Women in Geographic Education: An Agenda for the New Century

Abstract

Geography textbooks represent an underutilized raw material for understanding the society which created them and which, with their aid, “writes” important images for social survival. This paper represents an attempt to examine the images of the Palestinians that are embedded in Hebrew geography textbooks that have been written over the past century during which Zionism has existed. The texts, which were examined with the aid of ideas provided by Thompson (1987) and others, indicate the existence of a wide range of treatments of the Palestinians: ethnocentric, romantic, experiential, anthropological, etc. The spectrum of images is dependent on the historical period in which the text was written and the relations that were created between the Palestinians and Zionism in the Land of Israel.     

Depoliticizing water conflict: functional peacebuilding in the Red Sea–Dead Sea Water Conveyance project

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the nexus of technocracy–peacebuilding and its implications on water conflicts and hydropolitics. It is a conceptual exploration which advances an interdisciplinary approach by combining theories from two distinct research fields: peacebuilding and transboundary water management. It probes the argument that synergies between water management, development and peacebuilding frequently lead to technocratic and functional solutions. As empirical case illustration, the transboundary project, the Red Sea–Dead Sea Water Conveyance (RSDSWC) is analysed regarding its peacebuilding and peace promoting potential. Three concluding remarks are drawn from the conceptual and empirical analysis. First, strong emphasis on technocratic solutions is inclined to favour supply-oriented options rather than solutions based on ethics of sustainable development and rights-based distribution. Second, functional solutions to water conflicts downplay at times complex hydro-political and asymmetrical relations between adversaries. Third, wider trends of privatization in the water sector coincide with similar developments in the field of peacebuilding, where new transnational actors are gaining influence as “new peacemakers”, which are likely to have long-term consequences on power relations and the resolution of water conflict.

EDITOR D. Koutsoyiannis; ASSOCIATE EDITOR not assigned     

Place,exile and identity: the contemporary experience of Palestinians in Sydney

Statelessness, displacement and exile, far from being particular moments in history, continue to affect the lives of Palestinians living in Sydney, in the maintenance of national identity and community formation. The impacts that displacement and subsequent ‘statelessness’ have had on the ways in which Palestinians maintain a sense of national identity have similarities with those of other ‘displaced’ peoples. Without the recognition of national boundaries to secure national sovereignty (Palestine) and accommodate the continuation of a shared and inherited history, the most significant element through which Palestinian identity is kept ‘alive’ is the one thing that all Palestinians share: a communal sense of injustice which involves being denied the right to live in, or return to, their homeland. Statelessness, nationalism and the now ‘imagined community’ of Palestine are more crucial for Palestinians living in Sydney than more primordial elements of identity, such as language or local community. Statelessness and exile in Australia have constructed a particular sense of Palestinian nationalism. The continuity of Palestinian identity as a primarily political phenomenon is a situation analogous to that of other diasporic refugee communities.     

Palestinians and pragmatic citizenship: Negotiating relationships between citizenship and national identity in diaspora

This paper puts forward the notion of pragmatic citizenship and forms part of the ongoing re-appraisals of citizenship in relation to national identity in an attempt to make it more relevant and inclusive for those with complex identities, legal status and, in particular, the stateless. Using the case study of Palestinians in Athens to discuss relationships between citizenship, identity and statehood, this paper argues that the notion of pragmatic citizenship can be useful in such re-conceptualisations as it can take into account the potentially ambivalent and multiple feelings of belonging that migrants and those in diaspora may have. In the process it stresses that strong notions of belonging and attachment to a territorialised homeland do not have to be exclusive or problematic. The paper outlines the complexity of Palestinian legal status in Athens and the feelings of injustice statelessness can provoke; it then describes the process of Palestinian acquisition of pragmatic citizenship in Greece. However, the final section of the paper highlights that such a notion of citizenship can have positive repercussions in terms of inclusive visions of a future one-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.