The Common Camp: Architecture of Power and Resistance in IsraelPalestine

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Seeing the camp as a persistent political instrument in IsraelPalestine and beyond

The Common Camp underscores the role of the camp as a spatial instrument employed for reshaping, controlling, and struggling over specific territories and populations. Focusing on the geopolitical complexity of IsraelPalestine and the dramatic changes it has experienced during the past century, this book explores the regions extensive networks of camps and their existence as both a tool of colonial power and a makeshift space of resistance.

Examining various forms of camps devised by and for Zionist settlers, Palestinian refugees, asylum seekers, and other groups, Irit Katz demonstrates how the camp serves as a common thread in shaping lands and lives of subjects from across the political spectrum. Analyzing the architectural and political evolution of the camp as a modern instrument engaged by colonial and national powers (as well as those opposing them), Katz offers a unique perspective on the dynamics of IsraelPalestine, highlighting how spatial transience has become permanent in the ongoing story of this contested territory.

The Common Camp presents a novel approach to the concept of the camp, detailing its varied history as an apparatus used for population containment and territorial expansion as well as a space of everyday life and subversive political action. Bringing together a broad range of historical and ethnographic materials within the context of this singular yet versatile entity, the book locates the camp at the core of modern societies and how they change and transform.

Reviews

"The Common Camp is truly original and deeply researched. It is a brilliant study that is bound to become a classic read for anyone wishing to understand the camp in all its various manifestations and shifts in power relations between those entrapped and encamped and those external to its borders."Dawn Chatty, University of Oxford

"The Common Camp is a great book, both theoretically and historically, and likely to become a foundational reference. It provides a substantial advance on theorizations of the camp, developing from and critiquing Agambens work. The rich discussion of the history and politics of IsraelPalestine is an analysis through the camp as much as of the camp, which opens some valuable and much-needed perspective."Stuart Elden, author of The Early Foucault

Author Bio

Irit Katz is assistant professor of architecture and urban studies at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Christs College.