MIRIYAM AOURAGH, Palestine Online: Transnationalism, The Internet, and the Construction of Identity (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2012)

Abstract

Transnationalism, The Internet, and the Construction of Identity is a multi-sited ethnography that traces the emergence of Internet Communication Technologies in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) and in Palestinian communities in the diaspora, namely Lebanon and Jordan. Her study, across 13 sites, is based on three phases of fieldwork conducted from 2001 to 2004 and consists of interviews, participant observation, and data gathered online. Attentive to the social, economic, and political contexts of her research locations, Aouragh provides insight into the heterogeneous experiences of her interlocutors in accessing the virtual world, while also utilizing it as a tool for social activism against a colonial project and to shape and amplify Palestinian national identity. Important to her analysis is debunking the postmodernist assertion that the significance of the nation state has been reduced, as has nationalism, in the age of new technologies and global networks. Aouragh effectively utilizes the Palestinian context to refute these claims. She points to the state-grounded forces responsible for an ongoing dispossession and occupation, but also highlights the loss of Palestinian territory and statelessness in the diaspora as pivotal factors in invigorating the formation and perpetuation of Palestinian national identity offline and online.