عنوان

The Electrification of Palestine: Arab and Jewish Technopolitics, 1917-1948

Number

TL48371

.Language of Text, Soundtrack etc

انگلیسی

Title Proper

The Electrification of Palestine: Arab and Jewish Technopolitics, 1917-1948

General Material Designation

[Thesis]

First Statement of Responsibility

Fredrik Meiton

Subsequent Statement of Responsibility

Zweig, Ronald W.; Appuhn, Karl

Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.

New York University

Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.

2015

Specific Material Designation and Extent of Item

430

Text of Note

Committee members: Goswami, Manu; Jackson, Myles W.; Lockman, Zachary L.; Needham, Andrew

Text of Note

Place of publication: United States, Ann Arbor; ISBN=978-1-321-95466-1

Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree

Ph.D.

Discipline of degree

Hebrew and Judaic Studies and History

Body granting the degree

New York University

Text preceding or following the note

2015

Text of Note

This study starts from the assumption that political power, like electrical power, is channeled through material structures and technologies, whose properties structure its flow. As such, it departs from the conventional understanding of power by shifting the focus from overt political manifestations to attend to the subtler ways that power circulated and accumulated in Mandate Palestine. Drawing on the holdings of the Israel Electric Corporation, and a range of other sources in Hebrew, Arabic, German, French, and English, it argues that the character of the power system was influenced by a prevailing logic of colonial development and technological fashions that came together most notably in a social and economic policy throughout the British sphere of influence that privileged centralized, large-scale systems. But influence also ran in the opposite direction. As a result of assuming a central position within the vision of development as it was applied to Palestine, the power system had a fundamental influence on the history of that territory and its inhabitants' political and economic relations. The borders of Mandate Palestine were mapped onto the technical blueprint for a system of hydro-electrical stations on the Jordan River and countrywide high-tension distribution ring. In mapping out Palestine, the power system created a territory that was legible from the point of view of hydropower generation and distribution, as well as the larger technocapitalist vision with which it was implicated. This also had a decisive impact on the political arena and the terms of the ethno-national conflict that unfolded (and continues to unfold) between Palestine's Arabs and Jews.

Middle Eastern history; Science history

Subject Term

Social sciences;Arab-Israeli conflict;Electrification;Israel;Palestine;Zionism

Berver, David James

Zweig, Ronald W.; Appuhn, Karl

Subdivision

Hebrew and Judaic Studies and History

New York University

Call Number

1710812777; 3716574

Electronic name

p

[Thesis]

276903

a

Y