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Current Flow: The Electrification of Palestine

Online ISBN:
9780804788687
Print ISBN:
9780804787062
Publisher:
Stanford University Press
Book

Current Flow: The Electrification of Palestine

Published online:
29 May 2014
Published in print:
6 November 2013
Online ISBN:
9780804788687
Print ISBN:
9780804787062
Publisher:
Stanford University Press

Abstract

This book follows electric wires as they extend to new contact points and asks about the social significance of being permanently attached to an electrical network (’the grid’). The argument is that the construction of an electric grid is a process that creates social differences, new subjectivities, distinct geographical areas, and new social classifications and categories (types of ’electric consumers’). The method of inquiry adopts some insights of actor-network-theory, which accounts for social processes in terms of the joint assembly of human actors and non-human entities. The case-study is of electrification in 1920s Palestine. The book offers a material sociology of the roots of separatism between Arabs and Jews, discusses how electrification facilitated the construction of a distinct “Jewish Economy” and how electric wiring played its part in urban segregation. The historical case is used as means of exploring broader implications for sociological theory in general and for the future direction of the sociology of infrastructures in particular. Specifically, the book outlines a theoretical framework for treating humans-on-grids as entities that transcend the subject/object opposition: attachment to grids is not conceived as a new form of ’addiction’ but rather a relational and productive way for understanding agency and group formation.

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