Bedouin of Mount Sinai An Anthropological Study of their Political Economy [Hardcover]

The Sinai Peninsula links Asia and Africa and for millennia has been crossed by imperial armies from both the east and the west. Thus, its Bedouin inhabitants are by necessity involved in world affairs and maintain a complex, almost urban, economy. They make their home in arid mountains that provide limited pastures and lack arable soils and must derive much of their income from migrant labor and trade. Still, every household maintains, at considerable expense, a small orchard and a minute flock of goats and sheep. The orchards and flocks sustain them in times of need and become the core of a mutual assurance system. It is for this social security that Bedouin live in and retire to the mountains. Based on fieldwork over ten years, this book builds on the central theoretical understanding that the complex political economy of the Mount Sinai Bedouin is integrated into urban society and part of the modern global world.

This unique book is based on a long-term and detail-oriented ethnographic research the author conducted among the Bedouin population in Mount Sinai region. [...] Marx's book is a significant contribution to the ethnographic research on pastoral nomads as it illuminates myriad ways in which global and local political economic arrangements are reflected in the ways of life and social customs of the Bedouins. [&] Scholars and students studying Bedouin tribes in the Middle East as well as scholars in the fields of economics, sociology and anthropology more broadly will benefit tremendously from reading the book. ? Israeli Sociology

Marxs analysis of their contacts with regional systems is fresh and original. Although a marginal people of miniscule numbers, their circumstances expose the inherent frailties of powerful states and regulated markets&the book features historical depth& at the same time, his arguments also recognize a rich legacy of sociological debate& Familiarity is not enough. Rather his book suglCr