Abdulla Majeed
University of Toronto, Anthropology, Graduate Student
- University of Western Ontario, Anthropology, Graduate StudentWestern University Canada, Anthropology, Graduate Studentadd
- Anthropology of the State, Political Anthropology, Anthropology of Time, Middle East Studies, Anthropolgy, Collective Memory, and 40 moreCultural Sociology, Mobility/Mobilities, Anthropology of Mobility, Transnational migration, History and Memory, Cultural Memory, Commemoration and Memory, Refugee memory, Literature and Trauma, Bakhtin, National Identity, Postmemory, Postcolonial Theory, Nostalgia, Nostalgia and Memory, Iraqi History, Migration, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Cultural Anthropology, Architecture and Public Spaces, Dialogism, Phenomenology of Space and Place, Refugees, Anthropology, Refugee Studies, Memory Studies, Oral Traditions, Diaspora Studies, Critical Theory, Border Studies, Exile Literature, Exile, Oral History and Memory, Decolonization, Decolonialization, Anthropology of the future, Anthropology of Space and Time, Exile Studies, Philosophy of Time, and Economic Anthropologyedit
A condition of excess characterizes Iraqi exiles' everyday life in Jordan: excesses of waiting and anticipation, bureaucratic work, and aspirations for future benevolent governance. To grapple with this excess, they have had to develop... more
A condition of excess characterizes Iraqi exiles' everyday life in Jordan: excesses of waiting and anticipation, bureaucratic work, and aspirations for future benevolent governance. To grapple with this excess, they have had to develop strategies that render their lives in exile more manageable. Despite being hosted as “guests” of the Hashemite monarchy—an ambitious status evoking notions of pan-Arab solidarity and Arab traditions of hospitality—this status does not guarantee or grant them access to substantive citizenship rights. In light of this, Iraqi exiles who arrived in Jordan following the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 have often found themselves dependent on potentially injurious ways to navigate their presence. One of these strategies are relations and practices of faḍl, a form of exchange governed by a foreclosure of reciprocity and necessity of public recognition. Based on ethnographic fieldwork among what I refer to as the Iraqi exilic milieu in Jordan, this article examines how, in the absence and denial of expected forms of exchange, the circulation of stately faḍl and its cooptation by ordinary people articulate new notions and practices of valuable yet nevertheless wounding citizenship.
Research Interests:
This piece looks at the political work digital forms of textuality do, mainly the tweets of Iraqi Shi'i cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, to trouble the category of "Islamic text" as it travels between the Islamic and "not-so-Islamic."
Research Interests:
Part of the "Reading Muslims" project, this article considers more quotidian practices of reading by examining the work "Islamic" signs and posters do in the public sphere of a city like Jordan's capital, Amman.