“Heritage is Jordan’s oil.” This statement, which I heard from heritage experts, development workers, and Jordanian government officials, has come to be the most captivating way for me to summarize my PhD project. With the support of a Harrell Family Fellowship granted by the American Center of Research, I conducted field research in the early summer of 2021 to further investigate what it means when the past becomes a central resource for building futures.

Heritage has indeed opened up markets in Jordan, and the many wonderful sites scattered over the country continue to mesmerize tourists from all over the world. As a political scientist and historian, I explore the political economy of heritage in Jordan, specifically by looking at its links with development projects. The core idea underlying most contemporary heritage development projects is that when heritage sites provide income revenue to the people living near the sites, these people will value the site more and work to protect and preserve it. This, in turn, assures the sustainability of these “resources from the past” for future generations. The American Center’s USAID-funded Sustainable Cultural Heritage Through Engagement of Local Communities Project (SCHEP) has been at the forefront of this type of development initiative in Jordan, building on a legacy of community archaeology projects such as the Madaba Plains Project and Umm El-Jimal.

This idea of value creation and preservation is very interesting, but heritage scholars have been reluctant to highlight the economic value of heritage in their research. Many scholars worry that the commodification of heritage, and its increased use in the tourism market, will be harmful to the cultural value in the long run. Researchers such as Paul Burtenshaw have argued that this reluctance has led to a dearth in heritage scholarship. Regardless of personal opinions on this matter, the economic importance of heritage is clearly growing and thus calls for further research.

In my research I employ ethnographic methods, in combination with historical research, to look closely at this economic-value creation. My research has led me to visit heritage sites big and small in Jordan, and I conducted over ten months of ethnographic research in Madaba, looking at the impact heritage development has had in the city (Fig. 1).

Contrary to many heritage scholars, I think it is problematic to think of heritage as a timeless aspect of human’s engagement with the past. Since “heritage” as a term is relatively young—it only started to be used to refer to culturally significant remnants of the past in the 20th century—it is important to look at the conditions of possibility for the concept to play such an important role in contemporary society. Heritage is now used to build economic and political futures in Jordan, but these practices are shaped by the histories of archaeologists working in the region, of development projects intervening in places, and of colonial understandings of civilization and history.

One aspect that struck me in many of the heritage development projects, is the recurring complaint that Jordanians do not care enough for their heritage. This lament was uttered by Jordanians and foreigners alike in my conversations with them, and it points at the problematic definition of the concept of heritage. While it might be true that some archaeological sites have been beleaguered by vandalism or a lack of investments, it is equally true that most Jordanians have demonstrated a wonderful sense of care and pride in their traditions and histories. There is no denying the importance of tradition in the consumption of coffee, the hosting of guests, the richness of the language, and the abundant diversity of religious practices that suffuse daily life in Jordan (Fig. 2).

The complaint that there is not sufficient care for heritage points to a contestation surrounding the definition of heritage and the ownership of traditions and histories. Expert knowledge tends to alienate people from places suffused with histories, as Allison Mickel (2021) has shown in her salient study of labor practices in archaeology. Sites in Madaba that used to be part of everyday lives, intertwined in relations between past and present, lost their connection to the inhabitants when they were gated off. Sites were then described only in relation to “big events” in a shared history understood by tourists, but their relations to local histories often never made it to the signage (Fig. 3).

The lament that Jordanians do not care about their heritage also has a worrying colonial ring to it. During the destructive times of colonial conquest, Europeans often denoted their colonial subjects as living without a sense of history. During the British occupation of Egypt, Balfour defended the occupation by claiming that it was the English who knew the history of past civilizations in Egypt the best. Their superior knowledge of pharaonic times legitimized, according to Balfour, the presence of English troops on Egyptian soil (Said 1978). Similar arguments were used by France and Belgium to haul important artifacts to imperial museums. Precisely what is considered valuable and to whom clearly has far-reaching effects.

When heritage becomes the resource powering futures, it is crucial to look closely at what aspects of heritage are emancipatory and what aspects alienating. Many archaeologists have been actively rethinking their projects to address these alienating discourses, and heritage development workers have followed suit. A critical study of heritage, and its use in political economy, is a possible way out of lingering colonial ways of thinking. Together with the important work of Abu-Khafajah and Miqdadi (2019) as well as Meskell and Luke (2021), my research places Jordan firmly at the forefront of the growing research on heritage development. It is my hope that my research will contribute to the compassionate work of archaeologists and stress the emancipatory role history can play for the future. 

References

Abu-Khafajah, S., and R. Miqdadi. 2019. “Prejudice, Military Intelligence, and Neoliberalism: Examining the Local within Archaeology and Heritage Oractices in Jordan.” Contemporary Levant 4 (2): 92–106.

Burtenshaw, P. 2014. “Mind the Gap: Cultural and Economic Values in Archaeology.” Public Archaeology 13 (1–3): 48–58.

Jarrar, N. 2021. “A Struggle against Privatization and Neoliberalism.” The International Committee for the Conservation of the Industrial Heritage Bulletin 91: 12–13.

Meskell, L., and C. Luke. 2021. “Developing Petra: UNESCO, the World Bank, and America in the Desert.” Contemporary Levant 6 (2): 126–140.

Mickel, A. 2021. Why Those Who Shovel Are Silent: A History of Local Archaeological Knowledge and Labor. Louisville, CO: University Press of Colorado.

Said, E. W. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books. 

