New Under the Sun: Early Zionist Encounters with the Climate in Palestine

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Univ of California Press, Apr 2, 2024 - History - 228 pages
New under the Sun explores Zionist perceptions of—and responses to—Palestine’s climate. From the rise of the Zionist movement in the late 1890s to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Netta Cohen traces the production of climactic knowledge through a rich archive that draws from medicine and botany, technology and economics, and architecture and planning. As Cohen convincingly argues, this knowledge was not only shaped by Jewish settlers’ Eurocentric views but was also indebted to colonial practices and institutions. Zionists’ claims to the land were often based on the construction of Jewish settlers as natives, even while this was complicated by their alienated responses to Palestine’s climate. New under the Sun offers a highly original environmental lens on the ways in which Zionism’s spatial ambitions and racial fantasies transformed the lives of humans and nonhumans in Palestine.
 
 

Contents

Knowing Climate
19
Climate and the Jewish European Body
49
Warm Palestinian ClimateCool Jewish Spaces
78
Climate and the Study of Plants
115
Notes
157
Bibliography
191
Index
209
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About the author (2024)

Netta Cohen is Junior Research Fellow at Christ Church College, University of Oxford.

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