Voices of Reason

Alexander Koensler is Associate Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Perugia and Visiting Researcher at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute, Italy. He is the author of Israeli-Palestinian Activism: Shifting Paradigms.

• List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Notes on Ethnographic Ethics and Transliteration from Hebrew and Arabic IntroductionPart 1: How Many Voices? 1. A Polyphonic Perspective on Conflicts 2. Polyphony in the Periphery 3. Transversal Dreams, Desires, and Hopes Part 2: A Polyphonic Political Imagination4. Acts 5. Gyres 6. Acceleration Part III: Struggles for Justice 7. Collective Rights, Individual Lives 8. Human Rights in Practice ConclusionNotes References Index

"Voices of Reason makes an important contribution to our understanding of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and ethno-national conflicts more generally by exploring various cross-community interactions and convincingly demonstrating how reality is more complex than its usual portrayal exclusively as 'two sides' endlessly warring. This is an important intervention in general, and ever more so in the current climate, and it will generate much interest. Along the way it also compellingly deconstructs and complicates several other prominent images from the Palestinian–Israeli setting, e.g., the role of international activists, the meaning of solidarity, the effects of human rights, and much more." — Ron Dudai, Ben-Gurion University