Things that matter: nostalgic objects in Palestinian Arab homes in Israel

ABSTRACT

This article addresses the complex identity of Israel's Palestinian Arab citizens from an atypical perspective: through manifestations of their material culture. The cultural expressions that will be examined are objects from the past and objects that relate to the past, particularly to the rustic Palestinian life profoundly destabilized by the 1948 Arab–Israeli war. These objects, displayed in the homes of some of Israel's Arab citizens, are interpreted by contemplating their design, the design of their environment, their relationship to other objects, and their placement within the domestic sphere. Our study is animated by the desire to sketch a cultural portrait of Palestinian Arab Israelis, as well as by a methodological interest in interpretations based on a socio-architectural reading of objects.

This article reveals the various layers of meaning within these nostalgic displays in all their diversity, and will discuss at length their uniqueness, which is linked to the past traumas and present difficulties of Israel's Arabs. Our main purpose is to develop a line of thought whereby objects that express nostalgia are understood as the embodiment of a consciousness that is characteristic of the present.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. F. Turki, ‘To be a Palestinian’, Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol.3 (Spring 1974), pp.3–17, esp. p.6.

2. This is formulated particularly well in A.J. Clarke, ‘Window Shopping at Home: Classifieds, Catalogues and New Consumer Skills’, in D. Miller (ed.), Material Cultures: Why Some Things Matter (London: University College London, 1998), pp.73–99, esp. p.73.

3. M. Douglas and B. Isherwood, The World of Goods: Towards an Anthropology of Consumption (London: Routledge, 1996, 1979), p.37.

4. The Triangle, abbreviated from ‘the Little Triangle’, is the moniker given to a narrow strip of land stretching from Zalafa in the north to Kafr Qasim in the south. Its name derives from the imaginary triangle formed by three cities in Northern Samaria: Nablus, Jenin, and Tulkarm. In 1948, the Little Triangle was occupied by the Iraqi army, which refused to participate in armistice negotiations with Israel. The Iraqis then withdrew from this area, and it was subsequently occupied by the Jordanians. In the April 1949 armistice agreement signed by Israel and Jordan in Rhodes, the Triangle was ceded to Israel. For further details, see: Avshalom Shmueli, Itzhak Shnell and Arnon Soffer, Ha-Meshulash ha-Qatan: Gilgulo shel Ezor [The Little Triangle: Transformation of a Region] (Haifa: University of Haifa, 1985), p.29.

5. Margaret Scott called the spatial context in interpretation of material culture the ‘situational context’. See: M.A. Stott, ‘Object, Context and Process: Approaches to Teaching about Material Culture’, in B. Reynolds and M.A. Stott (eds.), Material Anthropology: Contemporary Approaches to Material Culture (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1987), pp.13–30, esp. p.18.

6. A. Appadurai, ‘Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value’, in A. Appadurai (ed.), The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp.3–63, esp. p.5.

7. M. Bloch, The Historian's Craft, trans. by Peter Putnam (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1953), p.61.

8. In Arabic as well, there is a clear link between the word ‘shay’ – thing, object, issue – and the verb shā’a, which means ‘want’. Likewise, in English the word ‘object’ can also mean ‘purpose’.

9. This very idea was expressed in the subtitle of Helga Dittmar's work on the social psychology of material assets: ‘To Have Is To Be’. See: H. Dittmar, The Social Psychology of Material Possessions: To Have Is To Be (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992).

10. F. Davis, Yearning for Yesterday: A Sociology of Nostalgia (London: The Free Press, 1979), p.8.

11. Quentin Tarantino (director), Pulp Fiction, 1994.

12. On objects as witnesses in situations of migration and displacement, see: J.-S. Marcoux, ‘The Refurbishment of Memory’, in D. Miller (ed.), Home Possessions: Material Culture behind Closed Doors (Oxford: Berg, 2001), pp.69–86, esp. p.84.

