Renaming space and reshaping identities

The case of the Bedouin town of Hura in Israel

Abstract

By exploring several layers of spatiality in the Bedouin town of Hura, this paper illuminates the process of constructing place and identities in the Bedouin community in the Negev. For this purpose we integrate two central themes in human geography-place naming and sense of place. We begin by locating these two theoretical issues in the experiential context of the Bedouins as a multi-marginalized displaced minority. In the empirical stage, we present three spaces of place naming in the town: institutional, residential and economic. We then discuss the "sense of place naming," that is, we interpret the cultural process which underlies the mechanisms of constructing spatial meanings and representations in Hura. Under harsh and hastened urbanization, urbanized Bedouins seem to prefer two basic fields of associations as a new indoctrination tool to their spaces. First and foremost is a "powerful Islam," which dominates institutional and residential spaces. The second is the Israeli-Western-capitalistic inclination, which dominates the economic-business arena. After a long period of non-naming occurrences, these new and ambivalent naming trends suggest that positive bonds to local space have developed among some residents of Hura. However, two major worlds of meaning which prevailed in Bedouin spatiality in their more nomadic phases in the past-tribal-kinship and ecological-natural-are excluded from their contemporary new representation, indicating new urban Islamic non-tribal culture ideals and identity aspirations.