Anthropological Quarterly

In this rich ethnography of heritage practices in Palestine, Chiara de Cesari tells the story of how Palestinian heritage work in the post-Oslo period has emerged as a crucial player in the prefiguration of an absent Palestinian state. In the absence of a state and its institutions, Palestinian heritage work has long been prominent in the struggle against Israeli colonialism. Starting with the folklore movement of the 1970s and in the wake of the failure of the Oslo Accords to create a Palestinian state, heritage practices are filling in through making material claims to sovereignty, from building an active civil society and sustaining and fostering social and economic development, to providing for forms of local government. In taking up this plethora of social and political challenges, heritage work and its practitioners are engaged in what de Cesari calls “anticipatory representation” (184; see also de Cesari 2012). The idea of “anticipatory representation” is critical to appreciating how de Cesari defines the “politics of heritage” in Palestine, broadening its scope beyond struggle and resistance.

The first chapter of De Cesari’s book opens with an account of the historical trajectory of heritage practices in Palestine from the Mandate period up through the post-Oslo period. As she notes, there is no clean, linear trajectory, but instead two distinct periods in which heritage work took on importance: first, the British Mandate period; and second, the re-birth the nationalist movement in the 1970s and 1980s. Importantly, both are punctuated by heightened anticolonial and nationalist activism and share a concern with cultural resistance. It is in these two periods that the foundations for the broader role of heritage practice as a form of national and cultural struggle were initially formed, and with it heritage work as a [End Page 557] “projection of a future” (77). Indeed, it is in heritage work that a collective political agency is formed, where the “revolutionary potential of oppressed subjects [is transformed] into political consciousness and action” (72).

Chapter 2 follows this thread through a vivid account of the heritage work in the Old City of Hebron from the 1980s to present, from its early inception by a group of scholars and architects from Hebron’s Polytechnic University to the establishment of the Hebron Rehabilitation Committee (HRC) by Arafat in 1996. As de Cesari notes, being an outpost in the colonization of the West Bank in 1967, Hebron was a strategic site for an emerging politics of culture due to its religious significance for the Jewish nationalist settler movement. Indeed, as the Oslo talks started to take shape in the 1970s, Hebron offered Arafat the opportunity to envision heritage work as a “countersettlement project” through making claims over the past as well as material claims to sovereignty. Following the Second Intifada, as the HRC became increasingly dependent on international funding and networks, its focus gradually moved to a more humanitarian approach to heritage practice that emphasized the sustainability of life in the Old City (103). While this focus led to a diverse array of social development activities—including social and economic revitalization, tourism, job creation, vocational training, children’s entertainment, and outreach activities (104)—it also put the HRC at odds with its European donors whose mandate was centered on emergency relief rather than long-term development. Over time, and with the increasing colonization of the Old City, the HRC morphed into a mode of governance, a hybrid sociopolitical formation that aimed to navigate between heritage practice, the making of heritage-aware citizens, and humanitarian aid. In short, it became a model for resistance to colonization and the development of the project of a future state.

Chapter 3 continues this analysis by examining more closely the role of heritage practices and organizations in the post-Oslo period, focusing on their close relationships with NGOs and the broader state-building project, this time through the relationship of the Department of Antiquities (DACH) and Riwaq (the Centre for Architectural Conservation), one the oldest heritage organizations from the...