Life Lived in Relief

"In this first comprehensive study of the oldest refugee camps in the world, Ilana Feldman provides a compelling analysis of displaced Palestinians’ politics of living. Her historical and ethnographic inquiry shows the ambiguities of international aid and the hardships as well as expectations of people still deeply affected, seventy years after the nakba, by the consequences of their expulsion from their land. Life Lived in Relief is destined to become a reference for anyone interested in the Middle East."—Didier Fassin, author of Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present

 "Life Lived in Relief is an ambitious book by one of the foremost scholars of humanitarianism and Palestine. Feldman approaches humanitarianism in a completely novel way, analyzing the way one people, the Palestinians, have lived across multiple generations under a humanitarian regime. This is a formidable work."—Lori Allen, author of The Rise and Fall of Human Rights: Cynicism and Politics in Occupied Palestine

"With exemplary care and commitment, Ilana Feldman examines the longue durée of temporary solutions and the persistent predicament of Palestinian refugees. Life Lived in Relief provides the definitive account of this defining humanitarian experience." —Peter Redfield, author of Life in Crisis: The Ethical Journey of Doctors Without Borders


"This epic historical ethnography of humanitarian life and practice in Palestinian refugee camps confirms Ilana Feldman as a leading scholar of humanitarianism. Life Lived in Relief gives us brilliant insights into the temporality of humanitarian living, as punctuated and oscillating, as changing but never linear. Feldman also rewrites the debates on the politics of humanitarianism, showing that refugees are always engaged in altering their worlds, even if these do not appear as radical breaks with the present. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in Palestinian lives and futures, the dilemmas and promises of humanitarianism, and the nature of politics." —Miriam Ticktin, author of Casualties of Care: Immigration and the Politics of Humanitarianism in France