Vegetable women: Agricultural education, indigenous knowledge, and becoming settlers in early twentieth century Palestine

• Published in: Endeavour (New series) Vol. 48; no. 2; p. 100941
• Main Authors: Teharlev Ben-Shachar, Erela, Novick, Tamar
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Elsevier Ltd 01-06-2024
• Subjects: Agriculture - history; Arabs - history; Colonialism - history; Female; History, 20th Century; Humans; Jews - history; Middle East; Vegetables - history; Middle East
• ISSN: 0160-9327; 1873-1929; 1873-1929
• DOI: 10.1016/j.endeavour.2024.100941

This paper deals with agricultural training for Jewish women settlers in Palestine, and focuses on the first school established by the Jewish botanist and settler Hannah Meisel in 1911. The school was modeled after European schools for horticulture, but grew to serve the settler community and students’ need to overcome financial challenges as well as the gendered structure of the labor force. As they pursued agricultural work, proximity to the land, and native status, the women taking part in the training program ultimately combined ideas about scientific progress and European theoretical foundations with Palestinian indigenous knowledge and practices. By appropriating Palestinian agricultural techniques and adopting vegetables as the main sphere of work and production, women settlers both struggled to shift gendered social hierarchies and became deeply involved in the settler-colonial project.