boozer

content/article/boozerintro.md

@@ -0,0 +1,416 @@
+---
+title: "Introduction"
+authors: ["annaboozer.md"]
+keywords: ["homescape", "home", "homeland", "household", "homelife", "diaspora", "displacement", "tahgeer" ,"Nubia", "Nubian", "Aswan High Dam Campaign", "war", "genocide", "resettlement", "Kom Ombo", "stereotype", "longue durée"]
+---
+
+# Introduction
+
+This volume goes to press as a war once again threatens homelife in
+Sudan. This conflict, which began in April 2023, has created the largest
+internally displaced population in the world -- well over one million at
+this stage, although firm numbers are difficult to come by. In addition
+to displacement, some communities, such as Darfur, face genocide. And
+yet this conflict has escaped international attention and outrage. This
+war is not remote to the individuals who contributed to this volume,
+some of whom were themselves displaced by warfare. Others search for
+information to support friends and colleagues who remain in Sudan. And
+still others give us optimism while they work with diaspora communities
+to heal the trauma of war, displacement, and genocide. Themes of
+homescape and displacement weave through these contemporary experiences,
+demonstrating the continued relevance of these topics today.
+
+This volume takes a long-term perspective on Nubian houses and
+households to explore the distinctive material, visual, and
+phenomenological worlds of Nubian homescapes. Nubia extends from the
+area around Aswan in Egypt to the contemporary town of Debba in Sudan, a
+region that roughly corresponds to the area between the first and fourth
+cataracts along the Nile. Nubians have existed as a distinct
+ethno-linguistic group since ancient times.[^1]
+
+Contributors to this volume of *Dotawo* explore homelife during periods
+when there were changes in the political and social organization in
+Nubia. By exploring a range of case studies that include objects,
+bodies, households, floral remains, workspaces, houses, and art we aim
+to understand how ordinary people made and continue to make their homes
+and livelihoods during periods of systemic change. In the process, we
+consider how these same sources reveal the power of everyday activities
+to transform broad social organizations from the bottom up. We also
+explore how some ancient social practices in Nubia might live on and
+continue to structure life in the present.
+
+Many of our contributors have explored homescapes creatively, remaining
+attentive to the multisensory, embodied, and intersectional ways that
+people experienced the home. We have encouraged these creative
+approaches because they capture the essence of homescapes better than
+academic prose alone. For this reason, this volume of *Dotawo* includes
+photographic essays, artwork, and fiction in addition to sociological,
+anthropological, archaeological, and linguistic approaches to the topic.
+
+This introduction situates the themes that structure this volume --
+homescapes, resettlement, and the *longue durée*. A brief history of the
+Nubian diaspora provides insights into this step change in Nubian
+lifeways and suggests comparisons for how contemporary displaced
+communities can move forward. And, finally, I introduce the twelve
+contributions to this volume, which range from ancient to contemporary
+Nubian society and span a range of disciplines -- archaeology, art,
+sociology, history, linguistics, and cultural anthropology among them.
+
+# Homescapes
+
+People often define *home* as a place where one lives permanently,
+usually as a member of a family or household. But home is more than a
+physical place and the people contained within it. Home is also where
+people tend to feel most at ease because they are familiar with the
+sounds, smells, and patterns of life within and beyond house walls.
+
+Meanwhile, *homescapes* may be defined as the physical or symbolic
+landscapes of one's home or homeland. In this way, a homescape may be as
+palpable as a house and its surrounding environs. Or it might be more
+ethereal. For example, an individual's accent might evoke feelings of
+home and inclusion to a native speaker who hears them speak, as Asmaa
+Taha describes in her contribution to this volume.
+
+Tim Ingold invented the term *taskscape* as a play on the word
+*landscape*. In his words, "just as a landscape is an array of features,
+so -- by analogy -- is the taskscape an array of related
+activities.[^2]" We define our own term *homescape* in a similar manner
+-- as an array of features related to the home. A homescape, then, is a
+socially constructed space of human activity, understood as having
+spatial, conceptual, or emotional boundaries and delimitations. Of key
+importance to Ingold's definition of taskscape was that it be understood
+as perpetually in process rather than in a static or immutable state.
