Middle Eastern Belongings

Diane E. King is a cultural anthropologist interested in identities ranging from the gendered to the national and trans-national. Her main field site is the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, where she has worked since 1995. She is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Kentucky, Lexington, USA.

• 1. Introductions: Impositions, ironies, bodies, lands Diane E. King 2. On the Margins: Women, national boundaries, and conflict in Saddam's Iraq Sarah Smiles Persinger 3. Leaving Mother-Land: The anti-feminine in Fida’i narratives Samar Kanafani 4. The Personal is Patrilineal: Namus as sovereignty Diane E. King 5. Land of Symbols: Cactus, poppies, orange and olive trees in Palestine Nasser Abufarha 6. Naturalising, Neutralising Women’s Bodies: The “Headscarf Affair” and the Politics of Representation Gabriele vom Bruck 7. When Belonging Inspires—Death, hope, distance Virginia R. Dominguez

"Middle Eastern Belongings makes important ethnographic contributions to current debates on "belonging"... The theme of violence is juxtaposed with the question of gender without the assumption of a feminist paradigm. In this sense, it follows Saba Mahmood's call for anthropologists of the Middle East and scholars of contemporary Islam to look at how Muslim women (and men) inhabit norms, rather than trying to look for the ways in which they overturn norms." - Edith Szanto, University of Toronto, CanadaAmerican Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, 2012. "This excellent book portrays multi-dimensional images of belonging and depicts the various ways in which belonging can be manifested by focusing on its worries and thrills in the Middle East. All images observe women in the context of their complex relationship to and in between territory and politics." -Basem Ezbidi, PhD Qatar University, Doha, QatarMiddle East Media and Book Reviews, Volume: 3 Issue: 11 November 2015