'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

Reading Sari Hanafi on refugees, spatiocide, Jerusalem, etc.

I had a few good research experiences this morning. The first was that I was looking for something else online but ended up reading this chunk out of a chapter the brilliant Palestinian researcher Sari Hanafi wrote on the sociology of a Palestinian return, in Rex Brynen and Roula Rifai's 2007 book Palestinian Refugees: Challenges of Repatriation and Development.

The 25-page chunk that Google Books gave me there had a lot of really interesting, thoughtful material in it. Hanafi talked about the advantages of using the term "return migration" rather than repatriation, given that repatriation (which is the technical term used in most refugee studies) is really an entire "migration" of its own... He talked about the important concept of "enduring transnationality" for many Palestinian refugees, whether they return or not... He drew on huge amounts of both sociological and economic data, gathered both by the Shaml institute that he headed in Ramallah for several years and by other organizations.

Wow.

So anyway, the chunk that Google Books gave me ended before the end of the chapter and without giving me any of Sari's footnotes. But I clicked on "Find it in a Library" and yes, indeed, the whole-- very expensive!-- book is available in the U.Va. library, which is around 2/3 mile from where I am now sitting.

Okay, so finding that chunk of text, and finding that the whole book can-- I hope!-- be in my hands before nightfall were two good experiences...

I had originally been doing a Google search on Sari because I know he was the originator of the important concept of spatiocide (aka spaciocide) and also, I think, of the important term biopolitics...

Googling for "spatiocide" I then found these two pages (1 and 2), which are both about a 2006 book titled City of Collision: Jerusalem and the Principles of Conflict Urbanism.

Since I am very interested in both Jerusalem and urban planning issues, this books looks fascinating! Sadly, however, the nearest library that it's in is 4100 miles away, in Frankfurt. I think I'll have to buy it and then maybe donate it to U.Va., which has a huge architecture school...

Okay, I've just made that purchase. (Stop me before I buy more books!)

Now I need to go back and read the review essay by Oren Yiftachel that I was reading before I got distracted by the whole Sari Hanafi thing.