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*{{Cite web |last1=Ford Lemus |first1=Melanie |last2=Stamatopoulou-Robbins |first2=Sophia |date=2022-06-16 |title=Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins on Infrastructure in Palestine |url=https://americanethnologist.org/online-content/interviews/sophia-stamatopoulou-robbins-winner-of-the-sharon-stephens-prize-for-her-book-waste-siege-the-life-of-infrastructure-in-palestine/ |access-date=2024-03-03 |website=[[American Ethnological Society]] |language=en-US}} |
*{{Cite web |last1=Ford Lemus |first1=Melanie |last2=Stamatopoulou-Robbins |first2=Sophia |date=2022-06-16 |title=Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins on Infrastructure in Palestine |url=https://americanethnologist.org/online-content/interviews/sophia-stamatopoulou-robbins-winner-of-the-sharon-stephens-prize-for-her-book-waste-siege-the-life-of-infrastructure-in-palestine/ |access-date=2024-03-03 |website=[[American Ethnological Society]] |language=en-US}} |
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*{{Cite journal |last=Makkawi |first=Moné |date=Fall 2021 |title=WASTE SIEGE: THE LIFE OF INFRASTRUCTURE IN PALESTINE |url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/waste-siege-life-infrastructure-palestine/docview/2690247533/se-2 |journal=[[Arab Studies Journal]] |volume=29 |issue=2 |via=[[ProQuest]]}} |
*{{Cite journal |last=Makkawi |first=Moné |date=Fall 2021 |title=WASTE SIEGE: THE LIFE OF INFRASTRUCTURE IN PALESTINE |url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/waste-siege-life-infrastructure-palestine/docview/2690247533/se-2 |journal=[[Arab Studies Journal]] |volume=29 |issue=2 |via=[[ProQuest]]}} |
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*{{Cite journal |last=O'hare |first=Patrick |date=March 2023 |title=A mass conspiracy to feed people: Food Not Bombs and the world‐class waste of global cities; Pollution is colonialism; Waste siege: the life of infrastructure in Palestine |url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&an=161619644 |journal=[[Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute]] |volume=29 |issue=1}} |
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*{{Cite journal |last=Rabie |first=Kareem |date=November 2021 |title=Waste Siege: The Life of Infrastructure in Palestine |url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&an=154346502 |journal=[[PoLAR: Political & Legal Anthropology Review]] |volume=44 |issue=2}} |
*{{Cite journal |last=Rabie |first=Kareem |date=November 2021 |title=Waste Siege: The Life of Infrastructure in Palestine |url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&an=154346502 |journal=[[PoLAR: Political & Legal Anthropology Review]] |volume=44 |issue=2}} |
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*{{Cite journal |last=Solomon |first=Marisa |date=March 2022 |title=Waste Siege: The Life of Infrastructure in Palestine by Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/857865 |journal=[[Anthropological Quarterly]] |language=en |volume=95 |issue=2 |pages=493–497 |doi=10.1353/anq.2022.0027 |issn=1534-1518 |via=[[Project MUSE]]}} |
*{{Cite journal |last=Solomon |first=Marisa |date=March 2022 |title=Waste Siege: The Life of Infrastructure in Palestine by Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/857865 |journal=[[Anthropological Quarterly]] |language=en |volume=95 |issue=2 |pages=493–497 |doi=10.1353/anq.2022.0027 |issn=1534-1518 |via=[[Project MUSE]]}} |
Revision as of 18:47, 5 March 2024
Author | Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins |
---|---|
Genre | |
Publisher | Stanford University Press |
Publication date | 2020 |
Pages | 344 |
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
In 1995, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization signed the Oslo II Accord. Oslo II divided the Israeli-occupied West Bank into three areas with differing levels of control shared by the Israel and the new Palestinian National Authority. This and the other Oslo Accords were meant to be temporary but remain in effect. As a result, Palestinian civilians in the occupied Palestinian territories including the West Bank and Gaza Strip are under Israeli governance and subject to various different legal systems.[1]
Waste Siege was written by Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins, then an assistant professor of anthropology at Bard College.[2] 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[3] in light of the involvement of Israel and international aid organizations as well as the complexity and unpredictability of Palestinian relationships to infrastructure.[4]
Stamatopoulou-Robbins' dissertation, based on 10 years of ethnographic fieldwork in the West Bank,[5] discussed Palestinians in the West Bank and their responses to the governance of the Palestinian 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.[2]
The book was published in 2019 by Stanford University Press. It is 344 pages long.[6] It was Stamatopoulou-Robbins' first book.[4]
Synopsis
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,[3] 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[4] due to Israeli colonialism.[7] Stamatopoulou-Robbins refers to these conditions as "waste siege".[4] 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.[1] The book also has roots in science and technology studies.[8] Throughout the text, Stamatopoulou-Robbins describes Palestinian encounters with the Israeli state and the state-like Palestinian Authority, and the ways these interactions shape the flow of waste for Palestinians[9] alongside their individual and collective improvisations in response to the presence of waste.[10]
"Compression"
The first chapter, titled "Compression,"[11] 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[3] as an example of collaborative national work.[10] She also characterizes the lives and views of the Palestinian professionals managing these landfills.[12] 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.[13] These foreign investors have the power to shape Palestinian sanitation projects even if these projects become misaligned with what Palestinians themselves believe they need.[14]
