The Endurance of Palestinian Political Factions: An Everyday Perspective from Nahr el-Bared Camp

by Perla Issa

Overview

A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org.

The Endurance of Palestinian Political Factions is an ethnographic study of Palestinian political factions in Lebanon through an immersion in daily home life. Perla Issa asks how political factions remain the center of political life in the Palestinian camps in the face of mounting criticism. Through an examination of the daily, mundane practices of refugees in Nahr el-Bared camp in particular, this book shows how intimate, interpersonal, and kin-based relations are transformed into political networks and offers a fresh analysis of how those networks are in turn metamorphosed into political structures. By providing a detailed and intimate account of this process, this book reveals how factions are produced and reproduced in everyday life despite widespread condemnation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520380592
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	08/17/2021
Series:	New Directions in Palestinian Studies , #3
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	186
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Perla Issa is a researcher at the Institute for Palestine Studies in Beirut, Lebanon.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations vi

Foreword from the Series Editor vii

Acknowledgments ix

Note on Transliteration xi

1 Introduction: "Empty Buildings" 1

2 "The Nest of the Crazy": The Ethnographic Setting 27

3 "We Drank the Jabha with Our Mothers' Milk": Joining Factions 51

4 "We Are the Factions": Political Faction Membership 71

5 "Factions Are Like Shops": Aid, Discipline, and the Structural Effect 91

6 "Factions Are Forced Husbands": Physical Representations, Factionalism, and Party Ideology 111

7 Conclusion: "The Guys Were Doing Something Great, the Factions Destroyed It" 135

Notes 149

Bibliography 157

Index 167