============================================================== 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 3:00-5:00 PM Rm. 16-220 ============================================================== 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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