The first chapter concludes with a specific example of the conflict that can occur between the national and international actors involved in Palestinian landfill management. The managers of Zahrat al-Finjan, a landfill run by the Palestinian Authority, are forced to choose whether to allow Israeli settlers to dump trash in the landfill or risk those settlers and others illegally dumping trash elsewhere.[15]
"Inundated"
The second chapter, titled "Inundated,"[14] 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.[2] 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.[13] The second chapter also describes the Palestinian pursuit of Israeli goods as linked to the Palestinian desire for sovereignty.[14]
"Accumulation"
The third chapter, titled "Accumulation,"[14] discusses the accumulation of waste in the village Shuqba.[3] Palestinian and Israeli waste is frequently dumped in the village, including potentially dangerous medical equipment as well as sewage and animal carcasses. Residents are gradually poisoned over time, but the variety of sources for this waste from both sides of the Green Line makes it difficult to know who to blame.[7]
"Gifted"
The fourth chapter, titled "Gifted,"[16] focuses on the redistribution of stale and unwanted bread, which is hung on unrelated structures, as an example of the collective creation of infrastructure.[3] Many Palestinians redistribute bread based on a religious prohibition on throwing it away or letting it touch the ground;[16] Stamatopoulou-Robbins argues that bread is also sacred to Palestinians because it represents various things including interconnectedness and a desire to support one another.[17]
"Leakage"
The fifth chapter, titled "Leakage,"[11] discusses sewage management in the West Bank.[3] It explores the ways that the sharing of West Bank infrastructure and environment between Israeli settlers and Palestinians is complex and unequal.[11] The concept of a "shared environment" in this space is mobilized to present Palestinians as polluters who are simultaneously incompetent and malicious, enabling Israel to justify continued "custodianship" over the West Bank.[7]
Stamatopoulou-Robbins discusses the specific example of Nablus. Israel pipes sewage from Nablus across the Green Line and processes it in Israel, subsequently using it as a free source of water for agricultural irrigation. Israel uses this sewage flow as an example of Palestinian incompetence while repeatedly preventing the Palestinian Authority from building its own sewage infrastructure.[7]
Reception
Waste Siege won the Albert Hourani Book Award from the Middle East Studies Association in 2020,[2] and was selected as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title.[18] In 2021 it won the Book Award of the Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association (AAA),[19] shared the Julian Steward Award from the Anthropology & Environment Section of the AAA,[20] and was jointly awarded the Sharon Stephens Book Prize.[18]
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".[17] Reviewer Basma Fahoum praised Stamatopoulou-Robbins’ level of knowledge about daily life for West Bank Palestinians.[17] 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.[17]
A review in Arab Studies Journal from 2021 found Waste Siege "an innovative and methodologically rich text" that effectively links discussion of the environment with analysis of settler colonialism.[5] The reviewer critiqued the heavy use of jargon and unclear rhetorical choices, including the interchangeable use of the terms West Bank and Palestine with no analysis of the Gaza Strip,[21] as well as lack of analysis of "the ways in which the violence of both military occupation and waste siege function as extensions of one another".[22] Also in 2021, a positive review in PoLAR: Political & Legal Anthropology Review described the book as an effective criticism of "the putative universality of environmental threats, mobility, fixity, political violence, and state governance".[8]
In 2022, a positive review in Anthropological Quarterly found that "Waste Siege sheds light on how people negotiate being overdetermined by their colonial conditions, including through their deployment and rejection of the term (and the terms of their) environment".[23]
References
Citations
- ^ a b Fahoum 2020, p. 234.
- ^ a b c d Bivins 2020.
- ^ a b c d e f Ford Lemus & Stamatopoulou-Robbins 2022.
- ^ a b c d Stamatopoulou-Robbins 2019b.
- ^ a b Makkawi 2021, p. 179.
- ^ Stamatopoulou-Robbins 2019a.
- ^ a b c d Makkawi 2021, p. 181.
- ^ a b Rabie 2021.
- ^ Solomon 2022, p. 493.
- ^ a b Makkawi 2021, p. 180.
- ^ a b c Solomon 2022, p. 494.
- ^ Fahoum 2020, p. 235.
- ^ a b Fahoum 2020, p. 236.
- ^ a b c d Solomon 2022, p. 495.
- ^ Makkawi 2021, pp. 180–181.
- ^ a b Solomon 2022, p. 496.
- ^ 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.
- ^ Makkawi 2021, p. 182.
- ^ Makkawi 2021, p. 183.
- ^ Solomon 2022, p. 497.
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.
- Makkawi, Moné (Fall 2021). "WASTE SIEGE: THE LIFE OF INFRASTRUCTURE IN PALESTINE". Arab Studies Journal. 29 (2) – via ProQuest.
- O'hare, Patrick (March 2023). "A mass conspiracy to feed people: Food Not Bombs and the world‐class waste of global cities; Pollution is colonialism; Waste siege: the life of infrastructure in Palestine". Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. 29 (1).
- Rabie, Kareem (November 2021). "Waste Siege: The Life of Infrastructure in Palestine". PoLAR: Political & Legal Anthropology Review. 44 (2).
- Solomon, Marisa (March 2022). "Waste Siege: The Life of Infrastructure in Palestine by Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins". Anthropological Quarterly. 95 (2): 493–497. doi:10.1353/anq.2022.0027. ISSN 1534-1518 – via Project MUSE.
- 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.