Current Flow

Current Flow PDF Author: Ronen Shamir
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804788685
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
Whether buried underfoot or strung overhead, electrical lines are omnipresent. Not only are most societies dependent on electrical infrastructure, but this infrastructure actively shapes electrified society. From the wires, poles, and generators themselves to the entrepreneurs, engineers, politicians, and advisors who determine the process of electrification, our electrical grids can create power—and politics—just as they transmit it. Current Flow examines the history of electrification of British-ruled Palestine in the 1920s, as it marked, affirmed, and produced social, political, and economic difference between Arabs and Jews. Considering the interplay of British colonial interests, the Jewish-Zionist leanings of a commissioned electric company, and Arab opposition within the case of the Jaffa Power House, Ronen Shamir reveals how electrification was central in assembling a material infrastructure of ethno-national separation in Palestine long before "political partition plans" had ever been envisioned. Ultimately, Current Flow sheds new light on the history of Jewish-Arab relations and offers broader sociological insights into what happens when people are transformed from users into elements of networks.

Networks of Power in Palestine

Networks of Power in Palestine PDF Author: Harel Chorev-Halewa
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1838608907
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 407

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Book Description
Informal networks are an elusive and hidden factor in every society. In the Middle East, the Arab Spring recently highlighted their power and scope from Iraq to Morocco, exposing how family and clan networks wield influence behind institutional facades. While many studies of Middle Eastern societies solely analyse formal structures and official governing bodies, this book illuminates longstanding informal social systems by examining the sociopolitical history of the Palestinian highlands, known from 1950 as the West Bank. By studying family-based networks in cities like Jerusalem, Nablus and Hebron, Harel Chorev-Halewa shows how their influence has receded more slowly and less dramatically in recent generations than is commonly believed. He also connects individual elite families to the broader landscape of informal networks, comprising inter-familial alliances, collective economic systems, Sufi orders and customary law - all of which make up the unseen 'familial order.' Unfolding chronologically, this book spans a period of immense change from the Late Ottoman period to the present day, asking: How did Palestinian informal networks adapt to new realities?Why and how did they endure? And what does this say about modern Palestinian national politics in particular, and Arab societies in general? Offering an original and innovative look at informal networks in Palestine, this study is of crucial importance to scholars of Middle East studies, Palestine studies, political science and anthropology.

Current Flow

Current Flow PDF Author: Ronen Shamir
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804788685
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
Whether buried underfoot or strung overhead, electrical lines are omnipresent. Not only are most societies dependent on electrical infrastructure, but this infrastructure actively shapes electrified society. From the wires, poles, and generators themselves to the entrepreneurs, engineers, politicians, and advisors who determine the process of electrification, our electrical grids can create power—and politics—just as they transmit it. Current Flow examines the history of electrification of British-ruled Palestine in the 1920s, as it marked, affirmed, and produced social, political, and economic difference between Arabs and Jews. Considering the interplay of British colonial interests, the Jewish-Zionist leanings of a commissioned electric company, and Arab opposition within the case of the Jaffa Power House, Ronen Shamir reveals how electrification was central in assembling a material infrastructure of ethno-national separation in Palestine long before "political partition plans" had ever been envisioned. Ultimately, Current Flow sheds new light on the history of Jewish-Arab relations and offers broader sociological insights into what happens when people are transformed from users into elements of networks.

The Common Camp

The Common Camp PDF Author: Irit Katz
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452960801
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 510

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Book Description
Seeing the camp as a persistent political instrument in Israel–Palestine and beyond The Common Camp underscores the role of the camp as a spatial instrument employed for reshaping, controlling, and struggling over specific territories and populations. Focusing on the geopolitical complexity of Israel–Palestine and the dramatic changes it has experienced during the past century, this book explores the region’s extensive networks of camps and their existence as both a tool of colonial power and a makeshift space of resistance. Examining various forms of camps devised by and for Zionist settlers, Palestinian refugees, asylum seekers, and other groups, Irit Katz demonstrates how the camp serves as a common thread in shaping lands and lives of subjects from across the political spectrum. Analyzing the architectural and political evolution of the camp as a modern instrument engaged by colonial and national powers (as well as those opposing them), Katz offers a unique perspective on the dynamics of Israel–Palestine, highlighting how spatial transience has become permanent in the ongoing story of this contested territory. The Common Camp presents a novel approach to the concept of the camp, detailing its varied history as an apparatus used for population containment and territorial expansion as well as a space of everyday life and subversive political action. Bringing together a broad range of historical and ethnographic materials within the context of this singular yet versatile entity, the book locates the camp at the core of modern societies and how they change and transform.

Power Born of Dreams

Power Born of Dreams PDF Author: Mohammad Sabaaneh
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781951491147
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Book Description
What does freedom look like from inside an Israeli prison? The walls of the cell are etched with the names of the prisoners who came before. A bird perches on the cell window and offers a deal: "You bring the pencil, and I will bring the stories," stories of family, of community, of Gaza, of Palestine. Mohammad Sabaaneh brings uses his striking linocut artwork to help the world see Palestinian people as human, not as superheroes or political symbols.

Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique

Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique PDF Author: Sa'ed Atshan
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 1503612406
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
From Ramallah to New York, Tel Aviv to Porto Alegre, people around the world celebrate a formidable, transnational Palestinian LGBTQ social movement. Solidarity with Palestinians has become a salient domain of global queer politics. Yet LGBTQ Palestinians, even as they fight patriarchy and imperialism, are themselves subjected to an "empire of critique" from Israeli and Palestinian institutions, Western academics, journalists and filmmakers, and even fellow activists. Such global criticism has limited growth and led to an emphasis within the movement on anti-imperialism over the struggle against homophobia. With this book, Sa'ed Atshan asks how transnational progressive social movements can balance struggles for liberation along more than one axis. He explores critical junctures in the history of Palestinian LGBTQ activism, revealing the queer Palestinian spirit of agency, defiance, and creativity, in the face of daunting pressures and forces working to constrict it. Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique explores the necessity of connecting the struggles for Palestinian freedom with the struggle against homophobia.

Where Now for Palestine?

Where Now for Palestine? PDF Author: Jamil Hilal
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
ISBN: 1848138016
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
Where Now for Palestine? marks a turning point for the Middle East. Since 2000, the attacks of 9/11, the death of Arafat and the elections of Hamas and Kadima have meant that the Israel/Palestine 'two-state solution' now seems illusory. This collection critically revisits the concept of the 'two-state solution' and maps the effects of local and global political changes on both Palestinian people and politics. The authors discuss the changing face of Fateh, Israeli perceptions of Palestine, and the influence of the Palestinian diaspora. The book also analyzes the environmental destruction of Gaza and the West bank, the economic viability of a Palestinian state and the impact of US foreign policy in the region. This authoritative and up-to-date guide to the impasse facing the region is required reading for anyone wishing to understand a conflict entrenched at the heart of global politics.

Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement

Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement PDF Author: Wendy Pearlman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139503057
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
Why do some national movements use violent protest and others nonviolent protest? Wendy Pearlman shows that much of the answer lies inside movements themselves. Nonviolent protest requires coordination and restraint, which only a cohesive movement can provide. When, by contrast, a movement is fragmented, factional competition generates new incentives for violence and authority structures are too weak to constrain escalation. Pearlman reveals these patterns across one hundred years in the Palestinian national movement, with comparisons to South Africa and Northern Ireland. To those who ask why there is no Palestinian Gandhi, Pearlman demonstrates that nonviolence is not simply a matter of leadership. Nor is violence attributable only to religion, emotions or stark instrumentality. Instead, a movement's organizational structure mediates the strategies that it employs. By taking readers on a journey from civil disobedience to suicide bombings, this book offers fresh insight into the dynamics of conflict and mobilization.

Thinking Palestine

Thinking Palestine PDF Author: Ronit Lentin
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
ISBN: 1848137893
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 203

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Book Description
This book brings together an inter-disciplinary group of Palestinian, Israeli, American, British and Irish scholars who theorise 'the question of Palestine'. Critically committed to supporting the Palestinian quest for self determination, they present new theoretical ways of thinking about Palestine. These include the 'Palestinization' of ethnic and racial conflicts, the theorization of Palestine as camp, ghetto and prison, the tourist/activist gaze, the role of gendered resistance, the centrality of the memory of the 1948 Nakba (catastrophe) to the contemporary understanding of the conflict, and the historic roots of the contemporary discourse on Palestine. The book offers a novel examination of how the Palestinian experience of being governed under what Giorgio Agamben names a 'state of exception' may be theorised as paradigmatic for new forms of global governance. An indispensable read for any serious scholar.

Refugees of the Revolution

Refugees of the Revolution PDF Author: Diana Allan
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804774925
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Some sixty-five years after 750,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homeland, the popular conception of Palestinian refugees still emphasizes their fierce commitment to exercising their "right of return." Exile has come to seem a kind of historical amber, preserving refugees in a way of life that ended abruptly with "the catastrophe" of 1948 and their camps—inhabited now for four generations—as mere zones of waiting. While reducing refugees to symbols of steadfast single-mindedness has been politically expedient to both sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict it comes at a tremendous cost for refugees themselves, overlooking their individual memories and aspirations and obscuring their collective culture in exile. Refugees of the Revolution is an evocative and provocative examination of everyday life in Shatila, a refugee camp in Beirut. Challenging common assumptions about Palestinian identity and nationalist politics, Diana Allan provides an immersive account of camp experience, of communal and economic life as well as inner lives, tracking how residents relate across generations, cope with poverty and marginalization, and plan––pragmatically and speculatively—for the future. She gives unprecedented attention to credit associations, debt relations, electricity bartering, emigration networks, and NGO provisions, arguing that a distinct Palestinian identity is being forged in the crucible of local pressures. What would it mean for the generations born in exile to return to a place they never left? Allan addresses this question by rethinking the relationship between home and homeland. In so doing, she reveals how refugees are themselves pushing back against identities rooted in a purely nationalist discourse. This groundbreaking book offers a richly nuanced account of Palestinian exile, and presents new possibilities for the future of the community.

In Our Power

In Our Power PDF Author: Nora Barrows-Friedman
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781935982418
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"In the years following Israel's 2008-9 "Operation Cast Lead" assault on the Palestinians of Gaza, a new kind of student movement emerged on U.S. campuses, in solidarity with Palestinians seeking to fully exercise their human and political rights within their historic homeland. These students have brought national attention to "BDS", the worldwide campaign in support of the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions of Israel until it abides by international law. Nora Barrows-Friedman traveled across the United States in 2013-2014 interviewing the young organizers at the core of this movement and documenting the political legacy these activists have built in the face of considerable opposition."--Page 4 of cover.