UC Berkeley

Building a Home-Land: Zionism as a Regime of Housing 1860-2005

by

Yael Allweil

Doctor of Philosophy in Architecture

University of California, Berkeley

Professor Nezar AlSayyad, Chair

The received study of Zionist practices largely disregards a cardinal aspect of Jewish nationalism: the role of housing in producing and inhabiting the home-land. This research identifies housing as the key site for the formation of subjects (Zionists) and place (Zion) and offers a new perspective on the history of Zionism as a massive housing project. It thus offers a complementing historiography to scholarly attempts to understand Israel through the specters of war (Morris, 2008), modernization of the orient (LeVine, 2005), colonization (Gregory, 2005), ethnicity (Yiftachel, 2005), gender (Boyarin, 1996) or the trauma of the holocaust (Wistrich, 1997).

The framework I propose for discussing housing addresses it at the same time as an action (to house), scheme of action (set of policies, funding schemes etc), value system (a basic right, identity marker), architectural form (physical houses), and settlement (location and typology). It is thus deeply involved in attempts to form national identity and citizens-subjects. In addition, two cardinal questions involve the actors at hand: Who performs the act of housing, and who benefits from it?

The modern nation state (Nairn, 2003) marks a shift of governance from kings supported by divine legitimacy, to rule legitimized "in the name of the people" (Bendix, 1978, Foucault, 1971). Housing of the common citizen is thus the key site for any modern nation-state to base and legitimize its rule (Castells et al, 1990, Goh, 2001), more so than the court or the parliament largely studied as the locus of nation building (Vale, 1992, Morton, 1989). As Foucault showed, the shift from absolutist-state to nation-state required the state to become an institution for governing modern subjects. Zionism's unique task to materialize a national home where none existed for millennia involved in addition connecting subjects and homeland in order to form a sovereign political entity legitimated by these people. This unique task was addressed by associating national home and individual housing (Kallus, 2005) and by the state assuming mediating role for the relationship between citizens and homeland (Nitzan-Shiftan, 2006).

This dissertation explores the relationship between nation, citizens and housing by historical examination of Jewish nationalism as a regime of housing. My research unfolds the history of "good housing", used for producing a legitimate claim for the homeland and for designing good citizens. My archival research of texts and planning documents indicates that early Zionist leaders understood housing as the answer for both above challenges (Weiss, 1956, Ruppin, 2001, GenGurion, 1969) and defined the materialization of Jewish nationalism as a housing problem. My research process maps the history of housing phenomena based on previous research, locating pivotal cases serving as laboratories for "good housing": where the ideas and materiality of "good housing" were formed and re-thought. These laboratory case studies, among which are Kibbutz Degania, Ahuzat Bait, the Amidar Shack neighborhood of Ramla and others, are then studied as a housing issue by examining primary sources.

Research methods include primarily archival research of texts and planning documents, as well as of visual documentations and textual descriptions of early dwelling environments. These are complemented with interviews with dwellers, planners and policy makers.