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Marginality and Sovereignty in Postcolonial Context
Abstract
How to rethink the power relations in the post-colonial concepts in relation to different modes of sovereignties? This paper tackle Bedouin sovereignties and politics in terms on water access beyond state structures. Basically, using the desert margins around the cities in south Sinai Egypt to gain extra territorial movements beyond the state roads and depending underground water sources that doesn’t only allow them another source of water beyond the state but also another form of movement and survival. This paper hypothesize that specialist Bedouin knowledge of underground waterways exposes the fragility of the state’s sovereignty, not necessary in direct opposition, but rather bypassing, negotiating and diverting state power and economic control over Sinai Sea waterways (Red Sea, Mediterranean, and Suez Canal). Despite the state’s attempts to marginalize and coopt the Bedouins, they possess a subaltern sovereignty in the form of unique access to and knowledge about underground waterways that enables them to survive and smuggle people and goods, living somewhat independently of state oversight. This access stems from their technical and embodied nomadic knowledge of the Sinai mountains. The Bedouins, as a political power, have always been in a dialectical relationship with the post-colonial state projects. This paper mainly Asks can we think of these practices as subaltern sovereignty practices? What are the conflicts and the openings in name it that way? Why remaking this term."sovereignty" and reusing it in counter context in our understanding of power , refusal and resistance relationships between the central urban power and the marginal groups and spaces?
Discipline
Anthropology
Geographic Area
All Middle East
Sub Area
None