In general, case studies in critical heritage scholarship are grounded within nation-state frameworks and in politically sovereign entities. In view of that, Chiara De Cesari’s book on Palestine appears as a groundbreaking work that offers a different option for understanding how heritage is deployed in a proxy state, a political entity under siege, whose international sovereignty is still being renegotiated. The originality of this book, in my view, resides in the very lens it employs to examine heritage.
Based on years of ethnographic research and fieldwork, this book provides an in-depth analysis of the Palestinian heritage trajectory, beginning with the British Mandate and extending to the present day. It shows how the different political configurations and struggles are reflected in heritage priorities and agendas, and how conflicting views of actors—state, non-governmental, and private—vie to define or contest its deployment. Passing from a folkloric revival of an imagined past, through urban rehabilitation of abandoned or occupied spaces, development-oriented discourse, and on to museum work, Palestinian heritage is dynamic and very tuned to larger geopolitical forces and international heritage discursive regimes. De Cesari argues that the inability of the Palestinian Authority (PA), along with its ministries and agencies, to assert itself as a strong centralized state, due to a lack of financial stability and political legitimacy, opens doors for internal and foreign private organizations, professionals, and diasporic Palestinian experts to stake their claims within complex and money-driven heritage preservation projects.
The book has four integrated chapters that can also be read as distinct texts. Chapter 1 examines the early folkloric rediscovery in Palestine, and the ethnographic movements spanning from the British Mandate up to the defeat of Nakba. It also highlights women’s mobilization in the revival of the Palestinian peasant material culture, especially through embroidery. The author shows how folklore collection, started by Orientalists in the quest of biblical geographies, is reformulated and repurposed for a proto-nationalism struggle. Unlike purely academic folklore, De Cesari argues, the early Palestinian revival movement put forward a participatory process of knowledge production that extends its scope to ordinary people, exposing them to methodological approaches aimed at resuscitating the national folklore as an anticolonial discourse.
Chapter 2 deals with the significance of the city of Hebron in Palestine’s heritage, marked by the Zionists’ settlement and partial military control of the site called the Old City. It also sheds light on the often-changing and ambivalent role of the Hebron Rehabilitation Committee (HRC), whose primary function has been the restoration of the built environment and the promotion of participation by Palestinians in the revalorization of abandoned houses at risk of being taken by settlers. Because of a lack of a centralized and strong state, the HRC transitions into a semi-governmental organization that serves as a proxy state authority. However, the financial challenges besetting its operation and structure make it more and more dependent on foreign funding, which completely shapes it along lines of a non-governmental agency. To survive in this constrained situation, the HRC had to widen its scope beyond heritage, encompassing humanitarian and administrative roles as a service provider. The chapter also focuses on the stories of two individuals, showing their daily struggles to empower their community to escape the assistance-based life through self-sustaining initiatives.
Chapter 3 explorers the complexities of heritage management, especially the heritage discourse disjuncture between state agencies, such as the PA’s ministry, and non-governmental organizations, with the backdrop of a space contested with Israel. The state’s priorities and its heritage legal framework, not completely decolonized, create barriers with the other non-governmental practitioners whose stake includes developmental and neoliberal agendas. This chapter sheds light on these boundaries that are constantly negotiated through conflict and friction. The interest of this chapter lies in the ways it brings into stark relief the heritage scholarship, often dominated by state monopoly, a case study in which non-governmental bodies compete with a makeshift state in defining heritage value and in experimenting with creative and alternative institutionalizing tools.
Chapter 4 features the intersection between museum and heritage as a national and transnational means of identity-formation for Palestine. After tracing the history of museums since the Oslo Agreement, it demonstrates the failure of PA’s state-building mechanism via museum-making. The author attributes the failure of the national museum project not to internal management problems or incompetence, but rather to the broader Palestinian struggle for sovereignty against Israeli military occupation and colonization. This impossibility for a national museum, however, generates a “museum fever,” referring to the proliferations of private and small-scale museum institutions that infest the public sphere to produce an anticipated statecraft through memorial narratives and global and virtual networks. She concludes that such alternative museums contribute to lay the groundwork for the hoped-for state of Palestine.
This book constitutes an original work that adds a novel layer to the beaten track of case studies in critical heritage, dominated by the focus on centralized state governments. The reality of Palestine as a unique geopolitical space in the world, a country largely reclaimed and annexed by Israel, yet involved in a constant quest for territorial recovery and international recognition as an independent state, is reflected in the complexity of its heritage. As such, Heritage and the Cultural Struggle for Palestine is likely to provide a template for critical engagement in classroom discussions and academic fora. Methodologically, the book provides an ethnography of a conflict-ridden field where safety and security are permanently tested. The author, a woman, shares her experiences of a fieldworker who evolves in a cultural, gendered, and religious realm different from her own, and she indicates the ways that she navigates across those barriers to create networks and achieve her goals. Her insights may be critical for researchers and students in folklore and anthropology as a pedagogical tool to enhance their preparedness and self-awareness in similar circumstances, and eventually may lead them to question some of their methodological assumptions.
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[Review length: 977 words • Review posted on May 7, 2020]