Doctoral Dissertation Research: Concepts of Time Among Settlers in Disputed Territories

Rutgers University New Brunswick, New Brunswick NJ

Investigators

Abstract

Rutgers University doctoral student, Assaf Harel, under the guidance of Dr. Daniel Goldstein, will undertake research on concepts of time and local politics in contemporary pioneer settlements. Pioneer settlement is a source of both opportunity and conflict in the contemporary world. How settlers assign meaning to the past, the present, and the future appears to be significant for predicting the potential for territorial disputes. The research will be carried out among two ideologically different Jewish settlement blocs in the West Bank. Through the use of qualitative and ethnographic methods that include interviews, archival research and participant observation, the researcher will investigate (1) how different groups of settlers assign meaning to events in time; (2) how they view their own capacity to influence the flow of history, and (3) how these conceptions of time relate to ideology as well as to settlement-making practices. The research is important because it may offer a lens into the local-level roots of seemingly intractable conflicts in many parts of the world today. Findings from the research also will contribute to social scientific understanding of the relations between time and space and thus will deepen understanding of temporal dimensions of territorial disputes. Funding this research also supports the education of a social scientist.