+We, too, consider the malleability of homescape to be a key component of
+its definition. Concepts of homescape thus contain a dichotomy within
+them -- they rely on both deep histories of connection as well as fluid
+processes of formation and reformation. People actively make their
+homescapes as they go about their everyday lives. They forge a home from
+the land, imbuing it with memory, meaning, and significance.[^3] This
+agency within everyday life, even amid circumstances of forced movement,
+is at the forefront of many contributions to this volume.
+
+Diasporas, whether voluntary or enforced, rupture concepts of *home* and
+*homescape.* The dispersion of a people from their original homeland
+creates scattered communities that combine their homeland with their new
+place of residence. These amalgamations between homeland and new home
+are complicated by the circumstances surrounding the relocation.
+
+People who have been forced to leave their homeland due to war,
+persecution, or natural disaster cannot make a new home so easily.
+Displaced people, and especially those who are displaced within the
+borders of their own country (known as Internally Displaced Persons or
+IDPs), are among the most vulnerable people in the world. They are often
+trapped in a protracted temporary housing status for years or even
+decades. Although they remain within the borders of their nation state,
+they rarely receive the assistance they require to make a new, stable
+home. Instead, many continue to flee from one place to another in a
+quest for adequate shelter, water, food, and medical care. This
+situation is the case for displaced persons who remain in Sudan at the
+moment this volume goes to press.
+
+Displaced persons are usually severed from their original vocations,
+communities, and even families. In such precarious conditions, such
+individuals are left to forge new identities with each new residence --
+each locale they encounter offers them new opportunities to pursue while
+closing out others. The hope that Khalid Shatta offers with his artwork,
+outreach activities, and long-term perspectives, helps assuage some of
+the hopelessness that may arise when considering these circumstances.
+His painting "Boozer/Shatta Figure 14" depicts a crowd of people who
+have fled the war in Sudan for Cairo. Their minds appear to be
+preoccupied with their homes and the war they have left behind. This
+disembodied rumination on homescape captures the essence of forced
+resettlement and diaspora more succinctly than any words I can put down
+here.
+
+Even those who move home under less violent circumstances have to cope
+with ruptures of making a new home in a different physical space as
+Amany Sadiq, Maher Habbob, Menna Agha, and Armgard Goo-Grauer describe
+in their articles. It also involves confronting linguistic differences
+and even offensive stereotypes, as Asmaa Taha describes. There is hope
+as well as struggle when finding a new place in the world, as Khalid
+Shatta described during the course of our interview. Although far from
+home, Shatta explained how feelings of home have never evaporated for
+him. Instead, visions of homescape endure and adapt, allowing
+individuals to forge new senses of self and home as they remake their
+lives.
+
+# Nubian Homelife and the Nubian Diaspora
+
+Concepts of home, homelife, and homescape have been present since
+ancient times, as Hamad Hamdeen, Kate Fulcher, Sarah Shrader, and Elsa
+Yvanez demonstrate in their contributions to this volume. It is
+challenging to identity emotional and conceptual relations to home in
+the material residues of past lives. These contributors tackled this
+challenge by using a wide range of methodological and theoretical
+vantages.
+
+Meanwhile, the Nubian diaspora has complicated easy encapsulations of
+early modern and contemporary Nubian homescapes. The Nubian diaspora is
+itself complex. While many Nubians were involuntarily displaced from
+their homes, others dispersed of their own volition in pursuit of
+opportunities beyond their homeland. This is certainly true of the
+Nubians of southern Egypt. Many Egyptian Nubian men had sought
+employment outside of Nubia for centuries, returning to their homeland
+only periodically. In her photo essay, Anne Jennings discusses this
+traditional Egyptian Nubian economy prior to the erection of the first
+dam along the Nile in 1903 as well as the impact of this and other
+modifications over the years. The raising of the High Dam in the 1960s
+led to significant changes in Nubian homescapes. That construction
+completely flooded the area between the First and Second Cataracts, and
+forced approximately 50,000 Nubians to resettle in the thirty-three
+villages built to accommodate them near the town of Kom Ombo. Several
+villages near the town of Aswan were not in danger of inundation and so
+the villagers were not removed.
+
+The new villages near Kom Ombo were a shock and a disappointment to
+those who resettled there. Nevertheless, they did their best to recreate
+their old environment, homes, and lifeways. Some traditions survived,
+while others shifted, as Menna Agha, Argard Goo-Grauer, Maher Habbob,
+and Amany Sadeq describe in their contributions to the volume. Anne M.
