Category Archives: Middle East

IMER Webinar 28.04: Corona Prevention and Impacts on Syrian Refugees in Jordan

Jordan has enacted some of the world’s strongest lockdown and quarantine measures. These measures have been received quite well domestically, but their impact on the country’s most vulnerable refugees is only beginning to be understood.

The majority of Syrian refugees in Jordan live in urban areas in addition to a significant number also residing in camps. As living conditions are linked to the effectiveness of prevention measures, different populations may experience different outcomes.

In this webinar, Sarah Tobin will explore the situation of the Syrian refugees in Jordan, while also examining the political consequences of the pandemic response in the country.

Sarah Tobin is a senior researcher at Chr. Michelsen Institute. Her latest research projects examine questions of religious and economic life and identity construction with Syrian refugees in Jordanian camps of Za’atari, Azraq, and Cyber City.

Time: Tuesday 28th of April 2020, 11.00 – 12.00

Join us on Zoom

IMER Seminar 21.03: The Patriarchal Management of what to keep and what to give of oneself in the Making of Lebanon’s Diasporic Modernity

Diasporic culture is the culture of Lebanese modernity. Like all modernities, it involves a splitting of the subject between a driven self and a homely self. This can be a painful split of the self, and in some instances, it can be dealt with through a splitting of the married couple rather than a splitting of the self. In this process, it is men who aim to monpolize the possession of what is worthy of being kept and what can be allowed to be given away. The paper examines ethnographically how this logic is integral to the making of diasporic culture.

Light refreshments will be served after the seminar!

Ghassan Hage is the University of Melbourne’s Future Generation Professor of Anthropology and Social Theory and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.

The event is organized by IMER, SKOK, and the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Bergen.

Time: Thursday 21th of March 2019, 14.15 – 16.00

Place: Seminar room, 9. floor at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Fosswinckels Gate 6

IMER lunch seminar 13.06: Mahr in Norway – the sale of a woman or a legal right?

Our last lunch seminar this semester: Now re-announced with a new date!

Mahr (the Muslim dower) is regarded as obligatory to Muslim marriages. This means that when a Muslim man marries a Muslim woman, he provides her with a certain financial gift. However, this arrangement is controversial. Does Mahr entail the “sale” of a woman in a Muslim marriage? Because of such concerns, marriage rituals that contain mahr are not approved by the Norwegian state, as they are seen as contravening “Norwegian law and general gender equality principles”.

But does mahr merely entail the “sale” of a woman, or can it serve other purposes as well?

In this seminar, the lived experiences of Norway’s regulation of mahr will be examined. Building on a study of the Iranian diaspora in Norway, Marianne Bøe will explore the forms that mahr can take in contemporary Norwegian society. In her study, Bøe has conducted interviews with members of the Iranian diaspora, and has also studied documents relevant for Norway’s marriage ritual regulation. Does the present regulation of mahr contribute to safeguarding gender equality and the rights of women, or does it have other unintended effects?

The seminar takes place at seminar room 112 at Adm. org, Christies gate 17, on Wednesday 13th of June, from 12.30 to 14.00. A light lunch will be served,

All are welcome!

Marianne Bøe is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Archeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion (AHKR) at UiB.

Lunch seminar 20.09 with Maja Janmyr: Labelling Syrian refugees in Lebanon

ATTENTION: NEW DATE

The war in Syria has created a large flow of refugees into Lebanon. Maja Janmyr from the faculty of law at UiB has recently conducted a prolonged fieldwork among Syrian refugees in Lebanon. She joins IMER for our first lunch seminar this semester, in order to present some findings.

In this seminar, Janmyr will explore the various legal, bureaucratic and social labels that get attached to the refugees by humanitarian, state and local government actors. A wide array of labels are imposed; registered refugee, laborer, displaced, foreigner, and more. These labels carry with them implications for what a Syrian may do, and how her presence is understood by others in the community. The labels also influence what type of rights and protections she may have access to. Importantly, the emergence of labels in one arena often influences how and why another set of labels takes shape in another.

The seminar takes place at the seminar room at the ground floor of Sosiologisk institutt, Rosenberggaten 39, between 12.30 and 14.00. A lunch will be served.

Welcome!

Maja Janmyr is a postdoctoral fellow at the Faculty of Law at the University of Bergen.