Concluding Analysis: The Activist Biography and Strategic Identification in Third Sector Fields

Abstract

As a way of examining Amal’s activisms in al-Naqab, this project draws from theoretical frameworks established by Bourdieu’s sociology of practice and political anthropology. Specifically, we suggested that rights-based activisms are social practices reproduced through dialectics of structure and agency, and indelibly involve a certain amount of conflict or struggle (Crossely 2002). While activism directed toward change may raise some problems as to the circularity of Bourdieu reproduction model, the notion of change as a normative characteristic of newly generated social structures is important for our discussion. Especially, if we consider alterations of al-Naqab Bedouin women’s space, created by the upheavals in their way of life in urbanized villages, as catalysts for female activisms in their society. Amal’s activisms not only respond to the creation of new social spaces but also set out to “establish a better life” (El’Sana-Alh’jooj 2007). Her endeavors in their very inception attempt to resolve conditions of unrest: on the one hand, dissatisfaction with her society’s current cir-cumstances, and on die odier hand, hopes of creating a new way of life for women in al-Naqab (Blumer 1969). In all, Amal’s biography as an activist emerges from a climate of change, a landscape wherein we may further consider her career in civil society in al-Naqab Bedouin soci-ety and work in broader fields of Israeli, Palestinian, and international sociopolitics.

The more tradition loses it hold, and the more daily life is reconstituted in terms of the dialectical interplay of the local and the global, the more individuals are forced to negotiate lifestyle choices among a diversity of options… Reflexively organized life-planning. … becomes a central feature of the structuring of selfidentity.

(Giddens 1991, 1–5)