+Jennings reminds us that significant changes took place even among those
+who were able to remain in their villages near Awan. Homescapes are
+always in a state of flux, even though they are deeply entangled with
+endurance and memory.
+
+Many Nubians, both male and female, are now living internationally, in
+countries such as the United States (especially in New York and
+Virginia), England (especially in London), France, (especially in
+Paris), Switzerland, and Germany, as well as in Egypt (namely, in Cairo
+and Alexandria in addition to the Kom Ombo region).[^4] Some of these
+communities struggle against racism and pressures to conform to local
+cultures at the cost of preserving their own lifeways. Others have
+identified new opportunities and advantages unavailable to them in their
+homeland. Past homescapes continue to haunt how individuals perceive and
+act in their new settings.
+
+# Contributions
+
+The contributors to this volume approach homescapes from broad temporal,
+geographic, and disciplinary standpoints. Despite these differences,
+common themes arose among the contributions, such as the value of the
+surrounding landscape in creating homescapes (e.g. Sadeq, Tsakos,
+Fulcher, Hamad) and the need to describe and interact with the home
+creatively in the form of words or images (Fulcher, Shatta, Jennings,
+Goo-Grauer). Given the rich connections between them, these papers could
+be grouped in any number of ways. Here, however, I decided to focus on
+themes of craftwork, displacement, and the *longue durée* since they
+repeated in so many of the contributions.
+
+## Craftwork and labor
+
+Many contributors explored craftwork and labor, demonstrating how work
+helps to define and make a homescape. Hamad Hamdeen delved into the
+plant remains found in the mudbricks used to construct Christian sites
+in Nubia. Brickmakers added these plant remains and other debris --
+collectively known as chaff -- to mudbricks to increase their strength
+and durability. These plant remains are small, sometimes invisible to
+the naked eye. And yet they contain within them a wealth of information
+about the materials people used in and around the home. These remains
+shed light on pharmacy, food and drink consumption, home construction,
+and fodder among other aspects of everyday life. Hamdeen makes a strong
+argument for making mudbrick analysis a mainstay of archaeological
+research through his careful analysis of four significant Christian
+sites in the Mahas region of Sudan.
+
+While bioarchaeology has been a mainstay of archaeological research
+since its inception, Sarah Schrader takes a unique vantage on human
+remains. Using bioarchaeological methods, Schrader demonstrates the
+frequency with which individuals assumed a squatting position. People
+squatted while working -- cooking, cleaning, taking care of children --
+as well as when they drank tea or chatted with a neighbor. In other
+words, ancient Nubians spent a lot of time in a squatting position.
+Schrader's approach offers us a peak into the everyday postures people
+assumed in and around their homes in antiquity.
+
+Elsa Yvanez delves into the world of work in her exploration of textile
+activities in Sudan during the Meroitic Period (*ca.* 300 BCE -- 400
+CE), a time when Meroë served as the capital of the Kingdom of Kush. She
+draws together the surviving material signatures of weaving -- spindle
+whorls, and loom weights most particularly -- to understand where and
+how people incorporated textile work into village and city life during
+the Meroitic Period. Her analysis reveals that this craftwork took place
+in domestic spaces as well as more formalized multi-use industrial
+areas. She found that textile production was ubiquitous, taking place
+in, around, and outside of the home. This result underscores the
+centrality of textiles to the social, economic and work lives of people
+living in Meroitic Nubia.
+
+Finally, Kate Fulcher explores painting materials used in ancient and
+contemporary Nubia as a way of accessing the complex entanglements of
+everyday life. She explains how people see the landscapes around them as
+palettes for decorating their homes. She found ancient evidence of color
+harvesting in the form of raw pigment lumps, the paintings themselves,
+and the residue found on grinding stones. Fulcher's ethnoarchaeological
+research compliments this material evidence since informants provide
+insights into the decisions and practices linked to acquiring and using
+pigment to decorate their homes. Fulcher gathers together this suite of
+evidence into a fictional narrative aimed at making past lives palpable
+and accessible.
