Jordan

دائرة المطبوعات والنحر في الاردن

... مؤتمر دافوس

From High to Low and Back Again: A Fish Above Sea Level

Samak fawqa satah al-bahr [A Fish above Sea Level]. Directed by Hazim Bitar. Jordan, 2012. Recently I had the opportunity to view the independent film Samak fawqa satah al-bahr (A Fish above Sea Level) at the University of Jordan. This is the first feature-length film by Hazim Bitar, who both wrote and directed it. He is a prominent presence in the Jordanian film community, having produced more than six shorts, both narrative-driven and documentary, in addition to founding the (now suspended) Amman Filmmakers Cooperative, which provided an array of support (including equipment, distribution, promotion, and people-power) to both aspiring and accomplished filmmakers. In ...

Reconciling Return and Rights: Palestinian Refugees and the Emergence of a "Political Society"

Analyses and debates on the reconfiguration of rights, democracy, social justice, and dignity in the Arab region suffer from a chronic methodological nationalism—which perpetuates the idea that people seek and fight for rights and self-determination solely in their national state and territory, seen as the natural context for achieving a full social and political personhood. When refugees and displaced persons (short or long terms alike) are discussed, they appear by and large as volatile figures or fortuitous victims, or as an indistinct mass in need of humanitarianism, living transient non-lives and awaiting compensation and return. They are hardly ever represented as ...

King Abdullah II of Jordan, World Statesman?

This week, Jeffrey Goldberg published a now infamous interview with King Abdullah II of Jordan in The Atlantic. Its contents have reverberated all around the blogosphere, generating heated real-life debates. Even before the full interview was made public, the New York Times culled out the most egregious of quotes for an article on 18 March. It was this truncated version that was initially circulating through the Internet and in the media in Jordan. Increasingly, references to the fuller Atlantic article were also being passed around. Initially, parts of the article were circulating in Arabic, and eventually the whole article was translated. Already, at least one ...

سيد الأردن: عن ما يقارب 400 أردني في السجون السعودية

The Rising Cost of Electricity in Jordan

              [Click on the image to view or download larger version of this illustration.]

Romancing the Throne: The New York Times and The Endorsement of Authoritarianism in Jordan

On 23 January 2013, elections were held for the seventeenth parliament of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. During the past several months, the monarchy and its allies hailed the 2013 parliamentary elections in Jordan as both the symbol and litmus test of the regime's commitment to "reform" in the country. Alternatively, the Islamic Action Front (IAF)—the political wing of the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood and the leading political opposition group since at least the early 1990s—called on Jordanians to boycott the elections in protest of what they described as an unrepresentative political system. These two opposing views represent a conflict over the definition ...

First Jordanian Elections post Arab Uprisings; Challenges of Reporting from Syria

This week, Amman-based activist and writer Hisham Bustani updates VOMENA on the first Jordanian parliamentary elections since the Arab uprisings, and what they mean for the country. More than thirty journalists were killed in Syria in 2012 alone. Istanbul-based freelance journalist Justin Vela talks about the challenges and pitfalls of reporting from a Syrian warzone. [Correction from Hisham Bustani: To correct a mistake I made in the interview regarding the number of the Jordanian Parliament's seats. The correct total number of seats is 150 seats: 123 seats of which are dedicated to the single vote/local district individual candidates;  and ...

On the Exhibition THIS IS also GAZA

 To write this commentary, I draw on my knowledge as historian of twentieth-century Palestinian painting as well as my own experiences with some of these artists when I co-curated Al Jisser Group’s exhibition in New York, “Williamsburg Bridges Palestine.” Additionally, I have a little experience visiting Gaza and communicating with artists there. On one of my visits acting as consultant, I brought the director of the Station Museum in Houston to Gaza as part of the development of the “Made in Palestine” exhibition. This essay will be limited to discussion of static images – painting and photography; but the show is a mix of static pictorial arts, film and ...

When is Something, Something? Jordan’s Arab Uprising

  Throughout the early months of 2011, and the Arab uprisings, I was living and conducting research in Jordan. I paid close attention to the reverberations of the Arab Spring on the ground in Jordan, and grew frustrated with the absolute lack of attention, or worse yet, dismissal of political developments there. I cannot count how many times I heard the refrain, “But nothing is happening in Jordan” or “Nothing will ever happen in Jordan.” In response, I ask here “When is something, something? In 2012, events in Jordan began to garner further attention by Middle East scholars in the US and the US media. Policy analysts writing for ...

Why Not Jordan?

The 13 November withdrawal of fuel and electricity subsidies has sparked vigorous demonstrations in Jordan, prompting renewed speculation about whether the wave of Arab uprisings that began in late 2010 has finally arrived in the Hashemite Kingdom. Indeed, amidst the rush of scholarly attempts to explain why uprisings did or did not occur in various Arab countries in 2011, Jordan is proving a stubborn case. Jordan fits nearly all the criteria for an uprising, but sustained protest has yet to take root. If social media and Internet access drove the revolts, then Jordan should have already had an upheaval, for it ranks well ahead of Egypt and Libya and is ...