Lisa Wedeen, Peripheral Visions: Publics, Power, and Performance in Yemen.Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2008.

摘要

Peripheral Visions is based on Wedeen’s eighteen months of field research innYemen spanning a period of great political and economic change starting innthe early 1990s, and on close examination of the substantial literature specialis-ning in this diverse and fascinating country. Wedeen is interested in the continu-nous processes by which collective national and religious identities are shapednby the everyday practices and ritualized “performances” and discourses ofnboth citizens and leaders in a constantly changing regional and internationalnenvironment. Republican Yemen is a particularly interesting focus for such anstudy; it is a relatively new nation-state born after a revolution in the 1960snagainst the theocratic Zaydi-Shi’ite imamate, which only achieved its presentngeographical extent as the “Republic of Yemen” after unification between thennorthern Yemen Arab Republic and southern People’s Democratic Republicnof Yemen in 1990. The same ruler, President `Alin`Abdullah Salih, has heldnpower for over three decades. But despite this remarkable political survival