The Geography Speaker Series Presents: The Taaffe Lecture
Prof. Irus Braverman, Dept. of Geog., University of Buffalo, NY
Talk title: Settler Ecologies: The Conservation Regime in Palestine-Israel
Abstract: Irus Braverman will join us to discuss her most recent book, Settling Nature: The Conservation Regime in Palestine-Israel. Drawing on more than seventy interviews with Israel's nature officials and on observations of their work, this book explores the widespread ecological warfare practiced by the state of Israel. Recruited to the front lines as part of this warfare are the fallow deer, gazelles, wild asses, griffon vultures, pine trees, and cows—on the Israeli side—against the goats, camels, olive trees, hybrid goldfinches, and akkoub-on the Palestinian side. Such nonhuman organisms are all the more effective because nature camouflages their tactical deployment as soldiers in a human war. At the end of the day, then, the administration of nature by the state of Israel advances both the Zionist project of Jewish settlement and the corresponding dispossession of non-Jews from this space.
