Commentators: Hestia Delibas and Joana Sousa (CES)


Overview

The West Asia and North Africa (WANA) region has been considered a site of continued turbulence, political conflicts, and stagnant development. This is compounded by an ever-looming threat of environmental crises due to the region’s aridity and scarce resources. The increasing marginalization and poverty in rural areas have resulted in an increase in mobilization and discontent that were considered a precursor of the Arab Spring. The ripples of the which the region continues to grapple with. The uprisings and mobilization which persist in different WANA regions at differing scales, sparked renewed interest in understanding the so called ‘social contract’’ between the ruling class and the people. Rural mobilization over the last few decades indicates the collapse of this social contract, especially within rural areas that continue to suffer from marginalization and poverty, despite a discourse of ongoing development and modernization. Much of the current rural development strategies in the region have been shaped by colonial environmental imaginaries of the WANA.

Many of these narratives laid the base for policies and practices utilized to dispossess rural communities and nomadic tribes and limit resource access and control. Among these imaginaries is the notion that arid and desert environments, and their soils, are unproductive, destroyed, and of low value. To understand these dynamics, it’s important to consider how colonial and post-colonial imaginaries and narratives impacted and continued to impact approaches to the state and development agency’s management of arid and rural landscapes.

In this presentation, I will discuss my research project and my exploration of questions around why Bedouin communities in Jordan continue to be marginalized, state and tribe/ community relations, and the role that colonial and post-colonial environmental imaginaries play in modernization and development agendas and their impact on Bedouin and rural communities. 


Activity within the working group ECOSOC - Oficina de Ecologia e Sociedade