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Daniel Martin Varisco

The Middle East Journal, Volume 63, Number 1, Winter 2009, pp. 151-152(Article)

Published by Middle East InstituteDOI: 10.1353/mej.0.0023

For additional information about this article

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for Western Sahara is still to be demon-strated. In particular, regional as well aspolitically binding instruments such as theOrganization for Security and Cooperationin Europe (OSCE) documents may not bethe best support for vetting Morocco’s latestautonomy proposal. Furthermore, the West-ern Sahara dispute appears to be more thesymptom than the cause of an aborted pro-cess that should have led to regionalizationand decentralization, including autonomy,in the North African states. Instead, nascentand clashing nationalisms have rendered aMaghrib-wide democratization and decen-tralization evolution at least premature, ifnot unattainable, thus making the case of

autonomy for the Western Sahara an excep-tion rather than a trendsetter.Therefore, a further discussion of, for

example, the novel model of shared sover-eignty and prospective international guaran-tees for any future autonomy-based settle-ment of the Western Sahara conict wouldhave enriched our understanding of whatmay lay ahead in the ongoing UN-mediatednegotiations between Morocco and the Al-geria-backed Polisario Front.

Jacques Roussellier, Adjunct Scholar, the Middle East Institute

YEMENPeripheral Visions: Publics, Power, andPerformance in Yemen, by Lisa Wedeen.Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,2008. xv + 223 pages. Notes to p. 262.Bibl. to p. 290. Index to p. 300. $65.

Reviewed by Daniel Martin Varisco

A weak state but a strong, communal-ly-oriented people with multiple publicspheres: such is the Republic of Yemen, theresult of unication in 1990 between revo-lutionaries north and south and the seat ofthe longest serving (since 1978) ruler in the

Middle East, President ‘Ali Abdullah Salih.Political scientist Lisa Wedeen traces the“experiment in nation-state formation” (p.2) that coincides with the longevity of Presi-dent Salih’s tenure. “What makes a Yemeni

a Yemeni in the context of the state’s fragili-ties, and why does Yemen hold together tothe extent that it does?” (p. 2), she asks atthe outset. Wedeen explores the making ofidentity beyond the institutional apparatus ofthe state and electoral politics for a countrywith distinct and multiple loyalties to tribe,region, and religious groupings. The resultis an important contribution to the study ofthe recent political evolution of Yemen as anation state in search of itself.

In the introduction, the author identiesher approach as interpretivist (p. 17), com-bining eldwork in Yemen for more than 18months (between 1998 and 2004) with in-terviews, limited analysis of texts, and many

hours spent in afternoon qat chews. The roleof the qat chew as a public sphere is exam-ined in Chapter Three. Much of the chapteris given to a critique of Eurocentrism in Ju-rgen Habermas’s framing of the concept (p.118). From her own experience in largelypolitical qat chew forums, Wedeen con-cludes that these “are sites of active politi-cal argument where issues of accountability,citizenship, and contemporary affairs can benegotiated” (p. 139), almost a kind of infor-

mal diplomacy of the commons. Her focusis on the chew as performative practice (p.145), one that can serve either to criticize orconsolidate support for the state, over andabove the values discussed by the partici-pants. It should be noted that the qat leaves’stimulant impact is technically like pseudo-ephedrine rather than the weaker caffeineeffect of coffee (p. 104).

Of particular relevance is Wedeen’sanalysis of the al-Huthi rebellion, initiatedin 2004 and still reverberating in Yemen’snorth. The traditional confessional divisionbetween Zaydi Islam in the north and Sha’iin the south and coastal region is no longeran appropriate way to dene the changingIslamic identities circulating in Yemen,especially under the inuence of nearbySaudi Arabia. Thus, the presence of the po-litical party al-Islah and the local notion of“Sala” complicate the common distinction

of Sunni versus Shi‘a “without attention tohistorically distinctive and locally mediatedcircumstance” (p. 160). Wedeen is right tolabel “tribe” a “vexed category” (p. 170),but a large part of the denitional problem

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is treating tribe primarily as an institutionrather than the values invoked in Yemen astribal, especially in the indigenous conceptof qabyala (tribal ethic). In her narrative,the author is determined to detribalize Ye-men, referring to North Yemen as “primarilya land of peasant sharecroppers and inde-pendent farmers and herders” (p. 31) whenthe vast majority of these would considerthemselves tribal ( qabili) if asked.

The nal chapter reaches beyond the Ye-meni case to explore “the global emergenceof contemporary Islamic movements” (p.186). Here Wedeen wades through theoriesof neoliberalism to argue the need to recog-nize “divergences in neoliberal reforms” (p.

207) as well as the diversity of Islamic po-litical practices. Her text engages with a widerange of scholars who have theorized onnationalism and political change, includingBenedict Anderson, Hannah Arendt, JosephSchumpeter, Gilles Kepel, Judith Butler, Ta-lal Asad, and others.

In sum, Peripheral Visions emphasizes theperformative dimensions of political life, howpersons are established as national throughiterative performances of particular national

acts, just as pious or democratic persons areproduced through everyday enactments ofpiety and agonistic deliberation respectively.Such a framework accounts for the fragilityand contingency of solidarities in a way thatmany explanations do not (p. 213).

The Yemeni case elaborated in this bookis indeed of value for broader comparisonof the growth of Islamic movements withinnational borders.

Daniel Martin Varisco, Professor of An-thropology, Hofstra University

BIOGRAPHYQueen of the Oil Club: The IntrepidWanda Jablonski and the Power ofInformation , by Anna Rubino. Boston:Beacon Press, 2008. xiii + 281 pages. Ac-knowledgments to p. 289. Notes to p. 332.Index to p. 346. $29.95.

Reviewed by Barbara Slavin

The best journalists are part detectives,part diplomats: tenacious gatherers of infor-mation who sometimes serve as go-betweensamong sources and can, on occasion, inu-ence history. One such journalist was WandaJablonski. Little known today, she coveredthe oil industry from the 1950s through the1980s, played midwife to the Organizationof Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)and started a major business publication, thePetroleum Intelligence Weekly , that becamethe bible in its eld.

Anna Rubino, who worked for Jablonskiin the 1980s, has written a book that is farmore than a biography. Through the tellingof Jablonski’s fascinating life, Rubino has

provided a history that puts in context thecontinuing struggles between oil producersand consumers. Fifty years ago, Jablonskitold a conference that Americans “needed to‘learn to think how the Arabs think, not howwe think they should think’” (p. 280). Of theIranians, she wrote in 1951, after they hadnationalized the British company that hadtaken the lion’s share of their oil earnings:“U.S. diplomats and oil companies ‘wouldbe making a costly mistake if they did not

take full account of Iranian sensibilities’”(p. 73).Born in Slovakia of Polish parents in

1920, Jablonski rst learned about oil fromher father, a geologist who took the familyto Texas, California, New Zealand, and theMiddle East. A polyglot product of schoolsin a half-dozen countries, Jablonski did notlet the fact that she was female block a ca-reer in a male-dominated eld. Applying touniversity in 1938, she went to Cornell afterlearning to her astonishment that Harvard,Yale, and Princeton did not admit women.Rejected by the prestigious Council on For-eign Relations, she took a job as a copyboyat the more prosaic Journal of Commerce inNew York in 1943. Less than a year later,she had her rst byline and soon after, be-came the paper’s oil writer. “Wanda,” Ru-bino writes, “was in her element: derricksand yields, sweet and sour crude — this was

the language she had learned as a child” (p.40).By 1947, after a string of scoops,

Jablonski was writing weekly columns un-der the byline W.M. Jablonski. Journalism

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