Charlotte Vekemans obtained her BA and MA in history at KU Leuven and her MS in conflict and development studies at Ghent University, Belgium. She published several articles on Belgian colonial rural policy while working at the History Department of KU Leuven and then moved on to earn a PhD in political science, specializing in heritage development, at Ghent University. Her research interests lie in heritage studies, politics of history, development politics, governmentality and new materialism, focusing on the integration of heritage in development projects in the Middle East, specifically in Jordan. She is also active as a teaching assistant for the joint BA in social sciences at Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Ghent University.

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Following a 10-month Fulbright Fellowship in Amman, I spent two months in residence at ACOR in summer 2019, where I began a Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC) Fellowship. For much of the year leading up to my arrival at ACOR, I scoured the libraries and archives around Amman gathering documentary sources to complement archival records I had located documenting legal matters in the post-1948 period. The CAORC Fellowship allowed me to settle into ACOR’s library for a period of pause and reflection on the volume of materials I had collected. I worked simultaneously on two distinct goals: one, to write a paper for the August 2019 Nordic Middle East Studies conference in Helsinki, with its thematic focus on “Borders and Borderlands,” and, two, to prepare a more in-depth presentation for an ACOR audience prior to returning to teaching at Towson University at the end of the summer. A period of concentrated writing time in ACOR Library allowed for the completion of both. Not only does ACOR Library serve modernists well, due to its excellent collection on modern Jordan and Palestine, but the collegiality from fellows and visitors to the library furthered introspection and analysis of my work.

My research examines the broad topic of law in the Jordanian West Bank. I have been exploring the ways that the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan’s legal system developed in a precarious historical moment. The post-1948 war period brought central Palestine under Jordanian rule. For the Palestinians, who had not realized an independent state of their own and been displaced from their homes, United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194 (III), adopted in December 1948, seemed to come to their aid with its calls for the return of Palestinians to their home. Jordan’s leaders worked on the politics of the post-war situation and reached an armistice agreement in 1949 with the new state of Israel, established on the land Palestinians had fled or from which they were exiled. Israel defied Resolution 194 blocking Palestinians’ right and desire to return to their homes. The armistice line, offering little precision for human settlement and agricultural stability for people’s lives, defined a new border previously unknown in the history of the region and marked an obstacle to life returning to normal for Palestinians. Yet, many still set out for their homes and lands, effectively transgressing the new and very long border.

The Jordanian government and monarchy experienced a period of turmoil, both politically and legislatively, in the years following the geographical expansion of the country. The “Unification of the Two Banks,” namely the East Bank and the West Bank, followed elections in 1950. The government then launched a Judicial Committee to draft laws for the whole of Jordan. Following heated deliberations, Jordan’s parliament enacted a new Penal Code to be implemented in August 1951. The assassination of King Abdullah in July 1951 briefly halted the implementation of the new law. In September 1951, following a tense few weeks regarding the succession process, King Abdullah’s eldest son, Talal, succeeded his father to the throne. His younger son, Nayyif, acting as Regent in Talal’s absence, had signed the law postponing the implementation of the new criminal code, which took effect in October 1951, amidst additional legislative and constitutional change. On 1 January 1952, King Talal signed the new constitution.

Required to police the new and expansive border after the signing of the Armistice Agreement, the Jordanian Arab Legion became stretched beyond capacity despite efforts to adapt. The enlarged kingdom faced the limitations of its existing legal system, as Transjordan had relied on Ottoman law for its Penal Code. A different Penal code had prevailed over the newly added territory, as the British Mandate Government in Palestine had legislated to meet colonial goals. Jordan maintained a dual system in its application of Penal law for more than two years after the signing of the armistice agreement: Ottoman law persisted in the East Bank while British Mandate law persisted in the West Bank. The latter had no statute for border crossings, yet that seemed to be the most frequently violation, particularly for the Hebron District whose villages lost substantial agricultural lands along with prospects for trading along the Palestinian coast now part of Israel.

The Jordan-Israel Mixed Armistice Commission, an organization of United Nations Observers, could not adequately attend to the many cases of border crossings that occurred in the early 1950s. With two Jordanian members, two Israeli members, and one foreign member, who usually served as the deciding vote on the committee, the Commission failed by not gaining trust from either side. The Jordanian newspapers from the period, particularly the ones that had roots in pre-Mandate and Mandate Palestine, published frequently on the Commission, both reportage and opinion pieces. Continued research will delve into the Commission’s role and its perception by Jordanians on both banks of the country.

Contextualized by these post-war changes, my research traced the legal and legislative developments particularly for the period of the early 1950s in the Hebron District. I will return to ACOR in summer 2020 to continue research and writing, examining a range of topics within the context of the law. New legislation affected the “crime of border crossings,” undertaken in particular by Palestinian men and younger boys according to the historical records. This topic must engage with the growing literature on borders, and from a legal perspective must consider the types of people, including juveniles who crossed, along with the punishments meted out to transgressors. Juveniles’ punishments differed significantly from their elders, as did the punishment for women though records do not indicate that they frequently crossed the border. Analyzing the punishments for various crimes must consider the socio-economic context for Palestinians, as many struggled to restore their livelihoods in light of the scarcity of work and available agricultural land after the war. During this time, Jordan’s legislative body continued to produce new laws to adapt the legal system to the new historical reality. While this research addresses a concise historical time period, it will illuminate our understanding of the legal challenges that both the kingdom and its new citizens faced in the post-war period.

I gratefully acknowledge my ACOR-MESA Travel Award, which will support my travel to New Orleans for the annual 2019 Middle East Studies Association conference. I am particularly looking forward to receiving feedback from colleagues in the field at this early state of my project, as it will go a long way to enhancing analysis of the legal system, border issues, and other criminal contexts.

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