Thanks for joining us on Insights! Your scholarship has taken you to various countries and institutions around the world since the time of your residential fellowship at ACOR in the late ‘90s. Can you tell us a bit about the broad outlines of your career since then?

After my ACOR-supported fieldwork in Jordan on the politics of tourism development, I was able to return to Boston and finish up my PhD in political science at MIT. I was lucky and got an academic job at Johns Hopkins University teaching international political economy. With the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, however, I felt the need to focus more of my teaching and research on U.S. foreign policy and its impact on the Middle East. In Baltimore, I felt disconnected from the region, so in 2007 I took a leave of absence and served as a visiting professor at the American University of Beirut (AUB). I arrived in Beirut in the wake of the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war that devastated Lebanon. This experience reshaped my perspectives and interests while giving me new insights into the dynamics of regional geopolitics. I returned to the U.S., but two years later my department voted against allowing me to go up for tenure. Fortunately, AUB had an opening that year, and I was able to relocate to AUB in the fall of 2010. Again, I was very glad to secure a job, but more critically it was an amazing experience and opportunity.

I am so grateful that my career took this path back to the region and into an academic environment that supported interdisciplinary work and efforts to support scholarship focused on regional and Global South concerns rather than being constrained by U.S. academic hierarchies, concerns, and the increasingly narrow focus on quantitative methods. Soon the Arab uprisings broke out, and Lebanon faced its own internal conflicts and the spillover from the civil war in Syria. I learned a tremendous amount from students and colleagues, including Rami Khouri, whom I had met at ACOR in the late 1990s, and had the wonderful opportunity of serving as director of the Center for Arab and Middle East Studies (CAMES) and working with the Arab Council for the Social Sciences (ACSS), directed by former Yarmouk University anthropologist Seteney Shami.¹

While I can honestly say I never imagined that I would end up living in the American South, in 2018 I took a position at the University of Alabama as part of an effort to help build a Middle East studies program. Beyond the opportunity to work with wonderful colleagues, I have been surprised by how interesting I find the experience, which has given me new perspectives from which to view U.S.-Middle East relations and ongoing changes in American politics while appreciating the great biodiversity and natural beauty of the state.

What topics and methodologies have occupied your work in recent years? How have they built on the research you were first engaged in while at ACOR?

It was while walking around Wadi Musa with ACOR fellow Najib Hourani that I formed ideas about the relationship between transnational flows and local territorial control that became the basis of the theorical approach presented in my dissertation, which compared the cases of Tunisia and Jordan, and I later developed in my book that the university press decided to title Beaches, Ruins, Resorts. I think the ability to easily travel across Jordan and explore its diverse archeological sites, rural landscapes, seacoasts, and budding ecotourism projects helped me to think in terms of geography and space and made seeing the contrast to spatial patterns of tourism development in Tunisia clear. Having drawn on theories of economic geography in my study of tourism and with the goal of seeing the dynamics of change in the Arab world as part of (rather than exceptions to) larger global processes (such as globalization), I approached the issues of international relations and U.S. foreign policy through the lens of geopolitics, that is, the territorial dimensions of international politics. My approach draws from the field of critical geopolitics and uses concepts such as “imagined geographies,” a concept developed by Edward Said and others that explores how space and territorial relations are understood through discourse, imagery, and other representations. Much of my work on tourism as well as international relations is concerned with rival ways regional and external actors “map” territories, flows, and the relationship between places.

From your vantage point as a comparative political scientist, how has the subject of your 2008 book (Beaches, Ruins, Resorts: The Politics of Tourism in the Arab World) grown and developed in the past twelve years?