13. S. Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York: Basic Books, 2001), p.xvi.

14. I. Kopytoff, ‘The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process’, in Appadurai (ed.), The Social Life of Things, pp.64–91.

15. Homer, The Iliad and the Odyssey, trans. by Samuel Butler (El Paso, TX: El Paso Norte Press, 2006), pp.271–2.

16. M. Chase and C. Shaw, ‘The Dimensions of Nostalgia’, in C. Shaw and M. Chase (eds.), The Imagined Past: History and Nostalgia (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989), pp.1–17, esp. p.4.

17. Boym, The Future of Nostalgia, p.xvi.

18. J. Starobinski and W.S. Kemp, ‘The Idea of Nostalgia’, Diogenes, Vol.14 (1966), pp.81–103, esp. p.84.

19. J.L. Wilson, Nostalgia: Sanctuary of Meaning (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2005), p.21.

20. D. Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p.10.

21. Starobinski and Kemp, ‘The Idea of Nostalgia’, pp.95–101.

22. D. Boyer, ‘Ostalgie and the Politics of the Future in Eastern Germany’, Public Culture, Vol.18, No.2 (2006), pp.361–81, esp. pp.365–6.

23. Boym, The Future of Nostalgia, p.xvi.

24. Chase and Shaw, ‘The Dimensions of Nostalgia’, pp.3–4.

25. J. Attfield, Wild Things: The Material Culture of Everyday Life (Oxford: Berg, 2000), p.7.

26. Boym, The Future of Nostalgia, p.xv.

27. Chase and Shaw, ‘The Dimensions of Nostalgia’, p.2.

28. Davis, Yearning for Yesterday, p.29.

29. R. Harper, Nostalgia: An Existential Exploration of Longing and Fulfillment in the Modern Age (Cleveland, OH: The Press of Western Reserve University, 1966), p.120.

30. S. Vromen, ‘The Ambiguity of Nostalgia’, YIVO Annual, Vol.21 (1993), pp.69–86, esp. p.77.

31. Fred Davis claims that the bitter taste of unpleasant memories evoked nostalgically can be removed by taking an ‘it-was-all-for-the-best’ attitude. See: Davis, Yearning for Yesterday, p.14.

32. Douglas and Isherwood, The World of Goods, p.71.

33. S. Signoret, Nostalgia Isn't What It Used to Be (New York: Harper & Row, 1978).

34. D. Lowenthal, ‘Nostalgia tells it like it wasn't’, in Shaw and Chase, The Imagined Past, pp.18–32, esp. pp.18–19.

35. D. Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country, p.6; Bevis Hillier, The Style of the Century, 1900–1980 (New York: Dutton, 1983).

36. F. Jameson, ‘Nostalgia for the Present’, South Atlantic Quarterly, Vol.88, No.2 (Spring 1989), pp.517–37.

37. J. Hoskins, Biographical Objects: How Things Tell the Stories of People's Lives (New York: Routledge, 1998), pp.193–94.

38. Lowenthal, ‘Nostalgia tells it like it wasn't’, p.22.

39. Hoskins, Biographical Objects, p.193.

40. D. Gross, The Past in Ruins: Tradition and the Critique of Modernity (Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1992), p.75.

41. Ibid., p.76.

42. Attfield, Wild Things, pp.119–20.

43. Hoskins, Biographical Objects, p.196.

44. E. Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983), p.32.

45. D. Miller, ‘Behind Closed Doors’, in D. Miller (ed.), Home Possessions: Material Culture behind Closed Doors (Oxford: Berg, 2001), pp.1–19.

46. Miller, ‘Behind Closed Doors’, p.15.

47. P. Bourdieu, ‘The Kabyle House or the world reversed’, in his Algeria 1960: Essays, trans. by Richard Nice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp.133–53. For criticism of Bourdieu's study, namely, that it may be ‘too convincing’, see: K. Peled, Architextura: Ha-Bayit ha-‘Aravi ke-Text Chevrati [Architexture: The Arab House as a Social Text] (Tel Aviv: Resling, 2012), pp.48–51; J.E. Goodman, ‘The Proverbial Bourdieu: Habitus and the Politics of Representation in the Ethnography of Kabylia’, American Anthropologist 105, Vol.4 (Dec. 2003), pp.782–93.

