About the Book
New under the Sun explores Zionist perceptions of—and responses to—Palestine’s climate. From the rise of the Zionist movement in the late 1890s to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Netta Cohen traces the production of climactic knowledge through a rich archive that draws from medicine and botany, technology and economics, and architecture and planning. As Cohen convincingly argues, this knowledge was not only shaped by Jewish settlers’ Eurocentric views but was also indebted to colonial practices and institutions. Zionists’ claims to the land were often based on the construction of Jewish settlers as natives, even while this was complicated by their alienated responses to Palestine’s climate. New under the Sun offers a highly original environmental lens on the ways in which Zionism’s spatial ambitions and racial fantasies transformed the lives of humans and nonhumans in Palestine.
Table of Contents
Contents
List of Illustrations
List of Abbreviations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Colonial History of Climate Investigation in Palestine
1. Knowing Climate
Climate Research in Undesired Geographies
Climate Investigation in Palestine
Working Methods in Climate Investigation
2. Climate and the Jewish European Body
Climate, Race and the ‘Origin’ of the Jewish People
Tropical Medicine: A Healthy Land Makes a Healthy People
Medical Climatology and the Future of Jews in Palestine
3. Warm Palestinian Climate—Cool Jewish Spaces
“The Refrigerating Industries”
The Garden Cities of Yesterday
How to say “Climate” in Arabic? Jewish Residential Spaces, 1910s–1920s
Local Heat—International Style
Climate, Roofs, and Building Materials
4. Climate and the Study of Plants
Forestation Against Desiccation
Acclimatization of Foreign Plants: Sources of Inspiration
Irrigation Technologies
Fruit Plantations: A Case Study in Zionist Acclimatization
Conclusions
Notes
Bibliography
Index
