The Politics of Suffering. Nell Gabiam

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СКАЧАТЬ coupled with my not being readily recognizable as Western or American, affected my fieldwork or my rapport with the Syrians and Palestinians I encountered. I usually introduced myself to people as an American, although anyone who got to know me very quickly knew my entire background. I purposefully chose to emphasize my American identity when meeting people for the first time because I felt that if I did not disclose this information, and these people found out later, they might become suspicious. My fieldwork coincided with a period during which the US government was particularly unpopular in Syria and American foreign policy was a sensitive issue. When I arrived in April 2004, the atmosphere was tense: about a year before, the United States had invaded Iraq, a deeply unpopular action with both Syrians and Palestinians. To make matters worse, the US government, which at the time was still confident in its invasion of Iraq, was hinting that Syria might be next. Additionally, a few weeks before my arrival, angry Palestinian protesters from Yarmouk had marched to the American embassy in Damascus, scaled the walls, and taken down the US flag in the aftermath of Israel’s assassination of Sheikh Ahmad Yasin, Hamas’s spiritual leader. After the protest, the embassy issued a security briefing urging Americans in Syria to avoid Palestinian areas. As a result of the prevailing atmosphere, I was forbidden–not by Syrian authorities but by the Fulbright office in Damascus–from living in Yarmouk.¹⁰ The head of the Fulbright office at the time considered the area too dangerous for me as an American researcher.

      I decided it was preferable for people to find out my American identity sooner rather than later, and overall I did not find this disclosure to be a significant hindrance. I made one exception, however, and that was with cabdrivers, to whom I introduced myself as being from Africa (min afrīqia). I had noticed that when I identified myself as an American to Syrian cabbies, most of whom are rumored to be government informants, I was inevitably bombarded with questions during the entire trip. When I identified as an African, I stirred no curiosity and could enjoy a peaceful ride. I did once elicit the pity of a cabdriver who refused to let me pay my fare once he found out I was from Africa.

      While working as an UNRWA volunteer on the Neirab Rehabilitation Project from the spring of 2005 to the spring of 2006, I assisted as an Arabic-to-English translator during informal meetings with Palestinian refugees in Ein el Tal and Neirab, and served as a note taker during UNRWA-organized community meetings and focus group discussions (these involved groups of Palestinian men, women, boys, and girls). In the fall of 2005, I participated in an UNRWA-sponsored study of living conditions in Neirab’s barracks which consisted of a questionnaire and formal interviews with twenty-four families. Aside from the participant observation I engaged in through my UNRWA activities in the Damascus and Aleppo areas, I conducted about thirty formal interviews with Palestinians of varying ages, occupations, and genders living in Ein el Tal, Neirab, and Yarmouk.¹¹ I also conducted about a dozen formal interviews with UNRWA staff (both foreign and Palestinian) directly involved in the Neirab Rehabilitation Project and interviewed the project’s two main Syrian government representatives (who were themselves Palestinian refugees). I carried out brief follow-up research in the summer of 2009 and the fall of 2010 in Ein el Tal and Neirab. In 2015, as part of an effort to document what had happened to Ein el Tal, Neirab, and Yarmouk and their inhabitants as a result of the war in Syria, I carried out additional research in several Middle Eastern countries and in Europe. In the spring of 2015, I spent one month interviewing UNRWA employees at the agency’s headquarters in Amman, Jordan as well as Palestinians from Ein el Tal, Neirab, and Yarmouk living in Lebanon, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates.¹² Most of these had fled the war in Syria, and six of them were Palestinians I had known during my 2004–2006 fieldwork. In the summer of 2015, I spent a month interviewing Palestinians from Ein el Tal, Neirab, and Yarmouk who had fled to Europe and sought asylum in France and Sweden.¹³ Four of them were Palestinians I had known during my 2004–2006 fieldwork.

      Like other anthropologists who have written about development, I was both an investigator and a participant in the Neirab Rehabilitation Project (Bornstein 2005; Li 2007; Mosse 2005). As David Mosse argues, it is almost impossible to sustain long-term participant observation in a development agency without making a practical contribution to its functioning (2005). However, he also states that “the impression that development agencies (donors, field agencies or others) always feel they have something to hide, or that confidentiality and proprietary claims over knowledge inevitably characterize the relationship between agencies and their contracted consultants or researchers [here citing Panayiotopoulos 2002] is wrong” (2005:12).

      UNRWA employees were generally comfortable with having an anthropologist in their midst. With regard to my participation in the Neirab Rehabilitation Project, UNRWA’s director in Syria (at the time) was not just accommodating; he was excited about having an anthropologist on board. He was especially interested in my involvement because UNRWA was in the process of reforming its operations and part of this process was to critically evaluate the agency’s role in Palestinian refugee camps.

      The “independent” team set up by UNRWA to lead the Neirab Rehabilitation Project was also receptive to my presence. Because of UNRWA’s insistence that the project be a participatory one in which the agency and community members would interact as partners, project leaders felt that an anthropologist’s perspective would be useful in making sure that local realities, opinions, and sentiments were taken into account in planning and implementation. A critical evaluation of the project had actually been incorporated into the project design, and consultants had been hired for this job. In such a context, I did not have to go undercover to try to assess the relationship between UNRWA and Palestinian refugees. I was one more person who could help the agency determine what it was doing right and what it was doing wrong in terms of its assistance to the refugees.

      I realized over the course of my fieldwork that Palestinian refugees generally value the opportunity to tell their stories to foreigners as a way to balance out Western bias against them. Some Palestinians saw their relationship with UNRWA as a means through which they could meet and interact with foreigners and share their experiences with them in the hope that these experiences would reach a larger (usually Western) public. I therefore did not have much trouble meeting Palestinians in Neirab and Ein el Tal who were willing to talk. It also helped that, in addition to the handful of foreign volunteers assisting UNRWA, the agency had recruited local volunteers from the camps to help with the Neirab Rehabilitation Project. I was thus part of a larger group of volunteers, a majority of whom were Palestinian. The Palestinian volunteers, whom I got to know through my work with UNRWA, played a crucial role in my gaining acceptance and trust in Neirab and Ein el Tal.

      It is impossible for me to completely separate my role as an anthropologist from my role as an UNRWA volunteer and participant in the Neirab Rehabilitation Project. I cannot pretend, as I write this analysis, to have been an outsider peering at the stage where development was supposed to be taking place and taking notes from a distance. “Development” was my primary field site and the focus of my participant observation as an anthropologist. Conducting participant observation at this site, as an anthropologist whose services were deemed valuable by UNRWA, allowed me to interact with the different actors who, in the name of improving the lives of Palestinians refugees, had converged on Neirab and Ein el Tal. It allowed me to investigate the logics and justifications behind the actions not only of the Palestinian refugees who were the target of development (see Fassin 2012) but also of UNRWA officials, Syrian government employees, and the project’s initial donors: the American, Canadian, and Swiss governments. I was able to meet and interact with representatives of these governments during their visits to the camps to evaluate progress. I was also able to attend UNRWA-organized meetings held in the camps that featured donor representatives.

      This book explores the intersection of humanitarianism, development, and citizenship in the Palestinian refugee camp. It focuses on the shift from a relief-centered discourse to a development-centered discourse on the part of UNRWA and on the ways in which Palestinian refugees engaged with this shift in discourse. By drawing on examples from Ein el Tal, Neirab, and Yarmouk, I show that Palestinian refugee camps are not static spaces to be acted on; they are themselves productive of particular ideologies–ideologies not necessarily synchronic with the discourse СКАЧАТЬ