Ecopastoralism: The Jewish Shepherd Revolution in the Israeli-Occupied West Bank

This workshop will explore how sheep have become potent yet clandestine agents of control, as well as animated technologies that produce, instill, and normalize biblical and spiritual imaginaries of the landscape and of the Jewish people's authentic belonging to it. Backed by the state, the settlers’ mundane shepherding activities have already enabled the largest land grab in the occupied West Bank since 1967. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, the workshop will contemplate this new "shepherding revolution," as the settlers call it. It will situate this revolution amidst sheep-related practices in other settler-colonial contexts and in relation to shepherding in the state's early years. Irus Braverman argues that examining settler shepherds in the West Bank expands our understanding of settler colonialism. It also illuminates how sheep-washing practices that position settlers as ecopastoralists are used to justify violence in the eyes of the occupying regime. This exacerbates the problematic settler ecologies practiced here.

Tamar Novick, Sezai Ozan Zeybek, and Katharina Lange will respond to Irus Braverman's recent work on the "shepherding revolution" and share insights from their research in Palestine, Israel, Turkey, and Syria. Workshop participants will then be invited to react, ask questions, and contribute their expertise and experiences to the discussion. 

Moderator: Hilal Alkan

Please fill out this form if you’d like to attend the workshop.

In collaboration with the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO).