Home and Homeland The Dialogics of Tribal and National Identities in Jordan by Linda Layne. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 188 pp.

Abstract

The formation of Jordanian tribal and national identities is the central theme
of Layne's Home and Homeland. This study focuses on the Abbadi tribes of the
East Jordan Valley and is based on extensive fieldwork conducted by Layne
between 1979 and 1988. Layne's central argument is that for the Abbadi and for
Jordanian society in general, tribal and national identities are in dialogic relationships,
deriving meaning from and conditioning one another. She challenges
approaches to Jordanian social and political identity which compartmentalize
individuals according to rigid Palestinian/East Bank/tribal lines, arguing that
identities are constantly shifting and being reconstructed through discourse
between tribespeople, urbanites, the monarchy, bureaucracy, the intelligentsia,
Hashemite rulers, and Western social scientists.
In the introductory chapter of this work, the author reviews and assesses
notions of social identity. Layne criticizes mosaic and segmentary models of
collective identity on two grounds: they are essentialist in tending to posit collective
identity in terms of social masses and they provide "pigeonhole" models
of identity which require the presence of an observer. Here she introduces a
"posture-oriented" approach to identity which "sees identity as meaning constructed
on an ongoing basis through the everyday practices of making a place
in the world, that is, adopting a posture in the context of changing circumstances
and uncertain contingencies."
Layne devotes the next three chapters to the Abbadi tribes. She outlines significant
changes that occurred in the Jordan Valley in the twentieth century in
tenns of the tribes' relationship with land and state. Her case study focuses on
domestic space as an expression of how the tribespeople have constructed their
social entities in the context of inclusion in the Jordanian nation-state and integration
into world capitalism. The author emphasizes the strong threads of ...