Paper short abstract:

The few articles published to date on the anthropology on Palestine and on Palestinian anthropology tend to conflate these two terms. None discuss the fact that the overwhelming production by Palestinian anthropologists has been about Palestine. How does this affect Middle East anthropology?

Paper long abstract:

The few publications to date on the state-of-the-art of anthropology on Palestine and Palestinian anthropology tend to conflate these two terms (Abu-Lughod 2020; Furani and Rabinowitz 2021; Schiocchet 2018, 2022; Atshan 2021). Furani and Rabinowitz’s seminal article largely shifts the tone from a discussion on data production about Palestine and Palestinians to Palestine (and Palestinians) as a site of theory production at large. However, none discuss what lies in the conflation between an anthropology of Palestine and a Palestinian anthropology, namely, that the overwhelming production by Palestinian anthropologists has been about Palestine. What social processes and academic mechanisms cause this conflation and what does it entail in practice? How does it affect the Palestinian anthropological production about the rest of the world at large? How can it invisibilize the academic production and circulation of Palestinian anthropologists working elsewhere and reproduce established academic (im)mobilities and hierarchies? Last by not least, how does it affect theoretical-methodological developments in anthropology at large?