Faculty and Grad Student Colloquium:
"Settler Ruralization and the Production of Agricultural Violence in the West Bank," with Oren Shlomo, The Open University of Israel
In the last two decades, there has been a gradual but high-impact change in Israel's colonization practices in Area C of the West Bank—from urbanization through the establishment of quasi–gated communities (“settlements”) to ruralization through the development of forms of “traditional” agricultural expansion, including shepherding outposts, vineyards, and field cultivation. The lecture traces the emergence of this shift and its accompanying consequences: new practices of settlers’ land grabs, new forms of violence that I term “agricultural violence,” and the large-scale process of Palestinian peasant dispossession from Area C.
Dr. Oren Shlomo works in the fields of political geography, urban politics, urban–rural politics, and environmental politics within the context of ethnic and national conflicts. His primary area of research focuses on Israel/Palestine, with a particular emphasis on Israeli control over East Jerusalem and the West Bank and its implications for urban and environmental governance, as well as land related issues. He completed his Ph.D. at Ben-Gurion University and subsequently held a Fulbright postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University. He is currently a faculty member in the Department of Sociology, Political Science, and Communication at the Open University of Israel.