Constructing citizenship and indigeneity in Jordan: The politics of Bedouin rights and identities in cultural heritage sites

Abstract

This paper explores the relationships between Bedouin rights, citizenship and indigeneity in cultural heritage sites in Jordan. State narratives in Jordan deny indigenous rights to Bedouin by claiming there are no indigenous populations. We use this denial as a starting point to explore two key questions. First, what drives this denial, and second, what does it reveal about indigeneity and citizenship tensions in Jordan? Bedouin in Jordan are narrated as Jordan's citizenry backbone and through frameworks that see them as a monolith. Yet experiences of Bedouin vary and many face displacement and dispossession. Indeed, in cultural heritage sites Bedouin are central to their legitimisation, while simultaneously their rights are not recognised. Through interviews and ethnographic fieldwork with Bedouin communities, we explore how tensions around citizenship, indigeneity and identity arise at the everyday level. We argue that a more critical engagement with indigeneity is necessary in Jordan. Without this, valuable indigenous knowledge, identities and rights risk being erased. Beyond our focus on Jordan, this paper makes broader contributions to debates on indigeneity and citizenship. We conclude by arguing that by applying the term indigenous to more diverse settings, and centring indigenous understandings of the term, we can reclaim its use from a grounded perspective and continue to refuse the way the term indigenous is used and narrated by colonial, postcolonial and settler-colonial states.