Colonial Effects analyzes the creation and definition of modern Jordanian identity. Massad studies two key institutions-- the law and the military--and uses them to create an original and precise analysis of the development of Jordanian national identity in the postcolonial period.
Joseph A. Massad engages recent scholarly debates on nationalism and richly fulfills the analytical promise of Michel Foucault's insight that modern institutions and their power to have productive, not merely repressive or coercive, capacities—though Massad also stresses their continued repressive function.
His argument is advanced by a consideration of evidence, including images produced by state tourist agencies aimed at attracting Western visitors, the changing and precarious position of women in the newly constructed national space, and such practices as soccer games, music, songs, food, clothing, and shifting accents and dialects.
Joseph A. Massad is assistant professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history in the Department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University. He won the Malcolm Kerr Dissertation Award for this work from the Middle East Studies Association.
Table of Contents
Introduction Law, Military, and Discipline Tradition and Modernity Historical Moments Part I: Codifying the Nation: Law and the Articulation of National Identity in Jordan The Prehistory of Juridical Postcoloniality National Time National Space National Territory and Paternity Nationalizing Non-Nationals Losing Nationality: The Law Giveth and the Law Taketh Away Women and Children Part II: Different Spaces as Different Times: Law and Geography in Jordanian Nationalism Different Species of Citizens: Women and Bedouins Bedouins and National Citizenship Nationalist Tribalism or Tribalist Nationalism: The Debate Jordanian Culture in an International Frame Women Between the Public and Private Spheres Women in Public Women and Politics Part III: Cultural Syncretism or Colonial Mimic Men: Jordan's Bedouins and the Military Basis of National Identity The Bedouin Choice Cultural Imperialism and Discipline Cultural Cross-Dressing as Epistemology Imperialism as Educator Masculinity, Culture, and Women Transforming the Bedouins Persuasion, Education, and Surveillance Part IV: Nationalizing the Military: Colonial Legacy as National Heritage Anticolonial Nationalism and the Army King Husayn and the Nationalist Officers Clash of the Titans: Glubb Pasha and the Uneasy King "Arabizing" the Jordanian Army The Palace Coup and the End of an Era Palace Repression and the Forgiving King Palestinians and the Military Threatening the Nation's Masculinity and Religious "Tradition" The Military and the New Jordan Colonial or National Legacy Part V: The Nation as an Elastic Entity: The Expansion and Contraction of Jordan Expanding the Nation: The Road to Annexation The Jericho Conference The New Jordan Palestinians and the West Bank Competing Representatives: The PLO and Jordan Toward Civil War A New Nationalist Era Clothes, Accents, and Football: Asserting Post—Civil War Jordanianness Contracting the Nation: The Road to "The Severing of Ties" Who Is Jordanian? Concluding Remarks
A work of genuine brilliance, as much for its searing insights into Jordanian history and culture as for its extraordinary mastery of the vast material it deploys. It is rare to encounter a pathbreaking book: this is certainly one.
Rashid Khalidi
Well written and tightly argued.... One of the best of the new crop of studies that deal with the evolution of national identity in the Middle East.
— Rashid Khalidi, University of Chicago
Timothy Mitchell
Massad asks how a national identity could emerge in a country established, ruled, and peopled to a significant extent by outsiders. His subtle analysis of the ways cultural politics and coercive power interact is an original and important contribution to the political theory of nationalism.
— Timothy Mitchell, New York University
Stephen Howe
There has thus long been an obvious need to turn attention from poets and playwrights as nation-builders to other, surely politically more central kinds of actors, like generals or judges. A growing number of scholars, dealing with many different parts of the colonial and postcolonial worlds, are indeed now making that turn. Joseph Massad's study of Jordanian nationalidentity is among its most sophisticated and impressive products. He focuses on the institutions of the law and the military, and shows very effectively how crucial these were to the creation and definition of nationality. It is a detailed, convincingly documented account -- and one which also ranges well beyond its central focus on the army and the legal system to proposestimulating insights into other aspects of the foundations of a modern political identity, from the invention of new 'national' costumes and cuisines to the elaboration of a novel conception of 'national time.'
— Stephen Howe, Interventions: International Journal of Post Colonial Studies
Partha Chatterjee
A distinguished addition to the growing field of studies of anticolonial nationalism -- distinguished especially because it focuses less on culture and more on law and the military. A welcome reminder that the modern nation-state must be repressive as well as productive."
