A Street View of Occupation

Getting Around Hebron on Google Maps

Bibliographic Data

ID12410209
AuthorsSophia Goodfriend (0000-0001-6440-7422, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume37
Issue2
Pages225-245
Publication date2021-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueVisual Anthropology Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1058-7187 • E-ISSN: 1548-7458
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/var.12247
OpenAlexW3202388201
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited19

This article offers an ethnographic exploration of the role Google Maps plays in Israeli authorities’ surveillance of the occupied Palestinian territories. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork conducted between Hebron, Palestine, and Tel Aviv, Israel, in the summers of 2018 and 2019, I describe how Google and Israel’s surveillance apparatus curtail what comes into view on Google Maps. I detail how Wesam, a Palestinian photographer, responds to such censorship through the creative use of Google Maps' Street View in Hebron. By centering Wesam's photographic practice, this article presents an ethnographic lens onto Israel's technologized military rule over the occupied Palestinian territories

Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Censorship · Ethnography · Geography · Library science · Media studies · Palestine · Political science · Sociology · Tel aviv · Visual arts · West bank · Computer Science · Geographies of human-animal interactions · History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Law · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration

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