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Fabled for more than three thousand years as fierce warrior-nomads and cameleers dominating the western Trans-Saharan caravan trade, today the Sahrawi are admired as soldier-statesmen and refugee-diplomats. This is a proud nomadic people uniquely championing human rights and international law for self-determination of their ancient heartlands: the western Sahara Desert in North Africa. Konstantina Isidoros provides a rich ethnographic portrait of this unique desert society''s life in one of Earth''s most extreme ecosystems. Her extensive anthropological research, conducted over nine years, illuminates an Arab-Berber Muslim society in which men wear full face veils and are matrifocused toward women, who are the property-holders of tent households forming powerful matrilocal coalitions. Isidoros offers new analytical insights on gender relations, strategic tribe-to-state symbiosis and the tactical formation of ''tent-cities''.The book sheds light on the indigenous principles of social organisation - the centrality of women, male veiling and milk-kinship - bringing positive feminist perspectives on how the Sahrawi have innovatively reconfigured their tribal nomadic pastoral society into globalising citizen-nomads constructing their nascent nation-state. This is essential reading for those interested in anthropology, politics, war and nationalism, gender relations, postcolonialism, international development, humanitarian regimes, refugee studies and the experience of nomadic communities.>
List of contents
Table of Contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
GLOSSARY
NOTES ON TRANSLATION AND TRANSLITERATION
INTRODUCTION
PART I A SHIMMERING MIRAGE
SITUATING SAHR?W? REFUGEES BETWEEN IDENTITY, PLACE AND SOVEREIGNTY
OVERTURES TO SCEPTICISM
THE LOGIC OF NOMADIC MOVEMENT AND DWELLING
PART II HAREM: THE TENT AND THE BREAST
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MASHRAB?YAH
CIRCULATING MALES: FEMALE ECONOMIES OF AFFECTION
VEILED MALES AND UNRESTRICTED FEMALES
PART III THE NAKED CITY
TENTED CITIES AND THE TENT-STATE
WOMEN AS POLITICAL ARCHITECTS
THRESHOLD: PATRIARCHY AND THE STATE
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ENDNOTES
About the author
Konstantina Isidoros is Postdoctoral Associate at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology (ISCA) and Research Associate of the International Gender Studies Centre (IGS), both at the University of Oxford, UK.
Summary
Fabled for more than three thousand years as fierce warrior-nomads and cameleers dominating the western Trans-Saharan caravan trade, today the Sahrawi are admired as soldier-statesmen and refugee-diplomats. This is a proud nomadic people uniquely championing human rights and international law for self-determination of their ancient heartlands: the western Sahara Desert in North Africa. Konstantina Isidoros provides a rich ethnographic portrait of this unique desert society's life in one of Earth's most extreme ecosystems. Her extensive anthropological research, conducted over nine years, illuminates an Arab-Berber Muslim society in which men wear full face veils and are matrifocused toward women, who are the property-holders of tent households forming powerful matrilocal coalitions. Isidoros offers new analytical insights on gender relations, strategic tribe-to-state symbiosis and the tactical formation of 'tent-cities'.
The book sheds light on the indigenous principles of social organisation - the centrality of women, male veiling and milk-kinship - bringing positive feminist perspectives on how the Sahrawi have innovatively reconfigured their tribal nomadic pastoral society into globalising citizen-nomads constructing their nascent nation-state. This is essential reading for those interested in anthropology, politics, war and nationalism, gender relations, postcolonialism, international development, humanitarian regimes, refugee studies and the experience of nomadic communities.
Foreword
A rich ethnographic portrait of the Sahrawi people and their socio-political organization
Additional text
Offers a fresh perspective on Sahwari social organisation in the Algeria-based refugee camps bordering in the Western Sahara ... It also provides rich ethnographic descriptions which enable a tactile entry point into Sahrawi life in the camps. This is the book's real strength and demonstrates the author's fluency in critical refugee studies and anthropological literature ... A highly engaging book which gives a truly interdisciplinary perspective, built upon a skilfully written ethnography and offering a fresh analysis from 'inside the tent'.
