A View from Jordan: An Interview with a Senior Delegate

[Dr. Fayez Tarawneh is a senior member of the Jordanian delegation to the Middle East peace talks recently held in Washington, D.C. Dr. Tarawneh, an economist, is the former minister of supply and assistant chief of royal protocol in Jordan. This interview was conducted by Dr. Mohammed M. Aman, editor of DOMES, on February 28, 1992, after Dr. Tarawneh spoke at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.]     

A Visa Story from Palestine

Palestinians are subject to special difficulties when applying for a visa: the ban imposed by the Israeli military authorities on Palestinians entering Israel and traveling via Bin Gurion airport is compounded by the obligation of Palestinians who need to travel abroad to fly via Queen Alia International Airport in Amman. Since September 11th the author and many of his colleagues have experienced overwhelming difficulties in securing visas to travel abroad to attend the smallest activity. Harsh and restrictive visa policies are playing into the hands of extremists on both sides. It is the responsibility of colleagues in countries that are implementing these restrictions to pressure their governments to change those policies.     

An Independent Palestine: The Security Dimension

If negotiations produce an end to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict then a sovereign, independent Palestine may emerge. But what is required for it to succeed? Nothing is more important than the security of a Palestinian state–for itself, for Israel, and for the region: security trumps all else. In addition to the problem of dealing effectively with opposition to a peace agreement within Palestine or directed against it from outside, the nature and magnitude of the security challenge will depend in large part on three issues: the drawing of borders between Israel and Palestine–and whether they are porous or marked by a rigid line of barriers; whether Israeli settlements are withdrawn, or in part incorporated into Israel, perhaps through land swaps with Palestine; and what arrangements are made for Jerusalem. One answer is the creation of effective Palestinian military forces (in addition to police), but this course could be divisive; a second is the development of a series of Israeli–Palestinian confidence‐building and share–security measures, including intelligence cooperation; a third is progress towards reducing external threats to Israel–Palestine, including success in Iraq and in defusing other Middle East problems. Most useful, however, would be the creation of an American‐led peace enabling force, ideally modelled on NATO. This force would need to be agreed by both Israel and Palestine; it must be adequately staffed, trained and equipped; its duties and rules of engagement must make sense to all parties; and it must be part of a network of dispute‐resolution and confidence‐building measures in full partnership with Israeli and Palestinian authorities.     

An Uncommon Type of Smoking Implement from Ottoman Palestine

Abstract

The presence of an uncommon and barely reported type of ceramic smoking implement found in Ottoman-period archaeological contexts in sites in Palestine is discussed. This implement, part of a large group of much more common Near Eastern smoking implements, expands our knowledge about the material culture and daily habits of the local population, and provides somewhat surprising evidence for the ethnic diversity of Palestine in the Ottoman period.     

In Sight,Out of View: A Tale of Three Monuments

Three monuments in Vancouver, British Columbia, located closely in time and geography and all concerning violence, were created not by one, but rather by three separate groups of advocates. Given that in each case the advocates were drawn from the socially marginalized, it would seem logical that the groups would have had to work together to accomplish something as complex as gaining access to public space with the permanence of monuments. But instead, a close examination of the development and uses of these three monuments reveals the profundity of several mechanisms of social distance. Those noted here include (a) the intransigence of structures of social exclusion, (b) the dispossession caused by the legacy of colonialism, and (c) the nature of trauma. In this essay, I argue that these mechanisms each created specific dynamics that amplified, rather than reduced, barriers between the three groups of advocates. Following an introduction to the Vancouver neighbourhood and each monument, I detail how each mechanism worked to show that what is in sight may nevertheless be out of view.     

Women's rights and misogyny in Brazil: An interview with Debora Diniz

In 2018 anthropologist and feminist Debora Diniz appeared as an expert witness in a Supreme Court hearing that addressed decriminalizing abortion. After receiving death threats, she was placed under police protection and forced to go into hiding. The police discovered that a right-wing extremist gang plotted an attack against her, and Diniz had to go into exile abroad, a fate she shares with several other academics working on women's rights and economic and racial inequalities. In this interview, Diniz reflects on the Brazilian political climate and its consequences for academics, freedom, women's rights and healthcare.     

Roman Urbanism: A View from the Countryside

The towns of Roman Britain have been subject to a long tradition of empirical research and discussion, but far less attention has been paid to the landscape context in which they developed. This paper considers the implications of this caveat for our understanding of Roman urbanism and suggests that most previous approaches have internalized the study of towns as social institutions and have failed to give due weight to the role of local rural agency in influencing the character of urban development. In so doing, it is suggested that the potential role of other important and competing nodes of economic, political and religious life, such as forts, fortresses, vici and small towns as well as rural sanctuaries and other settlements, is also not given due consideration in discussing the distinctive character of urbanism in Roman Britain.     

Collaborative Watershed Management: A View from the Grassroots

To date, research on collaborative watershed management has paid scant attention to the role of grassroots stakeholders, who are the people that actually use natural resources. This article argues cooperation from grassroots stakeholders is necessary for the success of collaborative management, and outlines three theoretical perspectives to explain cooperation. The validity of these theoretical perspectives is tested using a survey of farmer participation in the Suwannee River Partnership in Florida. The findings suggest farmers' perceptions of policy effectiveness are largely driven by economic considerations, whereas participation in collaborative management is linked to social capital.     

Hopewell Archaeology: A View from the Northern Woodlands

A tremendous amount of research on Hopewellian societies in the Northern Woodlands of the United States has been conducted within the last decade. This article summarizes the main themes and directions of that current research and presents a general model of Hopewellian societies. Local communities appear to have been small in size and relatively sedentary; sets of these communities shared a greater sense of cultural identity within a lineage and possibly clan organization, with each riverine drainage system occupied by a mosaic of lineages. Each in turn was spatially centered on specific clusters of religious, nonresidential public architecture. Alliances were based on a number of historically shifting variables, including religion, kinship, politics, and economics. It is suggested that future research continue existing methodologies and analyses and consider new ecological, genetic, and ideological research as a means of adding greater local historic nuance to this general model of Hopewellian societies.