48. Bourdieu, ‘The Kabyle House’, p.134.

49. For an expression of the notion that objects create multivalent contexts for one another, see the collection: D. Miller (ed.), Material Cultures: Why Some Things Matter (London: University College London, 1998).

50. M. Csikszentmihali and E. Rochberg-Halton, The Meaning of Things: Domestic Symbols and the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p.65.

51. Chase and Shaw, ‘The Dimensions of Nostalgia’, p.9.

52. S. Sontag, On Photography (London: Penguin, 1979), p.15.

53. Numerous sources describe the traditional rural Palestinian Home. Some of the most important studies are: K. Jäger, Das Bauernhaus in Palaestina: Mit Rücksicht auf das biblische Wohnhaus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1912); T. Cannan, ‘The Palestinian Arab House: Its Architecture and Folklore’, Journal of the Palestine Oriental Society, Vol.12 (1932), pp.223–47, Vol.13 (1933), pp.1–83; G. Dalman, Arbeit und Sitte in Palästina, Vol. 7, Das Haus (Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1942).

54. A historical geographic study of the change in dwelling patterns within Israel's Arab population appears in: M. Meyer-Brodnitz, ‘Ha-Dinamiqa shel ha-Shinuyim ha-Fisiyim ba-Kfar ha-‘Aravi be-Yisrael’ [Dynamics of Physical Changes in Israeli Arab Villages], in A. Shmueli et al. (eds.), Artzot ha-Galil [The Lands of Galilee] (Haifa: The Society for Applied Scientific Research, 1983), Vol.2, pp.745–62.

55. K. Peled, ‘The Israeli Arab Extended Family and the Inner Courtyard: A Historical Portrait’, Israel Affairs, Vol.19, No.1, pp.1–17, esp. pp.3–5.

56. M. Azaryahu, ‘Al Shem: Historiya u-Politiqa shel Shmot Rechovot be-Yisrael’ [Namesakes: History and Politics of Street Naming in Israel] (Jerusalem: Carmel, 2012), pp.213–23.

57. For example, the art gallery and planned museum of Umm al-Fahm or the al-Shuhada Museum in Kafr Qasim, which commemorates the massacre perpetrated by Israeli border policemen in the town. The museum was dedicated on 29 Oct. 2006, on the fiftieth anniversary of the massacre.

58. K. Peled, ‘The Well of Forgetfulness and Remembrance: Milieu de Mémoire and Lieu de Mémoire in a Palestinian Arab Town in Israel’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol.37, No.2, pp.139–58.

59. On the uniqueness of the guest room in Arab homes, see: K. Peled, ‘Ha-Salon ha-‘Aravi be-Yisrael ba-Aspaklaria Historit’ [The Israeli Arab Salon in a Historical Perspective], in Y. Bar-On and E. Tarazi (eds.), Chatzerot Achoriyot [Backyards] (Jerusalem: Bezalel, 2009), pp.69–72.

60. C. Knappett, Thinking Through Material Culture: An Interdisciplinary Perspective (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), p.108.

61. For more on this abundance, see: Peled, Architexture, pp.187–93.

62. ‘Bo'ee le-Eilat’ [Come to Eilat]. Lyrics by Yaron London. Composition by Nurit Hirsch (1970).

63. W. Rybczynski, Home: A Short History of an Idea (New York: Penguin, 1986), p.13.

64. Boym, The Future of Nostalgia, p.xiv.

65. Davis, Yearning for Yesterday, p.49.

66. B.S. Turner, ‘A Note on Nostalgia’, Theory, Culture & Society, Vol.4 (1987), pp.147–56, esp. p.150.

67. Ibid., p.152.

68. W. Stafford, ‘“This once happy country”: Nostalgia for Pre-Modern Society’, in Shaw and Chase (eds.), The Imagined Past, pp.33–46, esp. p.43.

