Book Reviews 109 

Home and Homeland: The Dialogics of Tribal 
and National Identities in Jordan 

By Linda Layne. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 188 pp. 

The formation of Jordanian tribal and national identities is the central theme 
of Layne's Home and Homeland. This study focuses on the Abbadi tribes of the 
East Jordan Valley and is based on extensive fieldwork conducted by Layne 
between 1979 and 1988. Layne's central argument is that for the Abbadi and for 
Jordanian society in general, tribal and national identities are in dialogic rela­
tionships, deriving meaning from and conditioning one another. She challenges 
approaches to Jordanian social and political identity which compartmentalize 
individuals according to rigid Palestinian/East Bank/tribal lines, arguing that 
identities are constantly shifting and being reconstructed through discourse 
between tribespeople, urbanites, the monarchy, bureaucracy, the intelligentsia, 
Hashemite rulers, and Western social scientists. 

In the introductory chapter of this work, the author reviews and assesses 
notions of social identity. Layne criticizes mosaic and segmentary models of 
collective identity on two grounds: they are essentialist in tending to posit col­
lective identity in terms of social masses and they provide "pigeonhole" models 
of identity which require the presence of an observer. Here she introduces a 
"posture-oriented" approach to identity which "sees identity as meaning con­
structed on an ongoing basis through the everyday practices of making a place 
in the world, that is, adopting a posture in the context of changing circumstances 
and uncertain contingencies." 

Layne devotes the next three chapters to the Abbadi tribes. She outlines sig­
nificant changes that occurred in the Jordan Valley in the twentieth century in 
tenns of the tribes' relationship with land and state. Her case study focuses on 
domestic space as an expression of how the tribespeople have constructed their 
social entities in the context of inclusion in the Jordanian nation-state and inte­
gration into world capitalism. The author emphasizes the strong threads of con-



l 10 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 14:4 

tinuity woven through the process of changing identity. A chapter assessing the 
changing architectonics of the home and family describes how the Abbadis still 
maintain "a modified pattern of seasonal transhumance," moving for the sum­
mer season into goat hair tents. 

Layne's work then moves from a tribal to a national level with a discussion of 
the Jordanian debate in the 1980s over the compatibility of tribalism with mod­
em citizenship. The author analyzes tribal voting patterns during the 1984 par­
liamentary by-elections to argue that tribespeople can function fully as citizens 
while retaining their tribal identity. 

The theme of "posture" is carried through to the monarchy in the last section 
of this work where Layne discusses the role of King Hussein in shaping social 
and political identities, particularly through the expropriation of tribal heritage 
as a symbol of Jordanian national identity. 

Home and Homeland makes a valuable contribution toward discussions of 
social identity in the Middle East region. Layne effectively demonstrates the flu­
idity and complexity of social identity formation and is well justified in point­
ing to the flaws in "pigeonhole" models of collective identity. The greatest 
strength of this work lies in Layne's presentation of her extensive and obvious­
ly diligent fieldwork, which offers us a detailed portrayal of aspects of Abbadi 
domestic life. 

Unfortunately however, Layne's analysis of broader socioeconomic and polit­
ical trends effecting identity formation in Jordan is not comprehensive. No ref­
erence is made to political liberalization in Jordan since 1989. The context of the 
1984 elections is not properly explained. The Palestinian component of 
Jordanian society is very undertreated, and Palestinian conceptions of identity 
are not analyzed. Finally, appearing as it did after the 1989 parliamentary elec­
tions, it seems extraordinary that this work has completely neglected to discuss 
the Islamic component of Jordanian social identity. 

Nonetheless, it must be said that Layne's case study has made an informative 
and thought-provoking contribution to the stili somewhat limited scholarship on 
Jordan and will certainly generate further discussion of social identity in the 
Middle East region. 

Marion Boulby 
Teacher Education Network 

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education 
University of Toronto 

Toronto, Ontario, Canada