That book was one of the first to address the political economy of tourism in the Arab world in a comparative manner. Meanwhile, geographers at the Center for Research on the Arab World (at University of Mainz in Germany) also produced a series of important studies. Today, there are far more scholars working on tourism (and related topics) in the Middle East from a range of disciplinary approaches. There is even a handbook of tourism in the Middle East and North Africa, and in my experience Middle East studies are pretty quick to recognize the importance of tourism in the region, including both its negative and positive impacts. Nevertheless, it is possible that the topic is still not taken seriously in many academic disciplines or faces the challenge of disciplinary silos, as tourism remains a topic best served by a multidisciplinary approach.

If you look at the numbers, internationally the tourism sector is currently in a crisis far deeper than at any time since the end of the Second World War. There are a lot of questions about which sectors and locations are going to recover. This crisis came after a decade during which tourism sectors in many locations across the Middle East and North Africa were hit hard by wars, political violence, and economic crisis. Tourism remains an important sector, especially in the Gulf states, with many governments continuing to stake hopes in using tourism as an engine of economic development. It is a cycle I have seen play out many times across the region. The recent moves towards normalization between Israel and the Gulf States and Morocco echo much of the discourse found in the 1990s during the peace process.

One of the most critical aspects of change in patterns of tourism development, I think, is the extension of some trends first recognized by the Mainz geographers (including Ala Al-Hamarneh and Christian Steiner). They noted how, in the years following 9/11, many Arabs redirected their tourist travel away from Europe to other parts of the Arab world. At the same time, domestic tourism flows and regional investment in the sector became increasingly important features. While these flows had always been there, with the volatility of western flows, governments and entrepreneurs came to give them more attention. While the vast wealth of the Gulf states is a critical driver in this process, more broadly the geographies of tourism are no longer mostly defined by western tourists, but rather by regional Arab tourists, religious pilgrims and Islamic tourism development, and the growing trend of halal leisure tourism. At the same time, tourism economies in many places, including Jordan, have become more highly diversified, including ecotourism, medical tourism, movie-based tourism, conference and meeting tourism, and sporting events, as well as heritage and cultural tourism, and are driven by new projects such as larger professional museums and cultural centers. Many of these trends are enhanced by the internet, social media, Airbnb, and the like, as well as the expansion of regional aviation networks, including low-cost airlines.

But I suppose that, for me as a scholar, one of the most rewarding trends to observe is the growth of local expertise in the field of tourism studies. In my interviews in the 1990s, I heard many complaints about outside tourism experts and externally developed tourism plans. In 2009, I gave a keynote address at a tourism conference held in Amman. There I met many young Arab tourism scholars and students. I was excited to find the Jordanians working on research topics such as the local views on the impact of tourism or different ways to promote tourism that appreciated aspects of the Jordanian landscape and ecology. In the years since, I noticed Jordanians such as Suleiman A. D. Farajat, who earned a PhD in tourism studies, has taught at the University of Jordan, and now serves as the chief commissioner at the Petra Development and Tourism Region Authority. Increased local expertise and professionalism is key to the future of tourism development in the region.

Do you have any advice for Insights readers who would like to get to know Jordan and the region better, especially from a comparative politics standpoint? Books or authors you would suggest, or online publications?

As I shifted to a focus on U.S. foreign policy and a concern for geopolitical developments at the regional level, I have not been able to follow Jordan as closely as I once did. In term of the politics of Jordan, I turn to the scholarship (and tweets) of specialists such as Curtis Ryan and Pete Moore. In terms of urban development in Amman, I follow the work of former ACOR fellow Najib Hourani. More broadly, I recommend both the current work as well as the very impressive publications archive of the Middle East Research and Information Project (Middle East Report).

In any case, for those outside the outside the region, an important tool to better understand Jordan and the region is to study Arabic and follow local events and media. One can also follow the English-language news sources from the region or ones with extensive reporting resources in the region, including outlets such as Al Jazeera and Al-Monitor. One can also now watch talks and other events taking place at institutions in the region, such as AUB or the ACSS, via their YouTube channels or livestreamed events. Still, there is no substitute for visiting and, more critically, living in the region for extended periods of time. One should travel extensively to see many places and peoples, but also live in places for long enough that they become familiar “homes” that you miss when you move away.

Waleed Hazbun is Richard L. Chambers Professor of Middle Eastern Studies in the Department of Political Science at the University of Alabama, where he teaches international relations and U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and, when lucky, is able to offer a seminar on the politics of travel and tourism. He previously taught at the American University of Beirut and served as director of the Center for Arab and Middle Eastern Studies (CAMES). While its cover depicts Palmyra, his book Beaches, Ruins, Resorts: The Politics of Tourism in the Arab World (Minnesota University Press, 2008) was based in part on dissertation fieldwork in Jordan. ​He is a longtime reader and now member of the editorial committee of the Middle East Report and, since relocating to Alabama, serves on the executive board of the Southeast Regional Middle East and Islamic Studies Society (SERMEISS​). He has two ongoing research projects. One addresses the politics of insecurity in the Arab World, and the other explores the global politics of airports, aviation, and air travel in the Middle East. ​

1. Editor’s Note: Seteney Shami is a member of ACOR’s board of trustees since 2012. Her most recent edited volumes, Seeing the World: How US Universities Make Knowledge in a Global Era (Princeton University Press, 2018) and Middle East Studies for the New Millennium: Infrastructures of Knowledge (NYU Press, 2016) are available to read at our library in Amman. Back to main article.

If you liked the above article, we think you may also enjoy this recent podcast interview (40 minutes), which published by our colleagues at the Richardson Institute in summer 2020:

The post Ask a Scholar: Prof. Waleed Hazbun (Former Fellow, Political Scientist) appeared first on ACOR Jordan.

ACOR Proudly Presents:
“The Making of Amman: Stories, Tours, and Traffic Jams”
An Online Lecture by Prof. Betty Anderson on August 26, 2020

About the Lecture:

Dr. Betty Anderson will present the research that she, Dr. Fida Adely, and several local researchers have been conducting in Amman over the last few years. Their research seeks to collect stories from Amman’s young residents about how they experience a city that is rapidly changing. Their stories map a city that is geographically and socio-economically fragmented, with increasing frustrations about the possibilities of physical and economic mobility. It is also a city where new and old neighborhoods generate a strong sense of belonging. In the talk, Dr. Anderson will be recounting these stories and analyzing the different methodologies the research team has employed to uncover them, including conducting one-on-one interviews, focus group sessions, and interviews-on-the-street; undertaking walking tours of neighborhoods all over the city; and producing photographic essays and interactive maps.

About the Lecturer:

Betty Anderson is a Professor of Middle East History at Boston University and the author of Nationalist Voices in Jordan: The Street and the State (University of Texas Press, 2005), The American University of Beirut: Arab Nationalism and Liberal Education (University of Texas Press, 2011), and A History of the Modern Middle East (Stanford University Press, 2016). For this project on Amman, she has been working in collaboration with Fida Adely, Associate Professor at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, and the author of Gendered Paradoxes: Educating Jordanian Women in Nation, Faith and Progress (University of Chicago Press, 2012).

A recent ACOR lecture given in Arabic may be found here. 

For more content such as this, please subscribe to Insights and ACOR’s YouTube channel.

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Brittany Barrineau, ACOR-CAORC pre-doctoral fellow for 2016–2017, writes below about her research into the social, political, and economic forces that are transforming Jordan’s traditional but rapidly evolving olive oil industry. 

The olive harvest festival in Irbid included an outdoor opening ceremony with poetry, several speakers, two dance groups, a marching band, and a small speech by the Minister of Agriculture. People expressed their excitement and some even took the opportunity to address the Minister about their concerns regarding the olive industry and the challenges of this season. This season saw some of the lowest yields in years. Inside the festival, the main room was set up with booths from local producers and organizations. The neighboring room featured a kitchen with women making food for sale. The booths included several mills selling bottles and tanakas (16 kg tin cans) of this year’s olive oil. There were also a variety of small businesses and women’s societies selling handicrafts and agricultural products and organizations such as the Jordanian Society for the Sensory Evaluation of Food.

