This dissertation demonstrates how changes in spatial boundaries map on to changes in the boundaries of national belonging through an ethnography of linguistic and spatial practice in a divided landscape. In Israel, as in many places around the globe, new forms of segregation have emerged in recent years, as violence and the fear of violence become increasingly bound up with the production of social difference and exclusion. In Wadi Ara, a valley in the north of the country where my fieldwork was based, segregation between Jewish and Palestinian citizens has dramatically increased since the fall of 2000, as the place of Palestinians in a Jewish state is being reconfigured. In this dissertation I focus on the changing movements and interactions of Jewish Israelis in Wadi Ara as they articulate with changes in the ways difference, belonging, and citizenship are organized on a national scale. I examine how increased hostility, fear, and distrust have become spatialized; how narratives of the past shape contemporary geographies; how competing ways of interpreting and navigating the landscape are mediated; and how particular forms of encounter are framed. My central argument is that through daily linguistic and spatial practice people in Wadi Ara do more than just make sense of shifting boundaries; they bring these boundaries into being and, in the process, they enact both self-definition and exclusion, reflecting and circumscribing the changing place of Palestinians in Israel. The dissertation is based on 19 months of fieldwork between 2002 and 2006.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/24319 |
| Date | 13 April 2010 |
| Creators | Sone, Abigail |
| Contributors | McElhinny, Bonnie |
| Source Sets | University of Toronto |
| Language | en_ca |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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