Architecture and Development

Israeli Construction in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Settler Colonial Imagination, 1958-1973

By: Ayala Levin

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Hardcover | 11 February 2022

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Hardcover
338 Pages

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25.4 x 17.78 x 2.06

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In Architecture and Development Ayala Levin charts the settler colonial imagination and practices that undergirded Israeli architectural development aid in Africa. Focusing on the "golden age" of Israel's diplomatic relations in and throughout the continent from 1958 to 1973, Levin finds that Israel positioned itself as a developing-nation alternative in the competition over aid and influence between global North and global South. In analyses of the design and construction of prestigious governmental projects in Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Ethiopia, Levin details how architects, planners, and a trade union--owned construction company staged Israel as a new center of nonaligned expertise. These actors and professionals paradoxically capitalized on their settler colonial experience in Palestine, refashioning it as an alternative to Western colonial expertise. Levin traces how Israel became involved in the modernization of governance, education, and agriculture in Africa, as well as how African leaders chose to work with Israel to forge new South-South connections. In so doing, she offers new ways of understanding the role of architecture as a vehicle of postcolonial development and in the mobilization of development resources.

Industry Reviews

"A remarkable addition to the growing literature on the intrinsic plurality of global development experiences. Placing architectural expertise at the center of knowledge transfer between the newly-formed nation-states of Israel and on the African continent, Ayala Levin depicts state building as a parallel activity being undertaken by both provider and receiver of expertise, undoing received notions about 'developed' and 'underdeveloped' contexts. The sections comparing Israeli approaches toward kibbutzim at home and rural-urban migration patterns in Sierra Leone and Nigeria are nothing short of spectacular." -- Arindam Dutta, author of * The Bureaucracy of Beauty: Design in the Age of Its Global Reproducibility *
"In this rich and wonderfully detailed study, Ayala Levin provides a careful, learned, and multidisciplinary assessment of Israel's architectural and developmental impact in Africa in which the characters and mindsets of Israeli architects and planners come alive. Scholars of Israeli-African relations, African development studies, African and Israeli architecture, and urban planning in the global South will find Levin's expose of Israeli-African geopolitics to be a valuable contribution." -- Garth Myers, author of * Rethinking Urbanism: Lessons from Postcolonialism and the Global South *
"Levin takes the reader on a well-detailed and multifaceted journey." -- Gabriel Schwake * Connections *

"Architecture and Development provides far more than the sum of its case studies: this volume presents excellent scholarship. ... It significantly enriches our knowledge of Israeli and African planning and architecture. It critically reveals fascinating connections between national ideologies and international relations and provides new perspectives on global junctions of architecture culture and knowledge production."

-- Inbal Ben Asher Gitler * Israel Studies Review *
"Without a doubt, Ayala Levin has produced a masterpiece as she endeavors beautifully to use architecture and development paradigms to write history, politics, sociology, international diplomacy, and policy. This book is certainly beneficial to a wide range of scholars, students, politicians, policy makers, and the general readership." -- Kwaku Nti * Journal of Global South Studies *

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