Oren Yiftachel

Oren Yiftachel
Oren yiftachel.jpg

Oren Yiftachel (Hebrew: אורן יפתחאל‎, born 1956) teaches political geography, urban planning and public policy at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

Yiftachel studied during the 1980s in Australian and Israeli universities. He has subsequently taught in urban planning, geography, political science and Middle East departments, at various institutions, including: Curtin University, Australia; the Technion, Israel; the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia, and UC Berkeley, in the US; University of Cape Town, South Africa and the University of Venice, Italy. He was a research fellow at RMIT, Melbourne; the US Institute of Peace, Washington DC; and the Van Leer Institute, Jerusalem.

Yiftachel is the founding and past editor of the journal “Hagar: Studies in Culture, Politics and Place”, and serves on the editorial board of Planning Theory (essay editor), Society and Space, IJMES, MERIP, Urban Studies, Journal of Planning Literature, and Social and Cultural Geography.

Yiftachel works on critical theories of space and power; minorities and public policy; 'ethnocratic' societies and land regimes. In urban and planning studies he's focused on the ‘dark side’ of urban planning and has contributed to opening up planning theory to critical theory in general, and to issues of identity, colonising power and space in particular. In political geography, his work formulated the concept of ‘ethnocratic’ regimes, which has generated debates in ethnic and racial studies, regime theories and research in Israel/Palestine. His comparative work has focused on analyzing spatial policy towards minorities in a range of 'ethnocratic' states and cities, most particularly Australia, Sri Lanka, Estonia and South Africa.

In a series of books and articles, Yiftachel conceptualizes the Israeli regime as an ethnocracy, promoting a dominant project of ‘ethnicization’ throughout Israel/Palestine. He documents the various practices of this project, and the manner in which it has constructed ethno-class identities and stratified citizenship through the process of expansion, development and politicization in the different regions of Israel/Palestine. A major focus of his work has been the ‘Zionist-Palestinian dialectic’, and the evolution of Zionist 'colonialism,' Palestinian resistance and counter mobilization. His work has also focused on other marginalized ethno-classes such as the Mizrahim (Eastern Jews), ‘Russian’ Israelis, Orthodox Jews, the Druze and the Bedouins.

Yiftachel uses a multi-disciplinary approach, inspired by Neo-Gramscianism thinking and by a range of 'related' Marxian and postcolonial critical theorists. In the study of Israel/Palestine he was one of the first to break the traditional scholarly divisions between analysis of Arab-Jewish relations and internal Jewish dynamics, and one of a handful of scholars to question whether Israel acts as a democratic state within the Green Line (Israeli pre-1967 borders). The Israeli regime, according to Yiftachel, has presided over the entire historic Palestine for over four decades, and should be analyzed according to the power structures he claims it imposed over the entire territory. Yiftachel developed the ‘settler-ethnocratic’ model to highlight the regime’s main historical-material logic, and the concept of ‘creeping apartheid’ to describe its recent manifestation.

Yiftachel’s work is rich in spatio-political theorization, with development of concepts such as ‘trapped minorities’, ‘fractured regions’, ‘ruptured demos’, ‘internal frontiers’, ‘frontiphery’, ‘creeping apartheid’, and ‘gray urbanism’. He attempts to ‘theorize from the South-East’ by providing alternative conceptualizations to the dominant theories and discourses generated by American and European academic centers.

Yiftachel has worked as a planner and activist in a range of institutions, including the Perth City Council in Australia and the Kibbutz Movement in Israel. He specialized in advocacy planning and land consultancy. Recently he has worked on an Israeli-Palestinian plan for a bi-national Jerusalem, an alternative plan for the unrecognized Bedouin villages in southern Israel, and a plan for a multicultural Beer Sheva.

Yiftachel is also a board and founding member of several activist and professional organizations, including Faculty for Israel-Palestine Peace (FFIPP), PALISAD, The Coexistence Forum, Adva (centre for social equality), the Israeli Planning Association, Ekistics and Habitat International. He is a regular op-ed contributor to leading Israeli newspapers, including Haaretz, Ynet and Ma'ariv.

Books

Yiftachel has published over 100 books, papers and book chapters. Among his books:

  • Planning a Mixed Region: Political Geography in Galilee, Ashgate, 1991.
  • Urban and Regional Planning in Western Australia (with D. Hedgcock), Paradigm Press, 1992.
  • Planning and Social Control: Policy and Resistance in a Divided Society, Pergamon, 1995.
  • Ethnic Frontiers and Boundaries (with A. Meir eds), Westview, 1997.
  • The Power of Planning (with Hedgcock, Little, Alexander eds), Kluwer, 2002.
  • Israelis in Conflict (with Kemp, Newman, Ram eds), Sussex, 2004.
  • Ethnocracy: Land and Identity Politics in Israel/Palestine, Pennpress, 2006.

References

http://www.geog.bgu.ac.il/members/yiftachel/yiftachel.html

External links


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Поможем решить контрольную работу

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Oren Ben-Dor — (Hebrew: אורן בן דור ‎) teaches the philosophy of law and political philosophy[1] at the University of Southampton School of Law in the United Kingdom.[2] He has published two books on these topics and is releasing shortly a third on the… …   Wikipedia

  • Israel and the apartheid analogy — The State of Israel s treatment of the Palestinians has been likened by many to a system of apartheid, analogous to South Africa s treatment of non whites during South Africa s apartheid era. [http://www.simonsays.com/content/book.cfm?tab=25… …   Wikipedia

  • Ethnocracy — is a form of government where representatives of a particular ethnic group(s) hold a number of government posts disproportionately large to the percentage of the total population that the particular ethnic group(s) represents and use them to… …   Wikipedia

  • Holy Land Studies — Holy Land Studies: A Multidisciplinary Journal, is fully refereed journal, published by Edinburgh University Press. The journal is edited by Nur Masalha. Co founded with the late Michael Prior (theologian) in 2002, the journal publishes new and… …   Wikipedia

  • Hagar (Bible) — Hagar (Since the 1970s the custom has arisen of giving the name Hagar to newborn female babies. The giving of this name is often taken as a controversial political act, marking the parents as being left leaning and supporters of reconciliation… …   Wikipedia

  • Ben-Gurion University of the Negev — אוניברסיטת בן גוריון בנגב Motto Israel s capacity for science and research will be tested in the Negev... David Ben Gurion Established 1969 …   Wikipedia

  • Israel/Palestine — (also Israel Palestine ) was created originally as a politically neutral term used to refer to the geographical region of Palestine. It includes Israel, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, but usually not the Golan Heights. It is a word used by… …   Wikipedia

  • Nur-eldeen Masalha — Nur Masalha Arabic: نور مصالحة‎ Born 1957 (age 53–54) Galilee, Israel Occupation Historian Nur eldeen (Nur) Masalha (Arabic: نور مصالحة‎) (born 4 January 1957, Galilee, Israel) is a Palestinian writer and academic …   Wikipedia

  • Gordon Stephenson — (1908–1997) was a British born town planner and architect. He is best known for his role in shaping the modern growth and development of Perth, Western Australia. Contents 1 Early career 2 Perth 3 Subsequent work 4 …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”