תוכן ענינים של הספר ותיאור קצר
מתוך socialsciences
David De Vries, Diamonds and War: State, Capital and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2010
This book by Prof. David De Vries of Tel Aviv University unfolds the formation in Palestine in the 1930s and 1940s of what has become one of the world's main strongholds of diamond production and trade. It discusses the history of the diamond-cutting industry characterized by a long-standing Jewish presence as a social history embedded in the international political economy of its times, and it places the genesis of the industry on a wider continuum of geographic and economic relocation of Dutch, Belgian and German diamond cutting centers. The book situates the Jewish diamond manufacturers and workers, the transplantation of their know-how, and their strategies in the reciprocal relations with both the British-Colonial and Zionist state structures, and through them with the networks and sources of diamond supplies, marketing targets and international competitors. Based on previously unexamined historical documentation found in archives in Belgium, England, Israel, the Netherlands and the USA the book unravels the Middle-eastern pattern of state intervention in the empowerment of private capital. At the same time it recasts the inseparability of a craft culture from international politics in a period of war and transformation of empire.
Contents
Introduction Global and National: War, Diamonds and the Colonial State
Chapter 1. Palestine as an Alternative
Chapter 2. The Making of a Monopoly
Chapter 3. Diamond Work and Zionist Time
Chapter 4. The Challenge and its Constraints
Chapter 5. Labor Unrest
Chapter 6. Liberation and Liberalization
Chapter 7. Crisis and Restructuring
Chapter 8. Reproducing the Pact
Epilogue