Current Issue: Volume 15 Number 1

Approaches to the Bedouin's importance in the history of the Arab Middle East regularly conflict on whether outside or inside influences are paramount. In particular, have their political structures and activities been a secondary response to processes that stemmed from the polities of sedentary people, or have primary agency and rationales from within their own milieu been pivotal? For the first time, this issue is to undergo methodical diachronic analysis. Distinguishing major periods of Bedouin political development from antiquity to the present, with an emergent focus on northern Arabia and the Fertile Crescent, a constant set of seven key features is assessed period by period in order to compare historical variations. Period-specific and consolidated results show that periods characterised by intrinsic factors differ clearly from periods marked by extrinsic ones, and that they alternate. Even as the Bedouin engage in interaction with the sedentary people, their own dynamics prove persistent and irreducible in themselves.

In this article, I analyse a steppe region in contemporary Morocco, outlining the political environment in which land use is currently negotiated. I ask what place different actors such as the state, the tribe, or local individuals occupy in the relevant power structures. Relying on recent fieldwork, I then discuss land appropriation by tribal households. Con flict-resolution mechanisms are presented in the third section. My contribution shows that access to land is often related to other types of resources (such as livestock, access to institutions and social prestige), and points out that a detailed, actor-centred analysis is essential to understanding the making of politics in the Moroccan high plateaus.

This article examines a revolt among the Sba'a-'Abada Bedouin, a sub-group of the 'Anaza tribal confederation, in Mandatory Syria. The case offers a rare glimpse into the political dynamics of a Bedouin group under French Mandatory rule. The analysis shows that the political circumstances enabled lower ranking tribal representatives to enter into direct negotiations with other Bedouin leaders and state agencies. These negotiations demonstrate that tribal categories such as the 'Anaza confederation provided a flexible reference system for the steppe population, which was used by tribal and state bodies alike.

In early 1979 one of the sons of the shaykh of the Hsana, a Syrian Bedouin tribe, was killed by members of another tribe. The story of why and how the Hsana took revenge on the perpetrators' tribe was told to the author by their current shaykh. The article uses this story and its specificities when compared to other tribes and their oral histories as a reference for illustrating and explaining the present, special situation of the Hsana in Syria.

This article investigates a conflict that loomed over the mutual use of pastures on either side of the border by various Sámi groups during the last decade. On the basis of a critical reading of Foucault, we analyse the identifications connected to different kinds of spaces that come up in the mediation of this conflict. Surprisingly, the notion of belonging to an indigenous people plays only a very limited role in this conflict. Being a Sámi and a state citizen turns out to be more important. Reindeer pastures are perceived as lands, bounded spaces, and as part of the state space, since reindeer herding is a 'nationalised' business. However, pastures as concrete places in themselves have not emerged as an important aspect of this conflict.