Notes
This essay is based on five years of work and residence in the Arab community of Dearborn, Michigan. Warren David, Jackie Kaiser, Abe al-Masri, Nabeel Hamoud, Ahmad Berry, Sally Howell, Ahmed Chebbani, and Ish Ahmad shaped my arguments during numerous conversations, though none of them would necessarily endorse my conclusions. Lila Abu-Lughod commented on an earlier draft of this paper, which was presented at the 1995 meeting of the American Anthropological Association. Nabeel Abraham, Roger Rouse, and Paul Dresch offered insightful criticisms of later drafts. The essay was written at the Institute for Advanced Study, where I found the intellectual detachment I needed to make sense of my experiences in Arab Detroit.
1. There are notable exceptions to the transnationalizing trend. Lila Abu-Lughod’s special issue of Public Culture, “Screening Politics in a World of Nations,” explores the nationalist dimensions of television production in postcolonial states. Yet in 1993, when the issue appeared, theoretical trends were already headed elsewhere, and Abu-Lughod offered a mildly apologetic foreword to the issue. “It might seem surprising,” she notes, “to privilege the national when the transnational character of television programming has been so frequently commented on” (1993a, 465). As I write this in 1996, Abu-Lughod’s rather modest fallback position—that “the nation-state remains crucial for the deployment of mass media” (1993a, 466)—can easily be read as a critique of “postnational” approaches to popular culture. For a sketch of recent trends in transnationalism and anthropological theory, see Blanc, Basch, and Glick-Schiller 1995. [BACK]
2. The figure, which debuted in Abraham and Abraham 1983, is probably much too high. It is lower, however, than the 250,000 estimate commonly cited in the press, by social service agencies, and in academic circles. The latter figure has become a “social fact” of sorts, but its refusal to change (up or downward) during the last ten years of steady immigration suggests that 250,000 is a quantitative symbol of Arab Detroit’s immense size. [BACK]
3. This claim circulates widely in Detroit. It originated (I am often told) in the Michigan Department of Social Services. Hassan Jaber, assistant director of the Arab Community Center (ACCESS) in Dearborn, vouched for the claim’s accuracy. Anyone familiar with the ethnic/racial demography of Detroit would find little reason to question his judgment. [BACK]
4. This figure was provided by Ahmed Chebbani, owner of Omnex, an accounting firm that balances the books for almost all the Lebanese-owned businesses on Warren Avenue. [BACK]
5. For critical takes on celebratory transnationalism, see Asad 1993, Harvey 1989, and Hannerz 1992, all carefully attuned to the oppressive potential of metropolitan cultural forms. For critiques that identify themselves more explicitly with the concerns and interests of the new transnationalism literature yet resist a “celebratory” tone, see Basch, Glick-Schiller, and Blanc 1994; Rouse 1995, 1996. For an extended consideration of ethnography’s role in constructing global and local knowledge, the reader should consult the 1993 ASA Decennial Conference Series, especially the volumes edited by Strathern (1995), Fardon (1995), and Miller (1995b). [BACK]
6. This figure was provided by Abe Osta, executive director of the American Arab Chamber of Commerce–Michigan. [BACK]
7. The six networks are TV Orient, Arabic Time TV, Sada al-‘Arab, United TV Network, Arab World TV, and Middle East TV. The sixteen public access programs are Islamic Message, Islamic Center of America, Islamic Council, Islamic Speeches, Voice of Unity, Abundant Life, Islamic Teaching, The Secret Place, Lebanese-American Club Program, Lebanese Cultural Center Program, Islamic Mosque of America, Sundays Journal, Insights from the Holy Quran, Association of Islamic Charitable Projects, Education and Life, and Islamic Institute of Knowledge. [BACK]
8. I use the phrase “Arab culture” because people in the community use it. I do not think it describes a uniform, bounded object. Neither do most Arab-Americans. Instead, it is shorthand for “manners,” “customs,” “traditions,” “heritage,” “way of life,” and any number of related concepts. [BACK]
9. The predicament of the Arab-American Media Society was shared by many Arab-American organizations in the 1970s and 1980s, when the public space available for Arab self-representation in the United States was minuscule. Funding was hard to generate, and reliance on money from the Arab Gulf kept many Arab-American organizations from developing practical, grassroots coalitions that would enable them to engage effectively in domestic politics. For an intriguing discussion of marginality and its effects on Arab-American political culture during this period, see Abraham 1989. Because it provided social services to America’s largest population of Arab immigrants—a task of considerable benefit to the “host society”—ACCESS was brought into local (and national) political structures almost from its inception. [BACK]
10. For detailed analyses of the corporate, political, and class interests underlying American multiculturalism, see Rouse 1995; Dresch 1995. [BACK]