• The Naqab is a region in south Israel, which until 1948 was mainly inhabited by Palestinian Bedouin tribes. A small part of this community continues to take their sheep and goats to seasonal grazing, a practice that carries deep and significant cultural importance but has been all but abolished by various post-1948 laws. Following a turn in forest management, grazing has become sought after as cost-effective pruning. However, mobile herds are now hard to come by as the practice has been obstructed among the Bedouins and as mobile herding is commonly thought of as an Arab cultural practice. Forests, on the other hand, have long represented the Israeli nation both as identity and territorial claim. Current regulation does not fit the new demand, making new regulation necessary. Reading Tim Ingold’s concept of ‘taskscape’ as a posthumanist approach, I explore how grazing is regulated in the Naqab in relation to both the state-Bedouin conflict and to the wider settlement-colonial enterprise in Israel/Palestine. I suggest that taskscape is a concept that can hold the complexity of natural resources, cultural identity and conflict while simultaneously countering the colonial idea of ‘empty space’ which tends to inform both state-pastoralists conflicts and grazing regulations, thereby offering a new lens through which to understand the ongoing settler-colonial project

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Social och ekonomisk geografi -- Kulturgeografi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Social and Economic Geography -- Human Geography (hsv//eng)

Keyword

settler colonialism

posthumanism

transhumance

Negev/Naqab

Israel

Palestine

Human Geography

kulturgeografi

Publication and Content Type

vet (subject category)

ovr (subject category)