California Dreaming

Ideology, Society, and Technology in the Citrus Industry of Palestine, 1890-1939

By Nahum Karlinsky

Subjects: Israel Studies, Agricultural Economics, History, Middle East Studies, Jewish Studies
Series: SUNY series in Israeli Studies
Paperback : 9780791465288, 284 pages, June 2012
Hardcover : 9780791465271, 284 pages, August 2005

Alternative formats available from:

Read Excerpt View Table of Contents

Request Desk or Examination Copy
Request a Media Review Copy

Table of contents

List of Maps and Figures
List of Tables
Preface

1. The Tantalizing Aroma of Citrus Blossoms

PART I. IDEOLOGICAL PLATFORM

2. Degania or Petah Tikva?: Private Enterprise in the Worldview of Jewish Citrus Growers in Palestine and Their Opponents

PART II. SOCIAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL PLATFORM

3. Spatial Distribution and Social and Entrepreneurial Profile

PART III. TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS

4. From Jaffa to Petah Tikva: Technological Development in Citriculture during the Ottoman Period

5. Technological Innovation during the Mandate Era

6. Technological Innovations in Arab Citriculture

PART IV. GROWING PAINS

7. Pursuit of Profit

8. The British Mandate Government's Policy toward the Citrus Industry

9. Attempts to Establish a Cartel

10. Conclusion: Jewish Citriculture as a Private-Enterprise Industry

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Multidisciplinary study of the citrus industry in Palestine before World War II.

Description

The citrus industry of Palestine has often been associated with the myths and ideals of the Labor Movement and its Zionist-Socialist ideology. The Jaffa orange, like the young pioneer and the collective kibbutz, was emblematic of a colonizing meta-narrative that marginalized or even denounced the private entrepreneurs—both Arabs and Jews—who were the true founders and proponents of the flourishing citrus industry in Palestine. California Dreaming reveals that these private entrepreneurs regarded the California citrus industry as their primary model of emulation. Utilizing an innovative multidisciplinary approach, Nahum Karlinsky vividly reconstructs the social fabric, economic structure, and ideological tenets of the Jewish citrus industry of Palestine in the early twentieth century. Also accentuated is the role of Palestinian-Arab citrus growers, whose industry predated that of their Jewish counterparts, and the complex relationship between the two national sectors that operated side by side.

Nahum Karlinsky is Senior Lecturer at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel.