Crossing Community Boundaries: Bedouin Women in the ‘Good Neighbors’ Project in the Negev/Naqab, Israel
Keywords:
Recognition from below; familiarity; crossing boundaries; good neighborliness; post-abyssal perspective
Abstract
This article traces processes of building familiarity between Bedouin and Jewish women in the Negev/Naqab and their implications on various spatial-socio-political scales, using Jewish and Bedouin women in a Good Neighbors group as a case study. This good neighborliness occurs in a colonial framework that does not recognize the Bedouins’ legitimate right to their villages and lands, rather considering them non-citizens. Focusing on Bedouin women, this study identifies and exposes barriers, failures and successes when women from Tal ʿArād cross physical, cultural social and political boundaries. We interrogate the kinds of boundaries they cross, how this process takes place, and at what intensity. Moreover, we ask what their participation in the process of building inter-community familiarity means for their gender status within the tribal community. The methodology used emerges from a post-abyssal perspective within the framework of a critical approach using qualitative methodology. The sources utilized were in-depth, semi-structured interviews with eight Bedouin women in the group; examples of group activities and discourse and their consequences; and analysis of the observations made of the participants. The findings indicate that the process of crossing boundaries and building familiarity from below, which contributes to good neighborly relations, underpins the establishment of trust and the growth of a joint social platform on a limited scale. Long-term potential for establishing a different discourse and developing a healthy society in the Negev is inherent in expanding the circle of Good Neighbors groups.
References
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Yiftachel, O. (1996) The internal frontier: Territorial control and ethnic relations in Israel. Regional Studies, 30(5), 493-508.
-----. (2020) From displacement to displaceability, City, 24(1-2): 151-165.
Abu-Rabia, R. (2017) Trapped between national boundaries and patriarchal structures: Palestinian Bedouin women and polygamous marriage in Israel. Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 48(3), 339-349.
Abu-Rabia-Queder, S., Morris, A., & Ryan, H. (2018) The economy of survival: Bedouin women in unrecognized villages. Journal of Arid Environments, 149, 80-88.
Abu-Rabia-Queder, & Weiner-Levy (2013) Between local and foreign structures: Exploring the agency of Palestinian women in Israel. Social Politics, Spring 2013, 88–108.
Alhuzail, N. A. (2018) A place of many names: How three generations of Bedouin women express the meaning of home. Journal of Housing and the Built Environment, 33(2), 247-262.
Anzaldúa, G. (1987) Borderlands/La frontera: The New Mestiza. San-Fransisco: Aunt Lute books.
Armstrong, W. (1998) Belonging, ethnic diversity and everyday experience: Co-existing identities on the Italo-Slovene frontier. Working paper series, University of Oxford. Transnational Communities: An ESRC Research Programme.
Baumel, Y. (2010) 61 years of supervised abandonment: Decoding Israeli governmental policy toward Arab citizens. In H. Katz & E. Tzfadia (Eds.), Abandoning State Supervising State: Social Policy in Israel, 1985–2008 (pp. 35-54). Tel-Aviv: Resling. (Hebrew)
Chiodelli, F. & Tzfadia, E. (2016, January). The multifaceted relation between formal institutions and the production of informal urban spaces: An editorial introduction. Geography Research Forum, 36, 1-14.
Dekel, T. (2019) Production of Space in Be’er-Sheva Metropolitan Frontier: Bedouin, Jews, and Trans-Local Civic Networks. Ph.D. Dissertation, Beer-Sheva: Ben Gurion University of the Negev. (Hebrew)
Evans, C., & Lewis, J. (2018). Analysing Semi-Structured Interviews Using Thematic Analysis: Exploring Voluntary Civic Participation among Adults. SAGE Publications,
Fanon, F. (2007) The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Black Cat.
Fitzgerald, T. (2010). Spaces in‐between: Indigenous women leaders speak back to dominant discourses and practices in educational leadership. International journal of leadership in education, 13(1), 93-105.
Fredericks, B. (2010) Reempowering ourselves: Australian aboriginal women. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 35(3), 546-550.
