Tactics and strategies of power: The construction of spaces of belonging for Palestinian women in Jaffa–Tel Aviv

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Synopsis

Adopting a qualitative method, the study examines the everyday tactics that sixty Palestinian women from Jaffa employ in order to cope with various strategies of power – gender, cultural, national and global – that limit their everyday spatial practices. Based on the narratives of these women, the study suggests to distinguish between pro-active and non-active tactics which create or diminish the construction of spaces of belonging on the base of daily negotiations, and ways of maneuvering that Palestinian women use against these strategies of power. Pro-active tactics create alternative spaces; enable the manipulation of social and cultural codes; and create the home as a space of independence. Non-active tactics work against ethnic allocation; discriminatory Palestinian and Jewish development and Islamization of space. The study considers spaces of belonging, which are created by daily negotiations and tactics, to be the “third space”, not only the space occupied by oppressed and marginalized groups, but also a space of opportunities that affords these women the possibility of making changes in their spatial practices.

Highlights

► We interviewed sixty Palestinian women of three age groups living in Jaffa. ► We examine the everyday tactics that women employ to cope with various strategies. ► Spaces of belonging are consist of pro-active and non-active tactics. ► Sense of belonging is created by the daily negotiations and successful tactics. ► They create “third space”, where they can have spatial practices changing.

Introduction

This article suggests another perspective on the construction of spaces of belonging, as consisting of pro-active and non-active tactics that Palestinian women citizens of Israel1 develop in order to cope with the gender, cultural, national and global strategies of power they encounter in their everyday lives. These women, who live in Jaffa at the margins of the globalizing Jewish city of Tel Aviv (see Map. 1), express their sense of belonging or lack of belonging in direct relation to the extent to which they are able to cope actively or non-actively with these strategies of power using various tactics. Following de Certeau's (1984) theorization of everyday life, we focus on the strategies of power that affect their everyday life, and in particular on how Palestinian women construct spaces of belonging or lack of belonging by employing various tactics and ways of maneuvering and resistance as reactions to strategies of power. As the paper will demonstrate, the tactical responses to strategies of power are complex. Palestinian women sometimes confront strategies of power by pro-actively constructing their spaces of belonging as spaces of opportunities in which they make it possible to bring about change in the spatial practices of their everyday lives. However, in other cases Palestinian women surrender to strategies of power and behave and use public spaces in non-active ways that express their sense of dis or lack of belonging. In these cases strategies of power have strong negative effects on their daily lives.

The paper consists of three parts. The first part specifies the theoretical framework of the paper, focusing on theories of everyday life, space, gender and culture, and on globalization and the global space. Each echoes specific strategies of power and thus includes a brief historical background of Jaffa–Tel Aviv. The second part presents the narratives of Palestinian women from Jaffa, which forms the analytical base for an elaborated understanding of the construction of spaces of belonging. The third part, the conclusion, presents a conceptual framework of pro-active and non-active tactics as formulating belonging or lack of belonging based on the narratives of Palestinian women.

Section snippets

Everyday life in urban spaces and practices of belonging

One of the theoretical bases of the elaboration that we suggest here to the meanings of spaces of belonging is that space is a dynamic and a changing entity that is affected by social and power relations, as well as by cultural codes (Bingamen et al., 2002, Crange and Thrift, 2000, de Certeau, 1984, Foucault, 1980, Lefebvre, 1991, Massey, 1994, Soja, 1996). Similar to Bourdieu (1991), de Certeau (1984) argues that practices of daily life give meanings to space; that is, daily spatial practices

Arab-Palestinian strategies of power: gender and culture

This section indicates the extent to which the focus on cultures, especially Arab culture, shows how norms and values can become strategies of power that limit women's daily use of space.

Arab culture is regarded as collective, traditional, hegemonic, conservative and patriarchal, with women having an inferior status (Abdo, 1987, Ahmad, 1994, Barakat, 2000, Rosenfeld, 1968). However, it has been argued that Arab culture is not static and is in fact a self-contradictory term, since while there

National and global strategies of power in Tel Aviv-Jaffa

One of the main assumptions of this paper is that Jewish national practices and processes of economic globalization dominate the spatial construction of Tel Aviv, while neglecting the development of the Arab areas of Jaffa. These practices and processes are among the strategies of power that affect the mobility and sense of belonging of Palestinian women.

But before moving on into the analysis we introduce a brief historical background on the development of Jaffa vis-à-vis Tel Aviv.

Palestinian

The construction of spaces of belonging: the method to identify daily tactics to cope with strategies of power

The main aim of this research is to identify the tactics women develop to cope with strategies of power in their everyday life as defined and narrated by the Palestinian women themselves, in order to propose another perspective to the construction of spaces of belonging as consisting of ongoing negotiations and tactics employed to deal with strategies of power at three spatial levels: the home, the neighborhood, and the city.

The study adopted the qualitative method of research. Its principal

The construction of spaces of belonging: another perspective

The elaboration suggested in this paper regarding the processes of constructing spaces of belonging perceives sense of belonging or dis-belonging as something that is created or enhanced as a result of the ongoing daily negotiations that Palestinian women perform with the strategies of power that affect their lives, and their use of tactics and other means of maneuvering around these strategies. It is an elaboration of the existing literature of and on de Certeau's work as it proposes in-depth

Pro-active and non-active tactics

In this section we analyze Palestinians women's pro and non-active tactics and ways of maneuvering in order to cope with the different kinds of strategies of power that they encounter in everyday life.

Conclusion — pro and non-active tactics as constructing spaces of belonging

A conceptual framework suggested here for an elaborated understanding of the construction of spaces of belonging of Palestinian women is based on the analysis of pro-active tactics which enhance a sense of belonging, and non-active tactics which surrender to strategies of power and decrease sense of belonging. This will be done in keeping with de Certeau's theory of space, according to which space is created by the spatial practices of everyday life. Accordingly, the tactics that the women

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