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Suspended in Space: Bedouins under the Law of Israel

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Ronen Shamir
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This article demonstrates the legal consequences that flow from the conceptualization of the Bedouin as rootless nomads and from the imposition of certain legal categories of land ownership as means for solving disputes across the indigenous/nonindigenous divide. I argue that the law works by imposing conceptual grids on time and space and that this conceptual ordering, in turn, gives rise to a series of binary oppositions that affirm the distinctions between “us” (Progressive Westerners) and “them” (Chaotic Oriental nomads). Once the Bedouin are placed on the side of nature, judicial practices tend, on the one hand, to objectify the denial of Bedouin claims of land ownership and, on the other hand, to facilitate state policies of forcing the Bedouin into urban setdements.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 30 , Issue 2 , 1996 , pp. 231 - 257
Copyright
Copyright © 1996 by The Law and Society Association

Footnotes

I am grateful to Shlomo Deshen, Patricia Ewick, Emanuel Marx, Alexander Kedar, and Menachem Mautner for their insightful and constructive reading of earlier drafts. I also thank four reviewers of the Review for their excellent suggestions for revisions and clarifications. The article is based on research supported by the Israel Foundations Trustees and the Israel Science Foundation. I also thank Nelly Elias, a research assistant, for her invaluable help.

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