Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2018
This article analyzes the restoration of Jordan's UN Dana Biosphere Reserve cottages for ecotourism and home building in the neighboring village of Qadisiyya as competing land projects. Whereas a multimillion-dollar endowment from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) restores Dana's houses as a “heritage” village for a tourist economy, families in Qadisiyya build houses with income from provisional labor to shore up a familial future. Each act of home building articulates a political claim to land. This article argues for attention to the architecture of the environment in the comparison of two, once-related villages. A comparative analysis of Dana and Qadisiyya reveals the competing socio-political objectives of home building for the future of Jordan and the implications of environment in that struggle.
Author's Note: I thank Sarah El Kazaz, Gökçe Günel, Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins, Elana Buch, Geoffrey Hughes, Andrew Shryock, the editors of IJMES, and three anonymous reviewers for their generative comments on drafts of this article. I thank Muʿad Al Qawabeah for his research assistance in Tafileh. I thank the American Center of Oriental Research whose CAORC Senior Fellowship supported my 2012 research and Franklin & Marshall College for grants that funded my follow-up ethnography.
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32 Al-Akh Sabah is the name of one of the three major tribes in Qadisiyya, representing 20 percent of the village. It designates geography, but is not used as a surname. I use al-Akh Sabah as a surname here to provide both context for the village and anonymity for individual members of this tribe.
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54 In this way Dana was quite similar to the Kan Zaman restaurant and heritage center Shryock describes outside of Amman. Shryock, “The New Jordanian Hospitality.”
55 Ibid.
