Najwa Adra

Dance and glance: Visualizing tribal identity in Highland Yemen

This paper is a study in the ways that esthetic markers—dancing, poetry, clothing, food—underlie, define, and construct conceptions of the tribe in the northern highlands of Yemen. As the rural Yemeni economy has changed from economic and political self‐sufficiency to dependence on the world market and a strong central government, so has the significance of tribalism. Ironically, nationalism is presented by the Yemeni media in tribal terms. While rural expressions of tribal identity have declined, use of tribal markers has intensified in towns and cities even by those who were not formerly defined as tribal. The significance of esthetic phenomena in the formation of identity and the construction of culture is addressed.1