I am working on my first book, Cultivating Sustainable Sovereignty: Palestinian Agrarian Lives in Transnational Focus. Expanding on my dissertation, it answers multiple humanistic social science questions. How have Palestinian agro-ecological and food systems changed due to settler colonialism over time? How do Palestinians’ agricultural practices and relationships—their food sovereignty efforts—serve their struggles for cultural and political sovereignty? Finally, how has the struggle for Palestinian food sovereignty turned global?
I argue that Palestinian farmers in the northern West Bank use sustainable development to remain on their lands, but that doing so requires them to engage in the booms and busts of global capital. Furthermore, I detail how Israel uses agricultural science and the law to claim Palestinian farmers as naturally part of the environment and inferior cultivators—thus justifying their expulsion. I trace how such rhetoric by Israel and its supporters changed from the 20th century Green Revolution primacy of technoscientific dominance over “traditional” Palestinian agriculture, to the 21st century extolling of Jewish agricultural practices as authentic to the land and therefore, environmentally friendly. Finally, I demonstrate that Palestinian Americans’ engagement with practices of food sovereignty outside of Palestine is part of a transnational project of stewarding and protecting traditional Palestinian crops and foods that are under threat within Palestine under the hopes of returning the plants—and people—to the land someday. In both Palestine and the diaspora, Palestinians demonstrate creative methods to maintain and transmit cultural food knowledge across generations in the face of political and environmental threats to their livelihoods.
Below you can explore articles and public scholarship I have published on the research themes of my first book.
I am also working on a second book project, connecting both settler colonial dispossession and Indigenous resistance through land and food in Palestine and California.
I argue that Palestinian farmers in the northern West Bank use sustainable development to remain on their lands, but that doing so requires them to engage in the booms and busts of global capital. Furthermore, I detail how Israel uses agricultural science and the law to claim Palestinian farmers as naturally part of the environment and inferior cultivators—thus justifying their expulsion. I trace how such rhetoric by Israel and its supporters changed from the 20th century Green Revolution primacy of technoscientific dominance over “traditional” Palestinian agriculture, to the 21st century extolling of Jewish agricultural practices as authentic to the land and therefore, environmentally friendly. Finally, I demonstrate that Palestinian Americans’ engagement with practices of food sovereignty outside of Palestine is part of a transnational project of stewarding and protecting traditional Palestinian crops and foods that are under threat within Palestine under the hopes of returning the plants—and people—to the land someday. In both Palestine and the diaspora, Palestinians demonstrate creative methods to maintain and transmit cultural food knowledge across generations in the face of political and environmental threats to their livelihoods.
Below you can explore articles and public scholarship I have published on the research themes of my first book.
I am also working on a second book project, connecting both settler colonial dispossession and Indigenous resistance through land and food in Palestine and California.
Settler colonialism through agricultural science in Palestine and California.
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An article based on my historical research connecting the settler colonization of California and Palestine through scientific agriculture was recently published in the Journal of Political Ecology. It's available open access! This paper was the 2023 winner of the Political Ecology Society's Eric Wolf Paper Prize.
Kirk, Gabi. 2024. “‘A Fairly Good Crop for White Men:’ The Political Ecology of Agricultural Science and Settler Colonialism between the US and Palestine.” Journal of Political Ecology 31 (1): 888–908. https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.6132. I delivered a talk based on this article, "The political ecology of agricultural science and settler colonialism between the US and Palestine," virtually with the University of Tennessee Anthropology Department's Disasters, Displacement, and Human Rights webinar series in May 2024. You can watch the recording here. |
Indigeneity and agrarian capitalism in Palestine.
Another article, based on my ethnographic research with Palestinian farmers in Jenin, was published in Historical Materialism in a special issue on "Race and Capital" in 2023.
Kirk, Gabi. 2023. “Commodifying Indigeneity? Settler Colonialism and Racial Capitalism in Fair Trade Farming in Palestine.” Historical Materialism 31 (2): 236–68. https://doi.org/10.1163/1569206x-bja10013.
A non-paywalled version can be found published on the Historical Materialism website.
I also spoke about the post-October 7 implications of my research on Historical Materialism's podcast in December 2023. Check out the episode (also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, etc).
Kirk, Gabi. 2023. “Commodifying Indigeneity? Settler Colonialism and Racial Capitalism in Fair Trade Farming in Palestine.” Historical Materialism 31 (2): 236–68. https://doi.org/10.1163/1569206x-bja10013.
A non-paywalled version can be found published on the Historical Materialism website.
I also spoke about the post-October 7 implications of my research on Historical Materialism's podcast in December 2023. Check out the episode (also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, etc).