Legendary for more than three thousand years, fierce nomadic warriors and camel-drivers who dominated the trans-Saharan caravan trade, the Saharawis are today admired as soldier-statesmen and refugee-diplomats. They are a proud nomadic people with a unique defence of human rights and international law for the self-determination of their land: the Western Sahara desert in North Africa. Konstantina Isidoros provides a rich ethnographic portrait of the life of this unique desert society in one of the most extreme ecosystems on Earth.
© 2019, Bloomsbury
Her in-depth anthropological research, carried out over nine years, sheds light on an Arab-Berber Muslim society where the men wear full veils and are centred on the women, the owners of the tents forming powerful matrilocal coalitions. Isidoros offers new analyses of gender relations, the strategic symbiosis between tribes and the tactical formation of “tent cities”. The book highlights the indigenous principles of social organisation – the centrality of women, male veils and kinship ties – providing positive feminist perspectives on how the Saharawis reconfigured their nomadic pastoral tribal society into globalised citizens and gave birth to a nation-state. This is essential reading for those interested in anthropology, politics, war and nationalism, gender relations, postcolonialism, international development, humanitarian regimes, refugee studies and the experience of nomadic communities.
- Title : Nomads and Nation Building in the Western Sahara: Gender, Politics and the Sahrawi
- Author : Konstantina Isidoros
- Editor : I. B. Tauris
- Date of publication : September 2019
- Number of pages : 304
- ISBN : 9781838604721
- Price : £30.59