Masha' of the Periphery: Collective Labor and Property in Palestinian Liberation Struggle
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Date
2024
Publication Type
Doctoral Thesis
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Abstract
This dissertation studies the persistence of forms of politicized collective social production and reproduction in the history of Palestinian liberation struggle between the 1960s and 2020s. It reads those forms, which comprised volunteer committees, cooperatives, and solidarity institutions among others, through the concept of the mashaʿ, or the commons. The dissertation examines three aspects of the Palestinian mashaʿ: the theoretical, the historical, and the contemporary. It does so through ethnographic, historical, spatial, and textual analysis.
On the theoretical plane, the dissertation develops the concept of peripheralization to read the spatiality and intertwinement of capitalist and colonial domination, from the urban to planetary scales, and particularly in Palestine. It places the rise of the mashaʿ/commons as a concept and practice in relation to peripheralization. On the historical plane, the dissertation studies prominent examples of the Palestinian mashaʿ in the period between the 1960s and 1990s both within and outside Palestine. It focuses on the role that parties of the Palestinian Liberation Organization played in the formation of these commons, and on the position that the latter held in these parties’ strategy and discourse. On the contemporary plane, the dissertation focuses on a group of cooperative in the West Bank in Palestine (2015-2024). After analyzing the spatial political economy of the West Bank, the dissertation traces the moments of emergence as well as the modes of operation and membership of these cooperatives. It argues that these cooperatives constitute a continuation of the commons of the 1960s-1990s and, more generally, of a Palestinian revolutionary tradition in which politicized social reproduction played a significant role. It also argues that this political mashaʿ formulates an extension of vernacular solidarity practices that permeate Palestinian society, and which correspond to Palestine’s condition of peripheralization. Furthermore, the dissertation argues that the persistence of these commons reflects a radical sentimental stance that operates on the plane of production but surpasses economistic motives towards the goal of national liberation.
This dissertation contributes to literature on the commons by introducing the work of Arab Sufi Marxist Hadi al-Alawi on the mashaʿ, and studying actors whose practice of the commons conjoined social, anti-colonial, and anti-imperialist struggle. Through its empirical research and using the framework of peripheralization, it contributes to a reading of urbanization that encompasses local and global dynamics and actors, in Palestine and more generally, and makes theoretically legible the commonalities and intertwinement between capitalist and colonial domination, but also their divergences in logics and goals. Furthermore, the dissertation emphasizes the interrelation between popular practice and party structures in producing the spaces of Palestinian liberation struggle.
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Examiner : Ursprung, Philip
Examiner : Schmid, Christian
Examiner : Takriti, Abdel Razzaq
Examiner : Hart, Gillian
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ETH Zurich
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Subject
Palestine; Urbanization; Colonialism; Commons; Political Economy; Masha'; Sufism; Communism
Organisational unit
08810 - Schmid, Christian (Tit.-Prof.)
03588 - Ursprung, Philip / Ursprung, Philip