69. Lowenthal, ‘Nostalgia tells it like it wasn't’, p.29.

70. Ibid., p.30.

71. Chase and Shaw, ‘The Dimensions of Nostalgia’, p.4.

72. Lowenthal, ‘Nostalgia tells it like it wasn't’, p.30.

73. Peled, ‘The Well of Forgetfulness and Remembrance’, pp.146–50; S. Bayadse, Baqa al-Gharbiyya: Ta'rīkh Lā Yunsā [Unforgettable History] (Kfar Qari: Dar al-Huda, 2002), pp.1–5.

74. R. Rosaldo, ‘Imperialist Nostalgia’, Representations, Vol.26, Special Issue: Memory and Counter-Memory (Spring 1989), pp.107–22, esp. p.108.

75. M. Berman, All that is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (London: Verso 1983), p.60. Compare: Gross, The Past in Ruins, p.5.

76. Chase and Shaw, ‘The Dimensions of Nostalgia’, p.1.

77. Rosaldo, ‘Imperialist Nostalgia’, p.110.

78. Lowenthal, ‘Nostalgia tells it like it wasn't’, p.24.

79. Boym, The Future of Nostalgia, p.xv.

80. Genesis, 19:17.

81. Boym, The Future of Nostalgia, p.xv.

82. Ibid., p.xix.

83. On this period, see: Peled, ‘The Israeli Arab Extended Family’, pp.7–12.

84. Between 1948–1966, Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel were subjected to military rule.

85. S. Tamari, ‘Bourgeois Nostalgia and the Abandoned City’, Comparative Studies in South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Vol.23, No.1&2 (2003), pp.174–80, esp. p.179.

86. On preparing jugs as women's work, see: S. Amiry and V. Tamari, The Palestinian Village Home (London: British Museum Publications, 1989), pp.43–46.

87. Appadurai, ‘Commodities and the Politics of Value’, p.3.

88. An example of social psychological research that views nostalgia in this way is: C. Routledge et al., ‘The Past Makes the Present Meaningful: Nostalgia as an Existential Resource’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol.101, No.3 (2011), pp.638–52.

89. See, for example: A. Blunt, ‘Collective Memory and Productive Nostalgia: Anglo-Indian Homemaking at McCluskieganj’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, Vol.21 (2003), pp.717–38; Boym, The Future of Nostalgia, p.xvii; Wilson, Nostalgia, p.7.

90. L. Spitzer, Hotel Bolivia: The Culture of Memory in a Refuge from Nazism (New York: Hill and Wang, 1998), p.146.

91. Boym, The Future of Nostalgia, p.252.

92. Ibid., p.354.

93. D. Rubinstein, Chibuk ha-Te'ena: Zchut ha-Shiva shel ha-Falastinim [The Fig-Tree's Embrace: The Palestinian Right of Return] (Jerusalem: Keter, 1990), pp.23–6, 42–7.

94. For an example taken from a study of the artistic heritage of Islamic (and pre-Islamic) culture as a source of artistic expression in Iraq, see: S. al-Khalil, The Monument: Art, Vulgarity, and Responsibility in Iraq (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), pp.78–100.

95. For more on the Rhodes agreements and the transfer of the Triangle area to Israel, see: M. Aqel, Al-Mufaṣṣal fī Ta'rīkh Wādī ‘Ārah: ‘Ārah wa-‘Ar‘arah min bidāyah thawrah 1936 ’ilā nihāyah ḥarb 1948 [A Detailed History of Wādī ‘Ārah: ‘Ārah and ‘Ar‘arah from the Start of the 1936 Revolt to the End of the 1948 War]. Vol.1 (Al-Quds: Matba‘ah al-Sharq al-‘Arabiyyah, 1999), pp.404–18.