Landscaping Palestine

Reflections of Enclosure in a Historical Mirror

Bibliographic Data

ID8965033
AuthorsGary Fields, Gary S Fields (corresponding author)
Year2010
Volume42
Issue1
Pages82a-82a
Publication date2010-01-14
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Journal Middle East Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-7438 • E-ISSN: 1471-6380
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0020743809990821
OpenAlexW4246146120
LanguageEN
Citations received14
References cited38

When in 1989 the Berlin Wall fell, and South African apartheid soon followed, it appeared even to political realists of the period that such systems, with their landscapes of walls and practices of separation, would rapidly be consigned to historical memory. In one of the great ironies of recent history, however, a new generation of such landscapes is proliferating in the wake of 1989, used by practitioners of power to promote systems of segregation and control movements of groups designated as threats by virtue of their representation as “other.” Reflecting collective psychologies of fear, these environments range from urban-based gated communities, where class prejudices against the poor and apprehension about crime coalesce in “fortified enclaves” within Cities of Walls , to borderlands between nation–states where hostility to immigrants and prejudices against ethnic others converge in creating what scholars describe as The Wall Around the West . Despite differences, these landscapes share a similar aim: they use built environments as defensive fortifications to preempt the circulation of people across territorial space based on class, religious, and ethnic divides. In this way, gated communities in São Paulo and Los Angeles, the walled borderlands of Melilla and Ceuta separating the European Union from Africa, and the walled border of Operation Gatekeeper separating the United States from Mexico, are broadly comparable

Ancient history · Apprehension · Archaeology · Argument (complex analysis · Art · Context (archaeology · Economy · Enclosure · Ethnic group · Genealogy · Geography · Narrative · Palestine · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Sociology · Engineering · History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Law · Middle East Politics and Society · Migration, Refugees, and Integration

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