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One look at the best-selling books on the Middle East and it is clear that Yemen has captured center stage. Anthropologist Gabriele vom Bruck's excellent case study offers an important contribution to this literature. More than that, this lucidly written study of the effects of systemic political and cultural change on a segment of Northern Yemeni society since 1962 should be required reading to any political analyst working on the country today.
What stands out in this rich and complicated story of transition is the fact that vom Bruck accessed the former ruling urban elite of Northern Yemen. This in itself is invaluable to those of us wishing to understand the intercommunal dynamics at play in and around the region of Sadah, the epicenter of the so-called "Huthi" insurrection today. In spite of its 2005 publication date, vom Bruck's patient and sensitive work sheds light on rarely considered personal traumas that remain relevant today.
This book fills any number of holes in a scholarship focused primarily on rural farming communities. Despite the excellent work of Martha Mundy and Shelagh Weir in particular, this aspect seems to have obscured largely urban, educated groups associated with a Zaydi sada (sing. sayyid) class in North Yemen. One consequence of this neglect is a misreading of Northern Yemeni power politics by less accomplished social scientists, leading to the heavy emphasis on "tribalism" at the expense of other sociopolitical forces in North Yemen. In vom Bruck's study, the sada...