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The government of Yemen, unified since 1990, remains largely incapable of controlling violence or providing goods and services to its population, but the regime continues to endure despite its fragility and peripheral location in the global political and economic order. Revealing what holds Yemen together in such tenuous circumstances, Peripheral Visions shows how citizens form national attachments even in the absence of strong state institutions. Lisa Wedeen, who spent a year and a half in Yemen observing and interviewing its residents, argues that national solidarity in such weak states tends to arise not from attachments to institutions but through both extraordinary events and the ordinary activities of everyday life. Yemenis, for example, regularly gather to chew qat, a leafy drug similar to caffeine, as they engage in wide-ranging and sometimes influential public discussions of even the most divisive political and social issues. These lively debates exemplify Wedeen’s contention that democratic, national, and pious solidarities work as ongoing, performative practices that enact and reproduce a citizenry’s shared points of reference. Ultimately, her skillful evocations of such practices shift attention away from a narrow focus on government institutions and electoral competition and toward the substantive experience of participatory politics.
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PERIPHERAL VISIONS
chicago studies in practices of meaning A series edited by Jean Comaroff, Andreas Glaeser, William Sewell, and Lisa Wedeen also in the series: Inclusion: The Politics of Difference in Medical Research by steven epstein Producing India: From Colonial Economy to National Space by manu goswami Bengal in Global Concept History: Culturalism in the Age of Capital by andrew sartori Parité!: Sexual Equality and the Crisis of French Universalism by joan wallach scott Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation by william h. sewell, jr. Bewitching Development: Witchcraft and the Reinvention of Development in Neoliberal Kenya by james howard smith The Devil’s Handwriting: Precoloniality and the German Colonial State in Qingdao, Samoa, and Southwest Africa by george steinmetz
PERIPHERAL VISIONS p u b l i c s ,
p o w e r ,
p e r f o r m a n c e
i n
a n d
y e m e n
LISA WEDEEN the university of chicago press • chicago and london
LI S A WE DEEN is professor of political science at the University of Chicago and author of Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2008 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 2008 Printed in the United States of America 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 1 2 3 4 5 ISBN-13: 978-0-226-87790-7 (cloth) ISBN-13: 978-0-226-87791-4 (paper) ISBN-10: 0-226-87790-6 (cloth) ISBN-10: 0-226-87791-4 (paper) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wedeen, Lisa. Peripheral visions : publics, power, and performance in Yemen / Lisa Wedeen. p. cm. — (Chicago studies in practices of meaning) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-226-87790-7 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-226-87791-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-226-87790-6 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-226-87791-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Yemen (Republic)—Politics and government. 2. Political participation—Yemen (Republic) 3. Nationalism—Yemen. I. Title. JQ1842.A58w43 2008 320.9533—dc22 2008005222 ∞ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
If I have exhausted the justifications I have reached bedrock, and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: