te ones a lo n e . . . '

(p .

250). Paul sends Aman her divorce paper and she is alone again. Harassed

by soldiers when she resumes her round of nightclubs and restaurants, she

decides to leave Somalia. She leaves her son from Paul with her mother, takes a

truck to the Kenyan border, crosses on foot , ends up in Mombasa where she

gets emergency documentation and crosses to Tanzania where she marries a

Somali man who is prosperous in the trucking business.

A m an is now seventeen. She says This is wh ere I wo uld like to end my story .

I struggled, an d I survived' (p. 288).

Of course, her s tory does not end here. From the introduction we know that

she met the first anthropologist (Barnes) in Italy and that she was married to an

American serviceman at the t ime. At the t ime of the book's publication, Aman

is living in the United States, though it is not said if she is married or not.

In the introduction and afterword of the book (by Boddy), Aman's life is

represented as i l lustrat ing the changing of Somalia from a tradit ional pastoral

economy and society to the war-torn terrain of today.

.. . Somalia today is a tragic country, a land of death and refuge es... Aman

herself now resides abroad. Yet her story allows us to turn the clock back to a

more peaceful time, when Mogadishu, the capital city, was hailed as the safest city

in East Africa—

relatively

safe, tha t is, if you were a young girl on the run; safe

once you knew how to handle men. Aman's tale of hardship and triumph, of

learning —becoming street and socially wise—allows us privileged insight into

the world of Somalia's most vulnerable citizen: the female child (x; emphasis in

the original).

Yet even the ba re outl ine of Am an's na rrat ive m ake s it str ikingly clear that this

is a life story of a woman who is a refugee, has lived her childhood as a refugee,

and furthermore, is a third generation refugee. Aman's grandmother f led the

1890 ba ttles between Ethio pia and S om ali tribesme n in which all her m ale


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relatives were killed. After a long trek with her three sisters and three female

cousins, they each got married to the first man who would take them . M arriage

emerges as a main strategy for women in disl

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