Although the selling of oil and agricultural goods continues throughout the year, the olive harvest, which falls between September and January, is a time when people come together to harvest, mill, and sell their olives, the oil, and related goods. Although many people who work in the industry (i.e., farmers, mill owners, members of organizations) have other forms of income, during the olive season the mills open and this constellation of people and places comes together for a few months.

My dissertation explores the creation of extra virgin olive oil within its current and historical context in Jordan. I examine the entire production process, from the care that goes into growing olive trees, to processing (milling) the olives, and finally marketing. Producing extra virgin olive oil requires particular care and scrutiny at each step so that the oil will reach international standards. However, these standards are not a priority for all producers and they are a new concept on the local market.

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In several areas of Jordan, farmers can point to old Roman trees as evidence of the long history of olives as central to the culture there. However, areas such as Ikfarat, north of Ibrid, were known for wheat and lentils long before they had a reputation for oil. Several farmers recounted how, in the 1970s and 1980s, the price of olive oil was good, the price of wheat was dropping, and the Ministry of Agriculture was selling affordable olive tree saplings. As a result, today many of the previous wheat fields are olive tree groves. Although olives were a previously existing crop, the expansiveness and increased dependence on it is not a natural phenomenon and is instead a product of global and local economic and political processes.

My project uses extra virgin olive oil as a lens to examine processes of globalization in Jordan. Both chemical and sensory evaluations based on international standards determine whether olive oil is extra virgin or another grade. While this classification has resonance on the global market, locally in Jordan there is not a large general consciousness regarding what extra virgin means or what are its requirements. However, many large producers are trying to increase awareness about what extra virgin means. The goal of this campaign is not only to differentiate high-quality products from low-quality, but it also seeks to raise the quality of production overall in Jordan in order to become more competitive on the global market.

In an effort to understand the global and local context of extra virgin olive oil production in Jordan, my project explores how these efforts are being made and what are the repercussions. Olive oil production is one example of how the line between traditional and modern production is blurry. The importance is not ‘what is traditional’ and ‘what is modern’, but how people construct these ideas and what they reveal about the current processes of globalization taking place in Jordan.

Written by Brittany Barrineau

Brittany Barrineau is a Ph.D. candidate in geography at the University of Kentucky. She earned an M.A. in Geography (2012) from the University of South Carolina and a B.A. in Geography and Anthropology (2009) from the University of Mary Washington. Her current research examines how state power, international geopolitics, and place-based identities converge in the complex relationship between farmers, their land, and the business of extra virgin olive oil in Jordan.

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Jordan is a rewarding place to be a geographer. To the south and east, deserts host an array of communities living close to tribal traditions, while the north is the very picture of settled agriculture, its loping hills blanketed with olives, figs, and pomegranates and dotted with Greek and Roman ruins. Lying at the confluence of environmental, but also cultural and historical spheres of influence – or as King Abdullah likes to put it, “between Iraq and a hard place” – Jordan also becomes an important place for studying political geography in the Middle East. For me in particular, it is an ideal vantage point for studying the conflict across the border in Syria.

It is not hard to feel this conflict’s impact on Jordan. The struggles of Syrian refugees here (as in Lebanon and Turkey) is by now well-known, while more recently the question of resettling refugees in the United States has divided domestic politics in America. But I came to Jordan this summer to investigate the Syrian civil war from a different angle – namely, how exiled Syrian dissidents continue to shape events inside despite being scattered across Europe and in neighboring countries. And this is no small question: After five years of civil war, it is difficult not to wonder how the exiled Syrian opposition has managed to keep alive the struggling movement opposing Bashar al-Assad in the face of enormous challenges. All of this takes place amid the personal traumas and the difficulties of everyday life in exile, which tears apart families, friends, and communities.

