[Sci-tech-public] *UPDATED TIME* Friday, April 29 4pm -- Ronen Shamir

[Amberly Steward]

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MIT Anthropology Presents:

 

Electrical/Power: Colonial Policies, Technical Innovation,

and the Origins of Separatism in 1920s Palestine

 

A talk by

 

Ronen Shamir

Department of Sociology & Anthropology - Tel-Aviv University

 

Friday, April 29

UPDATED TIME! 4:00-6:00 PM

Rm. 16-220

 

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In 1921, ignoring Arab opposition, the British government of Palestine
handed a concession for the production and distribution of electricity in
the Jaffa region to a Jewish entrepreneur.  Over the next four years, the
city of Jaffa, including the township of Tel Aviv, had been electrified. The
purpose of this paper is to trace some connections between the laying out of
the electrical grid and the emergence of Arab and Jewish nationalism.  Using
insights from the sociology of space and from actor-network-theory, I
suggest that the technical creation of the electrical network at once also
created the infrastructure for the consolidation of two distinct regions:
Arab Jaffa and Jewish Tel Aviv, thereby anticipating the paradigm of
national separatism that became dominant in years to come.

 

 

 

 

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