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Architectural discourses related to portable buildings are largely positivistic and focused on structure, materials, and modern technology. Scholars profile small, prefabricated constructions as relocatable, adaptable, and reusable according to the user's contradictions. While romanticizing a unique lifestyle, portable house prototypes open the way for industrial mass production and low-cost housing. Intentionally designed as place-independent units, they can, and often do, remain in one place for a long time. This scenario impacts significantly the social and spatial contexts of a particular locality, as it confronts the territorial claims of special interest groups. What is the role of portable buildings in such a setting? Who are the decision-makers and decision-making agencies'? This thesis focuses on the difference between the declared design intention described in current architectural literature regarding portable houses and the political and social practice of placing them in one of the world's most contested territories — the West Bank.Methodologically, a discourse survey, developed with experimental, self-made portable and temporary dwellings in 2002, gives an overview of relevant categories of portable houses: prototypes, parasites, and developers. A fourth category, transformers, interprets portable buildings within the context of the West Bank. This is followed by a material culture study conducted on site in December 2004/January 2005. Finally, several interviews provide subjective perspectives of portable houses in the West Bank. In addition, the works of the scholars Kronenberg, Kozlovsky, Weizman/Segal, Rotbart, and Foucault provide the basis for much of this analysis.In the extreme case of the West Bank, it was determined that designed as site-independent, portable houses in the West Bank carry significant local and regional meaning. As they are industrially fabricated and quickly deployed in large numbers at various, elevated locations, they become instruments of spatial control (observation, psychological demonstration of Israeli power and intimidation, territorial gain, and presence). Furthermore, portable houses here are appointed a political role by various agencies: defining and extending the national boundaries in a state of political indefiniteness and negotiations. The particular construction technology of `portable house' is used by a culture within a well-considered strategy of war.The reality of transportable buildings outside the architectural discourses is based on mass production, clustered distribution at difficult places with the intention for territorial claim, while maintaining strategic flexibility. Ultimately, portable houses need to be redefined as active instruments--rather than neutral products—that create subjective place attachment and identity, actively influence a territorial conflict, and impact spatial order and control. Thus, it can be argued that portable buildings make a territorial claim permanent. / Department of Architecture

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Call number: LD2668 .T4 1985 D38 / Master of Arts

This thesis is the result of ethnographic research carried out in an Israeli academic institution, located in the West-Bank of Israel/Palestine. Focusing on the social science department, the research examines the content and context of the study of social anthropology in this institute namely, The Academic College of Judea & Samaria ('The ACJS'), and analyses the ways in which Israeli identity is being understood and imagined by its students. Part One of the thesis examines the broad academic and geo-political context of the study of social anthropology in The Academic College of Judea & Samaria (The ACJS). This part includes three chapters: The first chapter presents an historical analysis of 'Israeli Social Anthropology' as a (Zionist) national tradition of ethnographic research. The second chapter is an introduction to the research of citizenship in Israel/Palestine and to the related concept of Israeliness as a 'culture of citizenship'. It includes an analysis of the West-Bank of Israel/Palestine as a disputed geo-political entity and a (political) no man's land within the international system of nation-states. The third chapter is an outline of the Jewish-Israeli settlement project in the West-Bank of Israel/Palestine, and also introduces the reader to the WB settlers. Part Two of the thesis is ethnographic and includes three chapters. The first chapter is ethnography of the West-Bank settlement-town where the ACJS is located, Ariel 'Settlementown'. This chapter incorporates a new descriptive method in political anthropology or, in the 'anthropology of the political', that of ‘sensing the political’ (Navaro-Yashin, 2003). The second and third chapters of the ethnographic part describe and analyze 'everyday life' in the ACJS itself, focusing on its social sciences department. It examines the way in which social anthropology is taught in the ACJS, and the ways in which Israeli identity is imagined and understood by its students. The summary of the thesis includes a triple hierarchical model of Israeli citizenship, based on this research, as well as suggestions for further research in the field of political anthropology and the anthropology of citizenship. The analytical focus of this research is Israeli citizenship and the concept of Israeliness as a 'culture of citizenship'. The research set itself as a search for the ways in which Israeliness was expressed and practiced in the 'everyday life' of people in the ACJS, and especially among its social science students and faculty. Studying Israeliness as a culture of citizenship implies adopting a new and different way of conceptualizing and understanding Israeli identity. Instead of adopting the Zionist political image of a (Jewish) national community, a view which, as has been the situation also in Israeli Social Anthropology, excludes non-Jewish citizens of Israel, the concept of Israeliness as a 'culture of citizenship' offers a new image of an Israeli political identity/community, one that includes all citizens of the State of Israel, regardless of their ethnic/religious identity and belonging. Thus, it is intended that the main contribution of this thesis will be to 'Israeli Social Anthropology' in filling these methodological and theoretical Lacunae, and in showing a way out of what appears to be a conceptual dead-end which it had reached concerning the interpretation and representation of Israeli identity. This intention seems even more advisable in the particular case of Israel/Palestine, where an adoption of the more inclusive discourse of 'citizenship' might contribute towards ‘Peace Education’, so much needed today as part of the long-term efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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After Israel’s triumphant victory over its Arab neighbors in the 1967 Six-Day War, the State immediately began a policy of territorial seizure in the newly occupied areas. Tracing these seizure practices, their supporting spatial apparatuses and the legalistic manipulations which have enabled de facto annexation to occur, this thesis uncovers not only the involvement of military officials and political figures, but also shows the complex utilization of nature and landscape for geopolitical means. From Jewish-only settlements to closed military areas, nature reserves, unilaterally-seized areas of ‘State Land’ and the cantons of split Israeli-PA jurisdiction, the creeping practices of Israeli annexation in this conflict are occurring without regard for international law or for the purportedly crucial negotiation process. Traditional assessments of the current status quo correctly identify the catastrophic effects of the continued Israeli occupation on the economic, social and environmental systems of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Yet they fall short of realizing the unique potentialities for Palestinian resistance and subversion inherent within this same state of imbalance. This thesis therefore seeks to elucidate three ways in which the Palestinians can capitalize on unexploited opportunities within the current destabilized conditions of Israeli military occupation in the West Bank. It will argue that the agency of architecture provides a crucial means of political intervention in a protracted dispute where the traditional political figures are unable to affect change via the processes of the peace negotiations. Beyond spatial tactics of resistance, the designs herein propounded have been conceived to thrive in a political environment which is shifting, volatile and indeterminate. Harnessing instability, they suggest new means of social, economic and environmental improvement for the Palestinians while simultaneously addressing their desires to establish an independent state. Cumulatively, these design proposals argue against the futile despair felt by many Palestinians that self-determination will only come by means of the perpetually stalled negotiations process. Instead, they outline new avenues for redirecting the trajectory of this conflict on the ground, through the strategic choreographing of Palestinian actions within, and taking advantage of, the very landscape in which they inhabit.