Rethinking Israeli Space ─ Periphery and Identity

This book sheds light on the production of Israeli space and the politics of Jewish and Arab cities. The authors’ postcolonial approach deals with the notion of periphery and peripherality, covering issues of spatial protest, urban policy and urban planning.

Discussing periphery as a political, social and spatial phenomenon and both a product and a process manufactured by power mechanisms, the authors show how the state, the regime of citizenship, the capitalist logic, and the logic of ethnonationalism have all resulted in ethno-class division and stratification, which have been shaped by spatial policy. Rather than using the term periphery to describe an economic, geographical and social situation in which disadvantaged communities are located, this critical examination addresses the traditionally passive dimension of this term suggest that the reality of peripheral communities and spaces is rather more conflicted and controversial.

The multidisciplinary approach taken by this book means it will be a valuable contribution to the fields of planning theory, political science and public policy, urban sociology, critical geography and Middle East studies.

Erez Tzfadia is a senior lecturer in Public Policy and Administration at Sapir College in Israel. He received his PhD in Geography at Ben-Gurion University in Israel in 2002 and was a Lady Davis postdoctoral fellow at the Hebrew University in 2003. His research focuses on the role of nationalism and neoliberalism in spatial arenas and on social structures.

Haim Yacobi is a senior lecturer at the Department of Politics and Government at Ben-Gurion University and a Marie Curie Researcher at Cambridge University. The main issues that stand in the core of his writings that have been published in different academic journals deal with the production of urban space, social justice, the politics of identity, migration, globalization and urban planning.