Edges of Care - by Noam Leshem (Paperback)

About the Book

"No man's land. The term invokes stretches of barren landscape, scattered broken trees, twisted barbed wire, whistling wind. But as Noam Leshem shows in Edges of Care, there is so much more to no man's land-unexamined complexities and political dynamics hidden within and around places deemed forgotten or lost. In often moving prose, Leshem interrogates no man's land as a site of radical uncaring: abandoned by a sovereign power in a relinquishment of responsibility for the space or anyone inside it. To understand the ramifications of such uncaring, Leshem takes the reader through a diverse series of abandoned places, including or bordering areas in Palestine, Syria, Colombia, Egypt, and Cyprus. There he shows that no man's land is not empty of life, but almost always inhabited and, in fact, often generative of new modes of being"--

Book Synopsis

A firsthand look at the lives of those who reside in no man's land--the violence they endure and their immense resilience.

"No man's land" invokes stretches of barren landscape, twisted barbed wire, desolation, and the devastation of war. But this is not always the reality. According to Noam Leshem in Edges of Care, the term also reveals radical abandonment by the state. From the Northern Sahara to the Amazon rainforests, people around the world find themselves in places that have been stripped of sovereign care. Leshem is committed to defining these spaces and providing a more intimate understanding of this urgent political reality.

Based on nearly a decade of research in some of the world's most challenging conflict zones, Edges of Care offers a profound account of abandoned lives and lands, and how they endure and sometimes thrive once left to fend for themselves. Leshem interrogates no man's land as a site of radical uncaring: abandoned by a sovereign power in a relinquishment of responsibility for the space or anyone inside it. To understand the ramifications of such uncaring, Leshem takes readers through a diverse series of abandoned places, including areas in Palestine, Syria, Colombia, Sudan, and Cyprus. He shows that no man's land is not empty of life, but almost always inhabited and, in fact, often generative of new modes of being. Beautifully written and evocative, Edges of Care reveals the unexamined complexities and political dynamics hidden within and around places governed by callous indifference.

Review Quotes

"Eschewing liner narratives, Edges of Care takes the reader through a fascinating journey of no-man's lands. Zigzagging between zones of conflict as diverse as World War I, the Korean DMZ, Chernobyl and contemporary Gaza, Leshem finds people abandoned by the state and exposed to the harms that emerge from a politics and culture of 'uncaring.'"--Roland Bleiker, University of Queensland, Australia

"In this beautifully written history of "no man's land," Noam Leshem exposes and interrogates different forms of sovereign abandonment characterised by violence and carelessness. Yet by taking the reader on a journey linking the production of space to inhumane policies and practices, Edges of Care also provides an urgently needed direction for a more caring society. It is a must read."--Neve Gordon, co-author of 'Human Shields: A History of People in the Line of Fire'

About the Author

Noam Leshem is an associate professor of political and cultural geography at Durham University. He is the author of Life After Ruin: The Struggles of Israel's Depopulated Arab Spaces and is the co-creator of Portraits of No Man's Land, a series of visual stories and documentaries produced with Google Arts & Culture in 2019.