THE POLITICS OF SUFFERING
PUBLIC CULTURES OF THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA
Paul A. Silverstein, Susan Slyomovics, and Ted Swedenburg, editors
THE POLITICS
OF SUFFERING
Syria’s Palestinian Refugee Camps
Nell Gabiam
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
© 2016 by Nell Gabiam
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Gabiam, Nell, author.
Title: The politics of suffering : Syria’s Palestinian refugee camps / Nell Gabiam.
Description: Bloomington : Indiana University Press, [2016] | Series: Public cultures of the Middle East and North Africa | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015050921 | ISBN 9780253021281 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780253021403 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780253021526 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Refugees, Palestinian Arab—Syria. | Refugee camps—Syria.
Classification: LCC HV640.5.P36 G33 2016 | DDC 362.87089/927405691—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015050921
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To my mother, Mary Jo Gabiam
Contents
1Informal Citizens: Palestinian Refugees in Syria
2From Humanitarianism to Development: UNRWA and Palestinian Refugees
3Ṣumūd and Sustainability: Reinterpreting Development in Palestinian Refugee Camps
4“Must We Live in Barracks to Convince People We Are Refugees?”: The Politics of Camp Improvement
5“A Camp Is a Feeling Inside”: Urbanization and the Boundaries of Palestinian Refugee Identity
Conclusion: Beyond Suffering and Victimhood
Acknowledgments
WRITING THIS BOOK would not have been possible without the support of the Palestinian refugees of Ein el Tal, Neirab, and Yarmouk who opened their homes and lives to me between spring 2004 and spring 2006 and, under much more tragic circumstances, during spring and summer 2015. I am immensely grateful for the kindness and generosity they showed me and for the trust that they gave me. Syrian friends and acquaintances contributed to the generally warm and friendly atmosphere I encountered while doing fieldwork. I am also grateful to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) for allowing me to engage in participant observation during the Neirab Rehabilitation Project and to the UNRWA staff that I interviewed. The views expressed by UNRWA staff during interviews do not necessarily represent the official views of UNRWA as an agency.
The research that is at the origin of this book started roughly ten years ago while I was a graduate student in anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. In the anthropology department, I am grateful to Donald Moore and Laura Nader, who provided crucial guidance and support from the very beginning and helped shape me as a scholar, and to Stefania Pandolfo for her useful feedback on an earlier incarnation of the book. Nezar AlSayyad, in the College of Environmental Design, has been a sympathetic and helpful reader and listener. I also benefited from the support of faculty outside uc Berkeley. I am particularly indebted to Dawn Chatty at the University of Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre and to Ghada Talhami at Lake Forest College in Illinois, both of whom read and commented on earlier versions of the book. I am grateful for the encouragement and support I have received from my colleagues in the departments of anthropology and political science at Iowa State University, which has been my academic home for the last five years. The support of friends and colleagues helped sustain me during the grueling process of writing and attempting to turn what began as my doctoral dissertation into a book. I would especially like to thank Anaheed Al-Hardan, Salomé Aguilera-Skvirsky, Diana Allan, Leila Hilal, Ali Bangi, Christina Gish Hill, Alan Mikhail, Saida Hodžić, Derrick Spires, Lisa Calvente, Monica Martinez, Rosemary Sayigh, Ted Swedenburg, Lex Takkenberg, Alex Tuckness, Maximilian Viatori, David Vine, and Brett Williams.
Research for this book was made possible by a Fulbright (DDRA) grant, a Social Science Research Council-Mellon
