About the Initiative
The Initiative on Labor and Culture at Yale University is a research center that seeks to understand the emergence of a global labor force, and the social and cultural transformations in work, working peoples, and labor movements around the world.
Drawing on currents in labor history, cultural studies, the sociology of work, working-class studies, and the study of ethnicity, race, gender and migration, the Initiative explores the cultural forms and social formations created by working people in the midst of changing labor processes and migration patterns, as well as forms of ethnic, class, and gender conflict and social movement solidarities.
Thursday, April 25th
Stone Men: The Palestinians who Built Israel
A book talk with Andrew Ross
WLH 116
4:30 PM
Sponsored by the Yale Initiative on Labor & Culture and the American Studies Program
“They demolish our houses while we build theirs.” This is how a Palestinian stonemason, in line at a checkpoint outside a Jerusalem suburb, described his life to Andrew Ross. Palestinian “stone men,” utilising some of the best-quality dolomitic limestone deposits in the world and drawing on generations of artisanal knowledge, have built almost every state in the Middle East except their own. Today the business of quarrying, cutting, fabrication, and dressing is Palestine’s largest employer and generator of revenue, supplying the construction industry in Israel, along with other Middle East countries and even more overseas.
Drawing on hundreds of interviews in Palestine and Israel, Ross’s engrossing, surprising, and gracefully written story of this fascinating ancient trade shows how the stones of Palestine, and Palestinian labour, have been used to build out the state of Israel—in the process, constructing “facts on the ground”—even while the industry is central to Palestinians’ own efforts to erect bulwarks against the Occupation. For decades, the hands that built Israel’s houses, schools, offices, bridges, and even its separation barriers have been Palestinian. Looking at the Palestine–Israel conflict in a new light, this book asks how this record of achievement and labour be recognised.
Andrew Ross is Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at NYU. A contributor to the Guardian, the New York Times, The Nation, and Al Jazeera, he is the author of many books, including Creditocracy and the Case for Debt Refusal; Bird On Fire: Lessons from the World’s Least Sustainable City; Nice Work if You Can Get It: Life and Labor in Precarious Times; Fast Boat to China–Lessons from Shanghai; No-Collar: The Humane Workplace and its Hidden Costs; and The Celebration Chronicles: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Property Value in Disney’s New Town.
The Initiative includes:
Work & Culture, a series of online Working Papers.
“Workers of the World,” a series of speakers and colloquia on international labor studies.
“A Decade of ‘New Voice’ Unionism: Reconsidering the US Labor Movement,” a series of speakers and colloquia on the US labor movement.
“Social Movement Activism after Yale,” a series of conversations with Yale graduates active in social justice movements.
“Reconsidering Historical Materialism,” a series of lectures and colloquia in collaboration with the Whitney Humanities Center’s Working Group on Marxism and Cultural Theory.
“Remapping Cultural Studies,” a series of speakers and colloquia on cultural studies and cultural history.
The Working Group on Globalization and Culture, a continuing research group.
Conferences.