Goloviznina, M.P. (2019) Indigenous agency and normative change from ‘below’ in Russia: Izhma-Komi’s perspective on governance and recognition. Arctic Review on Law and Politics. 10, 142–164.
Gottlieb, N., & Feder-Bubis, P. (2014) Dehomed: The impacts of house demolitions on the well-being of women from the unrecognized Bedouin-Arab villages in the Negev/Israel. Health & Place, 29, 146-153.
Handel, A. (2019) What’s in a home? Toward a critical theory of housing/dwelling. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 37(6), 1045-1062.
Knoblauch, H. (2021) Reflexive methodology and the empirical theory of science. Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung, 46(2), 59-79.
McKee, E. (2015) Trash talk: Interpreting morality and disorder in Negev/Naqab landscapes. Current Anthropology, 56(5), 733-752.
Meir, A. (1999) Local government among marginalized ex-nomads: The Israeli Bedouin and the state. In H. Jussila, R. Majoral, and C.C. Mutambirwa, (eds.), Marginality in Space--Past Present and Future, Aldershot: Ashgate, 101-119.
Meir, A. (2009) Contemporary state discourse and historical pastoral spatiality: Contradictions in the land conflict between the Israeli Bedouin and the state. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 32(5), 823-843.
Meir, A., Roded, B. & Ben-Israel, A. (2020) Janus-faced mobility, sense of road-as-place and Indigenous Bedouin-Jewish settlers relationships. Settler Colonial Studies, 10:4, 576-596.
Meir, A. and Zivan, Z. (1998) The Socio-cultural Encounter in the Frontier: Jewish Settlers and Bedouin Nomads in the Israeli Negev Desert. In Ethnic Frontiers and Peripheries: Landscapes of Development and Inequality in Israel, By O. Yiftachel and A. Meir (eds.), Boulder, Co.: Westview Press, pp.241-268.
Mikhelidze, N. and Pirozzi, N. (2008) Civil Society and Conflict Transformation in Abkhazia, Israel/Palestine, Nagorno-Karabakh, Transnistria and Western Sahara. Policy Working Paper, no. 3, MICROCON: A Micro Level Analysis of Violent Conflict, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton,
Nagda Biren (Ratnesh) A. (2006) Breaking barriers, crossing borders, building bridges: Communication processes in intergroup dialogues. Journal of Social Issues, 62, 3, 553—576.
Roded, B. and Tzfadia, E. (2012) Recognition of the land rights of indigenous peoples. Public Sphere, 7: 66–99. (Hebrew)
Sonn, C., Bishop, B., & Humphries, R. (2000) Encounters with the dominant culture: Voices of indigenous students in mainstream higher education. Australian psychologist, 35(2), 128-135.
de Sousa Santos, Boaventura (2007) Beyond abyssal thinking: From global lines to ecologies of knowledges. Review (Fernand Braudel Center), 30(1): 45-89.
Swirsky, M. (2002) From recognition to familiarity: An intercultural approach. In Jones Irwin (Ed.) Probing the Boundaries/At the interface. London: Rodopi Press.
Swirski S. & Hasson Y. (2006) Invisible Citizens: Israel Government Policy toward the Negev Bedouin. Tel Aviv: Adva Center. (Hebrew)
Talja, S. (1999) Analyzing qualitative interview data: The discourse analytic method. Library & Information Science Research, 21(4), 459-477.
Tamir, M. and Gonvotnik, G. (2017) The challenge of the Bedouin society in the Negev: Recognition of the recognition Theory. In: Zreik, R. and Saban I. (Eds. ( Law, minority and national conflict. (p. 429-478) Tel Aviv-Yafo: Law Faculty, TAU. (Hebrew) https://law.m.tau.ac.il/sites/law.tau.ac.il/files/media_server/law_heb/Law_Society_Culture/books/mishpat_miut/16Tamir%26Gutovnik.pdf.
Yiftachel, O. (1996) The internal frontier: Territorial control and ethnic relations in Israel. Regional Studies, 30(5), 493-508.
-----. (2020) From displacement to displaceability, City, 24(1-2): 151-165.
Published
2023-01-22
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