Understanding Life Lived in Relief
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n 1948, some 750,000 Palestinians were displaced from their homes. They ended up in neighboring Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, as well as the areas of the Palestine Mandate that became the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Today, 5 million Palestinian refugees are registered with the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), the body charged with providing assistance to Palestinians across the Middle East. Approximately 1.5 million of these refugees live in one of the 58 official UNRWA camps.
ILANA FELDMAN Professor of Anthropology, History and International Affairs
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In my forthcoming book, Life Lived in Relief: Humanitarian Predicaments and Palestinian Refugee Politics (University of California Press), I describe the establishment and extension of a humanitarian assistance apparatus over 70 years and across five “fields” of operation. The book explores the particular challenges that result when a crisis intervention continues for decades. It investigates the “politics of living” in a humanitarian condition for such a long time. For example, how does a formally neutral, non-political apparatus become a site for political engagement by refugees? The sources for the book are both archival and ethnographic. UNRWA’s archive anchors the documentary record, which includes material from every decade and field. I also conducted ethnographic fieldwork from 2008 to 2014, primarily in