BILAL AWAD SALAMEH,
On the Meaning of Land: Reclaiming the Palestinian Selfhood (Doha/Beirut ACRPS, 2021), pp. 207.
Introduction
There is relatively a paucity of academic literature on the question of land in the Arab context, particularly when it comes to sociology. The sole exception is the Palestinian context, in which land, because of the settler-colonial dimension, represents a central element in the formation of social relations at all levels. It is within this tradition that Bilal Salameh’s
On the Meaning of Land: Reclaiming the Palestinian Selfhood stands, approaching land as a macro-phenomenon around which the author weaves the many variables that make up the colonial conflict in Palestine, thus situating the book in the broader field of peasant studies. The author uses a theoretical framework that draws on a decolonial intellectual heritage in order to approach the land question within its Zionist colonial context, given that the latter is a neoliberal setting which can be understood in a complex and holistic way. He discusses this through a decolonial lens and through a critique of neoliberal social control and social engineering, drawing on the works of Franz Fanon, Melanie Klein, Achille Mbembe, and Malcolm X.
The author explores “the issue of land as [an object of] both symbolic and material value that offers Palestinians dignity, and guarantees that dignity”. He records the people’s representations of land’s value, whether in its own (symbolic) terms or because of its (material) value as a means of production on which the Palestinian community and its self-reproduction depend, a representation that is closely related to the colonial system and its social relations. He argues that we should not think of colonial control over land simply as a material, authoritarian practise aimed exclusively at the land itself. It also comprises, in the first instance, strategies and techniques to cement control over Palestinians as people, as well as over land as an object of value and a source of material production.
* This study was published in the 14th issue of AlMuntaqa, a peer-reviewed academic journal for the social sciences and humanities. You can read the full paper here.
