Settler Colonialism, the Indigenous Perspective, and the Sociology of Knowledge Production in Israel

The article traces the return of the settler colonial paradigm to the social sciences and humanities in Israel, with an emphasis on sociology and history as the two major disciplines that have produced robust criticisms of the myths of 1948 and the history of Zionism. The article offers three main arguments. The first is that the return of the settler colonial paradigm within the social sciences in Israel was due in large part to the development of a set of political conditions within Palestinian society in Israel. Second, Palestinian scholars and research centers based in Israel are playing a significant role in the resurgence of the settler colonial paradigm, in contrast to the earlier phases of what became known as “post-Zionism”/“the new historians,” “critical sociology,” and postcolonialism, which were all dominated by Israeli scholars and focused either on the 1948 war or on criticizing the Ashkenazi hegemony. Third, I demonstrate that, while scholars within the field of sociology and the Israeli social sciences in general have previously analyzed the conflict within the colonial/settler colonial framework, their research has characteristically framed the colonial situation in Israel/Palestine as historical in nature, rather than as an ongoing process. Moreover, as a Jewish/Israeli-centric field, it has focused mainly on the Zionist movement and on Israelis and their practices, leaving Palestinians absent from, or external to, their analysis. The article thus argues that what distinguishes the current phase of scholarly discussion of settler colonialism is that it centers the Palestinians as the group being researched, not only as victims but also as agents of history that resist the Zionist project and change its contours, historiography, and society as engaged scholars. The article ends with signaling new research directions through a phenomenology of relations between Palestinian citizens in Israel and Israeli society.