Olive Growing in Palestine

Palestine Museum Scotland invites you join us for the launch of 

Olive Growing in Palestine: Stories of Everyday Forms of Resistance by Juman Simaan

"Like no other book, not just for its lyrical text but for its documentation of concepts being faded away by colonial and genocidal forces.  In a world where Palestinians are described as uncivilised, Simaan documents the poetry and tenderness of everyday life in Palestine where care and wellbeing are communal efforts."  VIVIEN SANSOUR, FOUNDER OF THE PALESTINE HEIRLOOM SEED LIBRARY

Olive Growing in Palestine: Stories of Everyday Resistance follows the lives of four families and dozens of individuals in the West Bank who grow olives as both livelihood and resistance.  

Palestinian researcher Juman Simaan provides a counterpoint to eurocentric studies of lives and labour, foregrounding Global South perspectives on how people and communities respond to adversity and oppression.  This groundbreaking work sheds light on the indigenous Palestinian concepts of Sutra, 'Awna and Sumud, and the ways in which these shape how olive farmers resist in everyday ways and in concert with each other, with international supporters, and with the more-than-human world against the forces seeking to divorce them from their land and their trees.

These grassroots Palestinian ways of doing, being and becoming bring communities, activists and scholars new tools to counter global forces of discrimination, imperialism, white supremacy and the human-made climate crisis.

"Ignites a sense of urgency [and] offers deep insights regarding how collective agency can be exercised to resist dehumanisation"  FRANK KRONENBERG, UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN

Juman Simaan is a Palestinian who lives in Glasgow. He is an Associate Professor of occupational therapy at Edinburgh Napier University. Juman is interested in understanding the everyday lives and daily resistance of Global South communities, and people who are marginalised by structural forces such as the nation state, capitalism, racism and trans and homophobia.

With a special guest joining the event online: Mahmoud Soliman, Palestinian activist-scholar-farmer, who will be joining us online to discuss the current daily lives of farmers and shepherds in the West Bank of Palestine.