Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. This book explores the impact of 'Naqab Bedouin studies', and the relationship between 'Bedouin studies' and structures of governance over the Naqab Bedouin. The pressures of the knowledge economy, or 'knowing capitalism', and various new attempts to equate the value of academic research with its material impact have transformed the politics of academia. The Ottomans conquered the area of southern Palestine in 1519, but their control was not fully effective until the early nineteenth century. The Bedouin were encouraged to be part of the Mandatory administrative system, through employing them to serve on advisory councils and in police forces and through the establishment of tribal courts. The sedentarization period saw a shift in Israeli scholarship on the 'Negev Bedouin' from detailing Bedouin life in a presumed ethnographic present, to one built around modernization theory, shift that occurred for studies of Palestinians in Israel.