Kareem Rabie

KAREEM RABIE, American University, Washington, DC, received a grant in August 2020 to aid research on ‘Palestine in China: Circulation, Social Life, and Trade.” Throughout the West Bank over the last ten or fifteen years, there has been discussion of the link between businessmen in Hebron and China. Hundreds of Palestinians have settled in China or travel there annually. This research focuses on political economic governance through those traders and travelers who navigate changing forms of circulation, figures who allow us to see states, law, and global economics through daily practice. Through ethnography of traders and actors in the West Bank and China, and between the two, as well by documenting material processes around commodity importation, this work helps unearth intertwined and global economic and social histories. Within and beyond Palestine and China, it asks: what does governance around circulation and movement look like? Who is it for? How does it affect local social life and politics?