Introduction

Summary

Histories are written from fundamentally different – indeed irreconcilable – perspectives or viewpoints, none of which is complete or completely “true.”

Joan Wallach Scott (1991:776)

This book explores the ways through which anthropological data and analysis contribute to the understanding of the Palestinian–Israeli conflict and its formative year, 1948. Anthropology can shed new light in three different ways. First, it endorses a closeup perspective, with the intent of uncovering the microhistorical setting of memories. It attends to details, some which have been obscured by overarching narratives, usually political in character. Second, it gives access to changes over time and the fluidity of narratives; it is attentive to these transformations. Third, in contrast to history, it favors alternative versions and their juxtaposition; versions are often understood as complementary rather than competing or invalidating one another. It should be noted, though, that historians such as Joan Wallach Scott have begun to adopt a postpositivistic point of view.

Once we open the framework to incorporate multiple understandings of a conflict, we can recognize that nationalism is part of the story, but not the whole. This was true in 1948, and it remains true today. It is through personal narratives that I follow changing perceptions of the Israel–Palestine conflict. These narratives bear all the traces of the interviewees' social origins, generational belonging, gender, social class, and local affiliations. Sticking to the national level reveals little of these multiple identities and the ways they shape the stories people tell about what happened to them in 1948.