Irene Maffi – författare

After the revolution of 2011, the electoral victory of the Islamist party ‘Ennahdha’ allowed previously silenced religious and conservative ideas about women’s right to abortion to be expressed. This also allowed healthcare providers in the public sector to refuse abortion and contraceptive care. This book explores the changes and continuity in the local discourses and practices related to the body, sexuality, reproduction and gender relationships. It also investigates how the bureaucratic apparatus of government healthcare facilities affects the complex moral world of clinicians and patients.

There are ongoing efforts in anthropology to decolonise its history and give fairer space to marginalised traditions. This book examines the history and institutionalisation of anthropology in the Maghreb, the Mashreq and the Gulf, in an open and collaborative manner and from various perspectives. Its primary focus is two-fold: first, to reorient the anthropological focus towards studies conducted in the region, particularly on the conditions conducive to the institutionalisation of anthropological knowledge; second, to shed light on anthropological studies in languages other than English. offering different theoretical and epistemological perspectives.

During the nineteenth century, cultural heritage became a dominant feature of the political ideology of the European states and of their colonies. It became a new form of legitimization for the rising nation-state, cementing its inextricable link with that nation's politics and practices. The set of concepts and practices defining cultural heritage were exported to, and imposed over, the colonized populations in North Africa and the Near East. The legacy of the colonial period has proven very significant in the domain of cultural heritage which has become a crucial cultural arena in many Arab states. As in the majorities of post-colonial states, in the Arab world, the inherited paradigm of cultural heritage has been subject to various forms of adaption and re-elaboration that have made it a lively and complex space of negotiations between various actors. Thus, in The Politics of Cultural Heritage in the Middle East, Irene Maffi and Rami Daher draw together expert scholars to unravel these complex processes that are involved in the definition, production and consumption of heritage and its material culture in the Middle East, and the dynamics of the key actors involved.The variety of the cases analysed that cover the region from Morocco to Lebanon, as well as the multiplicity of the actors concerned such as the state (post-colonial or colonial), international organizations, municipal councils, local communities, families and even exceptional personalities, highlights and explores the complex processes where very local and specific dynamics intertwine with transnational economic, political and cultural fluxes. In its examination of the workings of cultural heritage in the Middle East, this book is an important resource for students and scholars of Middle East Studies, Cultural History, History of Art and Architecture, and for stakeholders involved in the field of cultural heritage.

This book is the result of a field research carried out by the author among a community of agriculturists in what was till recently the uttermost part of Southern Pakistani Balochistan.It deals with themes such as ways of living and representing spaces, constructing memory, the heritage of a form of social stratification which shaped community relationships in the last three centuries, and, last but not least, the insurgence of nationalism.Furthermore, the book puts forward some theoretical proposals about the translation of cultural «models», throughout a constant comparison between the author’s and his interlocutors’, alternating ethnographic «descriptions» with reflexive arguments.Notwithstanding its remoteness, Balochistan is today at the confluence of forces which reflect both local and «global» logics, pushing this land, once only visited by few adventurous travelers, in the focus of international interests which could impinge on political evolution of this sensitive area straddling South Asia and Middle East.