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Language is important to this story. Is it right to call this agglomeration of individuals, organizations, and narratives a coherent opposition movement? What about the word opposition? A prominent historian and analyst of Syria likens attempts to understand the opposition to “nailing Jello to a wall.” What is it exactly that ties these Syrians together, beyond the shared trauma of exile? How do they come together in practice, and what are they able to achieve when they do?

This last year I was fortunate enough to receive an ACOR-CAORC pre-doctoral fellowship, which has enabled me to begin addressing these questions. Although the first portion of my dissertation research began in Turkey, being an ACOR Fellow has made the Jordan portion of my fieldwork significantly more productive by placing me in contact with other scholars and resources. I have been able to learn far more about my project in Amman than I had otherwise expected thanks to this research residency.

As far as my broader project is concerned, I am conducting field research and interviews in two cities that have, until now, played critical roles in the experience of Syrian exiles. The first is Gaziantep, a peripheral city of the Turkish Republic lying a mere 120 kilometers from war-torn Aleppo. In some ways, Gaziantep could not be further from the conflict in Syria. As bombs continue to fall in rebel-held, liberated neighborhoods of Aleppo, Syrians meet in the shining new shopping malls of Gaziantep to write grants, fix journalists with local informants, and enjoy coffee with friends. At the same time, Gaziantep now hosts a bewildering array of civil society and international NGOs, humanitarian organizations, private contractors, journalists, and armed factions, all composing the larger landscape of opposition to the Assad regime in Damascus. Gaziantep has become a political center, the exile-capital for individuals from across Syria.

The second city is Amman, Jordan’s capital and largest city in the Kingdom. It, too, is an exile-capital of sorts, but a struggling one. Life in the city is difficult for Jordanians as much as Syrians, and the government navigates the pressures of being so close to an active war zone. International humanitarian organizations like the United Nation’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Islamic Relief International, and the World Food Program send flows of aid into Syria, while the UNHCR (mufawidiye), Save the Children, and the Union of Syrian Medical Relief Organizations struggle to provide aid to refugees inside Jordan. Meanwhile, activists open smaller organizations closer to the everyday realities of Syrians like the Mulham Volunteer Group and Auranitis. Journalist networks like Orient News, Souriali, and Syria Direct provide opportunities for Syrians within and outside Syria to discuss events “inside.” All of these activities are coordinated and organized from Amman.

A great deal sets apart these two cities in ways that transcend a simple focus on state refugee policy. The mix of social forces present in both cities, the regional origins of Syrians who have settled in them, the forms of mobility (legal and illegal) available to Syrians, urban political economies, locations relative to the Syrian border, and finally, the discourses of the war circulating among Syrians all shape the decision and ability of Syrians to come together and continue opposition politics from these places. But, despite these differences, both cities offer their own respective testimonies to a community of Syrians engaging in exactly the kind of politics that the Assad regime has tried to “kill,” to use the words of University of Chicago political scientist Lisa Wedeen.

And it is in both contexts that my research seeks to understand the various ways that these political communities are managing to survive in exile. I want to show, from the inside-out, that to become a refugee is not to lose one’s political agency. Rather, as scholars like Edward Said and Liisa Malkki have argued, it is sometimes through exile that people discover it.

My project is not about finding an end to the conflict. Nor is it about the end of life in Syria for its many exiled citizens. My project is more concerned with the relationships, activities, and narratives that emerge from the semi-chaos of exile, and the messy politics of how these are assembled in specific places. We are increasingly pushed to notice how different “political orders” arise during and change the course of civil war. In the case of Syria, exile-capitals represent yet another distinct form of political order, one that could use a little more attention.

Written by Ali Nehme Hamdan, ACOR-CAORC Pre-Doctoral Fellow for 2015-2016 and Ph.D. Candidate in Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles.  All photographs in this article were provided by the author.

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