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"On any given day in Jordan, more than nine million residents eat approximately ten million loaves of khubz 'arabi--the slightly leavened flatbread known to many as pita. Some rely on this bread to avoid starvation, for others it is a customary pleasure. Yet despite its ubiquity in accounts of Middle East politics and society, rarely do we consider how bread is prepared, consumed, discussed, and circulated-and what this all represents. With this book, Josâe Ciro Martâinez examines khubz 'arabi to unpack the effects of the welfare program that ensures its widespread availability. Drawing on more than a year working as a baker in Amman, Martâinez probes the practices that underpin subsidized bread. Following bakers and bureaucrats, he offers an immersive examination of social welfare provision. Martâinez argues that the state is best understood as the product of routine practices and actions, through which it becomes a stable truth in the lives of citizens. "Performing the State" not only describes logics of rule in contemporary Jordan--and the place of bread within them--but also unpacks how the state endures through forms, sensations, and practices amidst the seemingly unglamorous and unspectacular day-to-day"--
List of contents
Introduction:
1. A New Style of Administration
2. Sensing the State
3. Statecraft
4. Echoes, Absences, and Reach
5. Tactics at the Bakery
6. Leavened Apprehensions
Conclusion
About the author
José Ciro Martínez is Lecturer in Politics at the University of York and Junior Research Fellow at Trinity College, University of Cambridge.