+
+## Resettlement
+
+Feelings of displacement, due to architectural, social, and linguistic
+differences pulse throughout the contributions that describe Nubian
+resettlement in the wake of the Aswan High Dam construction. Although
+there had been dams and diasporas before the final raising of the dam,
+this last raising served as a key turning point for Nubian
+homescapes.[^5]
+
+Menna Agha explores the deep disappointment many Nubian settlers felt
+when they beheld the unfamiliar houses offered to them in what they
+called "*Al* *Tahgeer,*" the "place of displacement". The Egyptian State
+refers to *Al Tahgeer* as "New Nubia," a considerably more optimistic
+term that evades common Nubian sentiment. Evasion can be found
+throughout the resettlement process, as Agha describes in her essay. The
+Egyptian state prized optimization and productivity in their house
+designs rather than understanding the home as the fulcrum of everyday
+Nubian life. They left the views of Nubian women, who were deeply
+involved in placemaking, completely out of their planning. Agha shows us
+how villagers refashioned these prefabricated domestic spaces in a
+"Nubian way" once they took over the barren houses offered to them.
+
+Maher Habbob delves into a comparison of architectural and landscape
+features before and after the resettlement. He does so by looking
+closely at the legal, economic, social, and architectural upheavals that
+took place at the village of Tūmās wa 'Afya during the various
+constructions of the Low Dam and High Dam at Aswan. The resettlement of
+this village resulted in a radically different environment and alien
+houses -- neither of which accounted for traditional Nubian social
+understandings of homescapes. It was left to the villagers to remodel
+their new houses to make them into homes.
+
+Amany Abdelsadeq Sayed Hussein explores how the people of Abu Hor, a
+Kenuz Nubian village, remade their homes and homeland in the aftermath
+of their displacement in December 1964. In doing so, she also examines
+her grandfather's house. Sadeq's interest in her family's experience of
+resettlement and making a home resonates with her theoretical framework
+about senses of home. Her work underscores the importance of the social
+and emotional components of homescapes as well as the materiality of place
+and landscape.
+
+Although these individuals creatively remodeled domestic space to better
+suit traditional Nubian ways of dwelling in their new homes, some
+traditions inevitably fell by the wayside. Armgard Goo-Grauer's
+photographic essay of bridal rooms explores one of these traditional
+practices that was lost with the resettlement. Bridal rooms had served
+as a form of female self-expression at a critical time in a Nubian
+woman's life course. Women carefully selected, created, and combined
+objects and images in a single room as a hypnotic symbol of their new
+roles as wives in a household. Considerable emotional and creative labor
+went into the creation of these rooms and yet the practice ended
+abruptly with the resettlement of Nubians into pre-fabricated houses.
+These houses had no space for such rooms and Goo-Grauer describes how
+female decorative ambitions refocused onto furnishings more commonplace
+across Egypt more broadly.
+
+Meanwhile, the photographic essay by Anne M. Jennings reminds us that
+not all Egyptian Nubians were resettled. Jennings shows us the houses
+Nubians still occupy in the villages around Aswan. Although these houses
+have deeper roots in the Nubian community, they too have been
+refashioned over the years to accommodate the changing needs and desires
+of their occupants. For example, in the five years between her 1981 and
+1986 visits to Gubba, Jennings witnessed the transition from traditional
+materials such as mud brick and mud plaster, to stone and tin. This
+change, while less comfortable, allowed families to add a second storey
+to their house, which is itself another departure from traditional
+Nubian house design. By 2007, these Gubba houses had acquired tile
+floors, air conditioning, glass windows, and modern appliances in
+kitchens and bathrooms. These homes offer a powerful account of
+incremental change driven by individuals in contrast to the ruptures
+experienced by the uprooted Nubian communities described by other
+contributors in this volume.
+
+Finally, Asmaa Taha's article examines how Egyptians characterize
+Nubians by the way they speak Arabic, their mannerisms, their dress, and
+other visual signifiers. Egyptian media, particularly in the form of
+accessible soap operas and songs, fuel negative stereotypes of Nubians.
+Taha spoke with Native Nobiin speakers to understand their perception of
+these visual and linguistic stereotypes. Her informants offered a
+diversity of views on these stereotypes -- age and gender seemed to have
+critical influences on how they understood these representations.
