Struggling for Time: Environmental Governance and Agrarian Resistance in Israel/Palestine

by Natalia Gutkowski

Struggling for Time examines how time is used as a mechanism of control by the Israeli state and a site of mundane resistance among Palestinian agriculture professionals. Natalia Gutkowski unpacks power structures to show how a settler society lays moral claim on indigenous time through agrarian environmental policies, science, technologies, landscapes, and bureaucracy. Shifting the analysis of Israel/Palestine from land and space to time, she offers new insight into the operation of power in agrarian environments and develops a contemporary framework to understand land and resource grabs under temporal justifications. Traveling across both policymaking arenas and Palestinian citizens' agrarian fields, Gutkowski follows the multiple ways that state officials, agronomists, planners, environmentalists, and agriculturalists use time as a tool of collective agency. Through investigations of wetland drainage in Galilee, transformations in olive agriculture, sustainable agrarian development, and regulation of the shmita biblical commandment, the "year of release" for agricultural fields, this work highlights how Palestinian citizens' agriculture has become a site for the state to settle and mediate time conflicts to justify its existence. As Struggling for Time demonstrates, time politics will take on ever greater urgency as societies and governments plan for an uncertain future in our era of climate change.

336 pages, Paperback

Published May 14, 2024

Reviews

[Stephanie Ridiculous · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was ready to give this 5 starts, until literally the last two sentences of the book.

Overall, this is a fascinating look at agriculture in Palestine. Examining time as a tool of colonization is very eye opening and fascinating. Learning about Israeli olive development, "observance" of shmita, resource allocation, and bureaucratic delay tactics paints a very clear picture of the commonly "invisible" and "slow" forms of violence against Palestinians. While a bit dense, as an academic text, it was a pretty gripping read, that I felt was fair in its critique of Israeli government and Palestinian actors.

However, this kind of fell apart at the end of the conclusion. After 200 pages of establishing many of the ways Palestinians have been disenfranchised in the agricultural sector, Gutkowski ends with:

"But in this present moment, Palestinians in Israel are not fighting collectively for the future of agriculture. Giving up the right to produce food should be reconsidered."

I am baffled at how this long and thorough analysis of oppression, dispossession, and injustice is concluded with the notion that Palestinians are "giving up." It is true that this book is incredibly niche, and it does not at all analyze the broader spectrum of what is happening in Palestine. However, these final two sentences come across as flippant about the plight of the Palestinian, and overlooks any context as to why "fighting for the future of agriculture" might not be very high on the Palestinian to do list. To suggest that they should simply "reconsider" this fight is highly ignorant and naïve of what fights the Palestinian people are choosing, or are forced, to focus on instead. Having land to cultivate won't mean much if there are no Palestinians left alive to cultivate it.

Truly, I am flabbergasted and most of what I would have shared in this review is lost in my trying to make sense of this final statement from Gutkowski. Still, I do think this is a worth while read for those seeking a deeper understanding of how Israel functions in sectors that are less likely to make it into mainstream media, and the chapter of olive agriculture is particularly interesting in its own right. I cannot move past this conclusion, though, which is why I am only giving it two stars.