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Revision as of 19:03, 4 March 2024
Author | Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins |
---|---|
Genre | |
Publisher | Stanford University Press |
Publication date | 2020 |
Pages | 344 |
Awards |
|
ISBN | 978-1-5036-0730-9 |
Waste Siege: The Life of Infrastructure in Palestine is a nonfiction book by Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins. The book is an ethnography of waste management in the West Bank under the constraints of Israeli occupation. It was published by Stanford University Press in 2019, and received various awards.
Background
Waste Siege was written by Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins, then an assistant professor of anthropology at Bard College.[1] In her second year of graduate school, Stamatopoulou-Robbins took a course titled "Power and Hegemony" taught by Partha Chatterjee. The class focused on Foucault and Gramsci; Stamatopoulou-Robbins wrote a paper about the 2006 Palestinian legislative election, in which Palestinians elected Hamas, and its connection to infrastructure in Palestine. Her interest in Palestinian infrastructure was a response to its invocation by Western leftists as the reason for the popularity of Hamas, which she found overly simplistic[2] in light of the involvement of Israel and international aid organizations as well as the complexity and unpredictability of Palestinian relationships to infrastructure.[3]
Stamatopoulou-Robbins' dissertation discussed Palestinians in the West Bank and their responses to the governance of the Palestinian National Authority. She specifically focused on the Authority's waste management. She later decided that she wanted to reach a broader audience, including "people who don’t think much about Palestine" as well as people outside academia, and developed her dissertation into a book with added content.[1]
The book was published in 2019 by Stanford University Press. It is 344 pages long.[4] It was Stamatopoulou-Robbins' first book.[3]
Content
Waste Siege focuses on waste management in the West Bank and the ways it is shaped by the constraints of Israeli occupation. As an ethnography,[2] it discusses the lives of Palestinians in the West Bank and the ways those lives are shaped by the presence of abnormal quantities and varieties of waste. Stamatopoulou-Robbins refers to these conditions as "waste siege".[3] She argues that waste in the West Bank is "matter with no place to go," drawing on discard studies and Latourian materialism as well as more traditional anthropology.[5]
The first chapter focuses on landfills in combination and contrast with other waste management methods in the West Bank. Stamatopoulou-Robbins discusses the temporal implications of landfills and their relevance to a Palestinian project of nation-building.[2] She also characterizes the lives and views of the Palestinian professionals managing these landfills.[6] These professionals know that landfills only function for a finite period of time, but are unable to access more modern waste management technology; they are educated about this technology but unable to bring it to the West Bank. Meanwhile, they must cooperate with Israel and international aid organizations to get funding for landfills.[7]
The second chapter focuses on used goods smuggled from Israel into the West Bank to be sold, as well as the planned obsolescence of new goods in the West Bank market.[1] Stamatopoulou-Robbins argues based on her fieldwork that used goods from Israel, or rabish (from rubbish), are valuable not because of sustainability or poverty but because they are of higher quality than the new goods available to Palestinians.[7]
The third chapter discusses the accumulation of waste in Shuqba.[2]
The fourth chapter focuses on the redistribution of stale and unwanted bread, which is hung on unrelated structures, as an example of the collective creation of infrastructure.[2] Stamatopoulou-Robbins argues that bread is sacred to Palestinians because it represents various things including interconnectedness and a desire to support one another.[8]
The fifth chapter discusses sewage management in the West Bank.[2]
Reception
Waste Siege won the Albert Hourani Book Award from the Middle East Studies Association in 2020,[1] and was selected as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title.[9] In 2021 it won the Book Award of the Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association (AAA),[10] shared the Julian Steward Award from the Anthropology & Environment Section of the AAA,[11] and was jointly awarded the Sharon Stephens Book Prize.[9]
A 2020 review in Arab Studies Quarterly found Waste Siege "an important work" and "a welcome addition to the sparse literature about the environment, waste, and infrastructure in Palestine and the Middle East more broadly".[8] Reviewer Basma Fahoum praised Stamatopoulou-Robbins’ level of knowledge about daily life for West Bank Palestinians.[8] However, she criticized flawed translation and transliteration from Arabic to English, and argued that Palestinian redistribution of bread is not unique but a characteristic shared with many Arab and Muslim countries as well as areas of Israel populated by observant Jews.[8]
References
Citations
- ^ a b c d Bivins 2020.
- ^ a b c d e f Ford Lemus & Stamatopoulou-Robbins 2022.
- ^ a b c Stamatopoulou-Robbins 2019b.
- ^ Stamatopoulou-Robbins 2019a.
- ^ Fahoum 2020, p. 234.
- ^ Fahoum 2020, p. 235.
- ^ a b Fahoum 2020, p. 236.
- ^ a b c d Fahoum 2020, p. 237.
- ^ a b "Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins Named Joint Winner of the 2021 Sharon Stephens Book Prize". Bard College. October 12, 2021. Retrieved 2024-03-03.
- ^ "The MES Book Award". Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association. American Anthropological Association. 2022-11-09. Retrieved 2024-03-03.
- ^ "2021 Julian Steward Prize". Anthropology and Environment Society. 2021-12-03. Retrieved 2024-03-03.
Works cited
- Bivins, Alyssa (2020-10-20). "An Interview with Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins". Middle East Report. MERIP. Retrieved 2024-03-03.
- Fahoum, Basma (2020). "Review of Waste Siege: The Life of Infrastructure in Palestine, Stamatopoulou-Robbins, Sophia". Arab Studies Quarterly. 42 (3): 234–238. doi:10.13169/arabstudquar.42.3.0234. ISSN 0271-3519 – via JSTOR.
- Ford Lemus, Melanie; Stamatopoulou-Robbins, Sophia (2022-06-16). "Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins on Infrastructure in Palestine". American Ethnological Society. Retrieved 2024-03-03.
- Stamatopoulou-Robbins, Sophia (2019). Waste Siege: The Life of Infrastructure in Palestine. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-1-5036-0730-9.
- Stamatopoulou-Robbins, Sophia. "Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins, Waste Siege: The Life of Infrastructure in Palestine (New Texts Out Now)". Jadaliyya. Retrieved 2024-03-03.