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Being Bedouin Around Petra
Life at a World Heritage Site in the Twenty-First Century
Mikkel Bille
210 pages, 12 illus., bibliog., index
ISBN 978-1-78920-120-8 $135.00/£99.00 / Hb / Published (January 2019)
eISBN 978-1-78920-121-5 eBook
Reviews
“This new monograph by Bille deserves to be widely read as a lucid study of tensions between what he identifies as competing ‘universalities’ – though he also uses the arguably more precise term ‘universalisms’… His thoughtful, multi-layered analysis has a broad resonance beyond its ethnographic details and would surely be welcomed in tourism and heritage studies.” • JRAI (Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute)
“Bille’s ethnography of rural communities around Petra comes as a welcomed contribution to this emerging area of study.” • Anthropology Matters
Description
Petra, Jordan became a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1985, and the semi-nomadic Bedouin inhabiting the area were resettled as a consequence. The Bedouin themselves paradoxically became UNESCO Masterpieces of Oral and Intangible Heritage in 2005 for the way in which their oral traditions and everyday lives relate to the landscape they no longer live in. Being Bedouin Around Petra asks: How could this happen? And what does it mean to be Bedouin when tourism, heritage protection, national discourse, an Islamic Revival and even New Age spiritualism lay competing claims to the past in the present?
Mikkel Bille is an Associate Professor at Roskilde University. His research focuses on the role of material culture from the recent past in contemporary society.