Abstract:

The narghile (hookah, shisha, “waterpipe”) is a key element of everyday's life in the Middle East. Its ethnographic, folkloric and anthropological dimensions are analysed in relation to its traditional settings and particularly the Oriental coffee-houses. Then, we try to understand the long silence of social sciences regarding this ancient and common practice, from both the Northern and Southern sides of the Mediterranean. With Pierre Bourdieu, we ask: who decides what is important or relevant in social sciences; in other words, which theme deserves attention? With a few researchers, we agree that not all the social sciences corpus of the colonial times must be considered historical garbage. As our bibliographical sources were extremely scarce, we realised that a few valid and usable elements could be picked out of that huge production, particularly in the ethnographic field.

Indeed, literature, poetry and painting actually made up for the long silence of social sciences regarding the narghile. Consequently, the present world sudden craze for hookah smoking can be construed as a backlash effect and even a bad joke played to the official representatives of the corresponding disciplines. Now that hookah lounges are popping up everywhere in the world, what will they say? That they did not know or that there were more "serious" themes to be studied: religion, sex, power, conflicts, identity, etc.?

The narghile practice and its revival show how an ancient popular culture now challenges the dominant and global one. Contrary to some quick analysis, the underlying identity feature is not so important. In fact, the unexpected phenomenon poses the question of cultural transfer and, beyond, the question of culture itself.

The critique of orientalism by Edward Said actually touched off an epistemological revolution in the field of social and human sciences. We develop further an analysis begun in a doctoral thesis about the relation between material culture and orientalist representations. However, beyond the classic orientalist vision of the past, a new question emerges: that of neo-orientalism. On a practical level, this concept refers to the development of hookah lounges all over the world (about one thousand in a country like France and more or less the same figure for the USA). Amazingly, people patronise these places for the narghile experience. In these conditions, the owners of these establishments, most of them of Middle Eastern origin, actually began to sell an orientalist "service" or "product" (Arabian Nights decor, exotic food, drinks, music and narghiles) to both "Westerners" and "Easterners" living in the West. Even in the Middle East, a kind of neo-orientalism is sold to the Orientals themselves.

On a theoretical level, and because hookah smoking is now considered a world epidemic and a global threat, US-funded research centres were set up in key countries of the Middle East to try to contain the damage caused to the world by this new virus. Biomedical studies on this epidemic have been published on almost a monthly basis over the last three years. In this context, Edward Saïd's criticism is, once again, highly relevant because Oriental researchers are involved in this last process.

Document Type: Research article

DOI: 10.1163/157005806777069804