Critical security and anthropology from the middle east

Giulia El Dardiry, Sami Hermez

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

9 Scopus citations

Abstract

This colloquy takes the Middle East region as a starting point from which to explore a contrapuntal concept of security that is subverted from its original meaning and captured from the state. The essays follow the lives of revolutionary youth, doctors, commodity traders, refugees, and spies to examine their experiences of (in) security. In doing so, the essays deploy storytelling and other ethnographic forms to think of the political economy, emotions, flows, and ethics of security from the perspective of those living-in-crisis.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)197-203
Number of pages7
JournalCultural Anthropology
Volume35
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - 2020

Funding

We thank the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Arab Council for the Social Sciences (ACSS), and Northwestern University in Qatar for the generous support that allowed us to gather a wonderful group of scholars and hold our workshop, "Insecurity and Everyday Life: Perspectives from the Middle East, " in Beirut, Lebanon. Thank you to all the participants of the September 2018 workshop, to Omar Dahi and Lori Allen, who read a version of the introduction, and to the Cultural Anthropology editorial collective and the journal's anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback. Perhaps most of all, this collection would not be possible without the various interlocutors who are identified in pseudonym only-precisely because of the politics of (in)security-and who yet constitute its primary theorists and protagonists.

Keywords

  • Crisis
  • Critical security
  • Ethnography
  • Everyday life
  • Middle east

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Anthropology
  • Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)

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