+
+## Longue durée
+
+In his review of Derek Welsby's edited volume, *Archaeology by the
+Fourth Nile Cataract*, Alexandros Tsakos takes up two themes that pulse
+through many of the contributions to this volume -- the *longue durée*
+of Nubian homescapes and the loss of homelands. Archaeological work in
+the region of the Fourth Cataract, like much of Nubia, came into being
+as a salvage expedition. Such expeditions have advantages and
+disadvantages -- they take an enviably wide-ranging cultural and
+disciplinary scope, but are painfully limited by time and resources.
+Tsakos describes how these limits are noticeable in both the research
+conducted and in the eventual volume. Tsakos dwells in particular on the
+homescapes of the Manasir, which were documented before their ancestral
+lands were flooded. He makes a strong argument for careful documentation
+and sensitive publication given the ruptures created by this
+indescribable loss.
+
+In my interview with Khalid Shatta, he often took a long-term
+perspective on Sudan, on his artwork, and on himself. He mused on the
+enduring issues in Sudan that create repeated patterns of loss and
+resilience over the course of thousands of years. Shatta's reflection on
+his own life as a Sudanese expatriate illustrates the emotional
+complexity of homescapes and diaspora. His present home allows his mind
+and body the freedom to produce art in a way that was not possible for
+him in Sudan. Meanwhile, Sudan remains deeply embedded in his artwork --
+individuals from his hometown, emotions about the current war, and
+symbols of both ancient and contemporary life appear and reappear
+throughout his works. While his art does not avoid undercurrents of
+violence, unrest, or displacement, it is also beautiful, haunting, and
+even comforting. Here, Shatta shows us how one might harmonize between
+the before and after of the homescapes that have been ruptured by war,
+resettlement, and everyday change.
+
+# A Home for *Nubian Homescapes*
+
+When approaching a topic like Nubian homescapes, it is necessary to tear
+down the walls between disciplines and genres. The complex emotional and
+material terrain of homescapes requires art, photographic essays,
+fiction, and a suite of academic approaches to navigate it. *Dotawo: A
+Journal of Nubian Studies* is an appropriate home for these intertwining
+perspectives. *Dotawo* has been open access since its launch in 2014. It
+welcomes contributions from a diverse range of disciplines, languages,
+and genres. I cannot imagine publishing a volume such as this one
+anywhere else, both because I firmly believe that accessibility is an
+ethical issue and because most journals remained siloed by discipline
+and genre. I am grateful to *Dotawo* for making this volume possible, to
+the contributors for pursuing unique vantages on Nubian homescapes, and
+to the people of Sudan who are on our minds and in our hearts now more
+than ever.
+
+# References
+
+Ingold, Tim. \"The Temporality of the Landscape.\" *Conceptions of Time
+and Ancient Society/World Archaeology* 25, no. 2 (1993): 152--74.
+
+Janmyr, Maja. \"The Nubians of Egypt: A Displaced Population.\" In *An
+Atlas of Contemporary Egypt*, edited by Hala Bayoumi and Karine Benafla,
+96--7. Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2023.
+
+Yao, Alice. \"The Great Wall as Destination? Archaeology of Migration
+and Settlers under the Han Empire.\" In *Archaeologies of Empire: Local
+Participants and Imperial Trajectories*, edited by Anna Lucille Boozer,
+B.S. Düring, and Bradley J Parker, 57--88. Albuquerque, NM: SAR & UNM
+Press, 2020.
+
+Youssef, Maaï, and Mayada Madbouly. \"Displaced People and Migrants in
+Cairo.\" In *An Atlas of Contemporary Egypt*, edited by Hala Bayoumi and
+Karine Benafla, 32--3. Paris: CNRS Editions, 2023.
+
+[^1]: For a basic geographic and temporal introduction to Nubia, see
+    Janmyr, \"The Nubians of Egypt: a displaced population.\"
+
+[^2]: Ingold, \"The Temporality of the Landscape.\"
+
+[^3]: Alice Yao described this process for the people who were relocated
+    to live along the Great Wall in Han China. See Yao, \"The
+    Great Wall as Destination? Archaeology of Migration and Settlers
+    under the Han Empire.\"
+
+[^4]: For an overview of the four main waves of Nubian settlement in
+    Cairo from 1902 until 1964, see Youssef and Madbouly,
+    \"Displaced People and Migrants in Cairo.\".
+
+[^5]: The High Dam (*as-Sad al-\'Aali*) was completed in 1970. The
+    reservoir reached its full capacity six years later.