About the Book
This important volume rethinks the traditional parameters of Middle East studies and the dominant trends in scholarship on Israel and Palestine by focusing on popular culture--from the internet to music videos, tourism to advertising, comics to cafe culture. The essays in this collection challenge the idea that the production and consumption of culture is peripheral to history and politics. They demonstrate that attention to popular culture yields deeper and more nuanced accounts of politics and power. Further, the contributors consider Israel and Palestine not as discrete national entities but rather in relation to one another, as mutually constituted within regional and global political, economic, and cultural processes. Scholars from the fields of history, sociology, ethnomusicology, literary studies, anthropology, and political science look at how narratives of occupation and resistance circulate in popular culture in Israel and the occupied territories and in the broader regional and global spheres.
They contemplate Israeli films of the 1980s and 1990s, Palestinian underground music, Israeli tourism to Palestinian villages, the rendering of the conflict in journalist Joe Sacco's graphic novel Palestine, urban life in nineteenth-century Jerusalem, the use of the internet in Palestinian refugee camps, and more. Together, these essays signal broader approaches and new conceptual paradigms within which the cultural politics of Palestine and Israel might be understood. Contributors Livia Alexander Carol Bardenstein Elliot Colla Amy Horowitz Laleh Khalili Mary Layoun Mark Levine Joseph Massad Melani McAlester Ilan Pappe Rebecca L. Stein Ted Swedenburg Salim Tamari
Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Popular Culture, Transnationality, and Radical History / Rebecca L. Stein and Ted Swedenburg 1
I. Historical Articulations
Wasif Jawhariyyeh, Popular Music, and Early Modernity in Jerusalem / Salim Tamari 27
The Palestinian Press in Mandatory Jaffa: Advertising, Nationalism, and the Public Sphere / Mark LeVine 51
Post-Zionism and Its Popular Cultures / Ilan PappÉ 77
II. Cinemas and Cyberspaces
Cross/Cast: Passing in Israeli and Palestinian Cinema / Carol Bardenstein 99
Virtual Nation: Palestinian Cyberculture in Lebanese Camps / Laleh Khalili 126
Is There a Palestinian National Cinema?: The National and Transnational in Palestinian Film Production / Livia Alexander 150
III. The Politics of Music
Liberating Songs: Palestine Put to Music / Joseph Massad 175
Dueling Nativities: Zehava Ben Sings Umm Kulthum / Amy Horowitz 202
Against Hybridity: The Case of Enrico Macias/Gaston Chrenassia / Ted Swedenburg 231
IV. Regional and Global Circuits
"First Contact" and Other Israeli Fictions: Tourism, Globalization, and the Middle East Peace Process / Rebecca L. Stein 259
Prophecy, Politics, and the Popular: The Left Behind Series and Christian Evangelicalism's New World Order / Melani McAlister 288
Telling Stories in Palestine: Comix Understanding and Narratives of Palestine-Israel / Mary Layoun 313
Sentimentality and Redemption: The Rhetoric of Egyptian Pop Culture Intifada Solidarity / Elliott Cola 338
Bibliography 365
Contributors 397
Index 401
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.
Review :
"This empirically rich, theoretically innovative, and unusually wide-ranging volume brings together a set of fascinating and insightful explorations of the popular culture and cultural politics of Palestine/Israel, including music, cinema, television, cyberculture, tourism, comics, and the role of Israel and the Jews in U.S. evangelical Christian eschatology. By demonstrating how culture has been a crucial and often formative domain of contention both within and between Arab and Jewish societies in Palestine over the past century and down to the present day, the contributors open up a great deal of extremely valuable terrain that has been sorely neglected until now."--Zachary Lockman, author of Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism "This theoretically savvy, eye-opening tour through popular culture in and about Palestine and Israel confirms at once the inherent inseparability of culture/politics and the gripping mutuality of Israel/Palestine."--Lila Abu-Lughod, author of Dramas of Nationhood: The Politics of Television in Egypt "Rebecca L. Stein and Ted Swedenburg's volume Palestine, Israel, and the Politics of Popular Culture makes an invaluable contribution to the growing field of Middle Eastern cultural studies. Refusing essentialist understandings of culture, the editors and authors also transcend traditional Marxist paradigms. The volume insightfully illuminates the often marginalized issue of the politics of culture within the contested terrain of Palestine and Israel."--Ella Shohat, Professor of Middle Eastern Studies and Cultural Studies, New York University "Provocative... The essays in this volume ... imaginatively deconstruct aspects of popular culture still seeping across the walls erected through this long and intractable conflict."--Donna Robinson Divine, Digest of Middle East Studies "Recommended."--D. Peretz, Choice "In considering the ways that popular culture influences and is influenced by the political, economic, social, and historical processes of the region, Palestine, Israel, and the Politics of Popular Culture ought to be an indispensable addition to any Middle Eastern cultural studies library."--Helga Tawil Souri, Journal of Palestine Studies "Read together, these interdisciplinary essays challenge traditional paradigms of hybridity which often presume the coming together of two distinct identities at the expense of internal and external differences. The authors theorize how globalization simultaneously loosens and solidifies nationalism. Yet more than that, they seek to explain what this dual effect tells us about the politics of cultural production and consumption. Historically rich, the case studies contribute much to scholarship on Israel-Palestine and the broader field of Middle East studies. Theoretically insightful, the authors propose innovative models for conceptualizing representation. As a result, Palestine, Israel, and the Politics of Popular Culture is of the utmost value to anyone who traffics in representation."--Sarah Rogers, Art Journal "Given the enormous lack of studies on popular culture as a vital force in Israel/Palestine, the book certainly provides instructive reading and is a welcome addition to the field."--Motti Regev, International Journal of Cultural Studies
