RGP Cycle One Grantees and Projects

Omar Tesdell: The Palestinian Environmental Present: Development, Cultivation, and Spatial Practice in the West Bank

The West Bank has faced dramatic economic shifts over the past four decades that have increased vulnerability of Palestinians, especially in the spheres of food and agriculture. Food insecurity and reliance on food imports, for example, have increased significantly. Yet paradoxically, Palestinians are one of the world’s largest per-capita recipients of official foreign aid. The rise both of aid regimes and vulnerability in Palestine has been explored, but analysis overlooks subtle shifts in the relations between the agro-ecological and geographical orders. These orders are made up of Oslo-process land categorizations since 1993 and massive interventions in Palestinian agriculture by Israel for over forty years.

Palestinians have historically shaped this complex of forces, which might be called the Palestinian Environmental Present. Whether it is the ecological activity of the land, law, scientific knowledge, cultivation practices, or state power, this present has long been constituted through local practice and the vegetative activity of the landscape. Specifically, I will investigate the juridical-spatial category of ‘cultivation’, a topic treated only generally in my doctoral dissertation. The question of land tenure is crucial not only to Palestine, but also undergirds current struggles around the Arab region over land privatization and inequality. Conceptually, my study raises questions about politics of environmental transformation from the vantage point of farmers and environmentalists, in a region where there is a longstanding dearth of environmental research. My proposed research project will also reveal the production of space, nature, and vulnerability in the context of political upheaval.

Omar Tesdell earned his Ph.D. from the Department of Geography, Environment and Society from the University of Minnesota in 2013.His research focuses on environmental problems and sovereignty in the Middle East. The Social Science Research Council IDRF, Palestinian American Research Center, and the University of Minnesota have supported his research.