Tribes of Syria (original) (raw)
Little information is available regarding contemporary relations between Bedouin tribes and the Syrian state apparatus. These ties are mainly expressed through relationships of patronage and clientism between tribal leaders and state operatives. The Bedouin tribes of Syria continue to function as groups tied in networks of real and fictive kinship; these bonds provide the tribal members with a solidarity and cohesiveness which the state has not been able to suppress despite decades of effort. Dawn Chatty is University Reader in Anthropology and Forced Migration and Deputy Director of the Refugee Studies Centre, Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford, UK. She has conducted fieldwork in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Oman. Her research interests include nomadic pastoralism and conservation, gender and development, health, illness and culture, and coping strategies and resilience of refugee youth. Her most recent books include Conservation and Mobile Peoples: Displacement, Forced Settlement and Sustainable Development (Editor with Marcus Colchester), Berghan Press, 2002, Children of Palestine: Experiencing Forced Migration in the Middle East (Editor with Gillian Lewando-Hundt), Berghahn Books, 2005, and Handbook on Nomads in the Middle East and North Africa (Editor) Brill, 2006. In 2010, her monograph Dispossession and Displacement in the Modern Middle East will be published by Cambridge University Press.