Heritage and the Cultural Struggle for Palestine (Stanford Studies in Middle Eastern and Islamic Societies and Cultures) - Softcover

De Cesari, Chiara

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1503609383 ISBN 13: 9781503609389

Publisher: Stanford University Press, 2019

Synopsis

In recent decades, Palestinian heritage organizations have launched numerous urban regeneration and museum projects across the West Bank in response to the enduring Israeli occupation. These efforts to reclaim and assert Palestinian heritage differ significantly from the typical global cultural project: here it is people's cultural memory and living environment, rather than ancient history and archaeology, that take center stage. It is local civil society and NGOs, not state actors, who are "doing" heritage. In this context, Palestinian heritage has become not just a practice of resistance, but a resourceful mode of governing the Palestinian landscape.

With this book, Chiara De Cesari examines these Palestinian heritage projects―notably the Hebron Rehabilitation Committee, Riwaq, and the Palestinian Museum―and the transnational actors, practices, and material sites they mobilize to create new institutions in the absence of a sovereign state. Through their rehabilitation of Palestinian heritage, these organizations have halted the expansion of Israeli settlements. They have also given Palestinians opportunities to rethink and transform state functions. Heritage and the Cultural Struggle for Palestine reveals how the West Bank is home to creative experimentation, insurgent agencies, and resourceful attempts to reverse colonial violence―and a model of how things could be.

About this title

About the Author

Chiara De Cesari is Senior Lecturer of European Studies and Cultural Studies at the University of Amsterdam.

Edition details

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Publication date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1503609383
• ISBN 13: 9781503609389
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288