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Production of space, intercultural encounters andpolitics: dynamics of consummate space andspatial intensity among the Israeli Bedouin

Avinoam Meir1 and Yuval Karplus2

The ‘spatial turn’, represented primarily by the Lefebvrean theory of production of space, fails to internaliseinsights from the ‘cultural turn’ which delves into high cultural resolutions of minority ethnic or religious sub-groups within Western culture. These insights suggest that space may be characterised by spatial pluralism thatoriginates in ontological pluralism of place and space. This ontological pluralism originates in the contemporaryreality of cultural pluralism within the same space. By deconstructing the classical Lefebvrean theory of productionof space as a super concept into finer scales, we facilitate internalisation of these cultural insights through a seriesof new sub-concepts of consummate space, spatial imbrication and spatial intensity. These successive concepts arecapable of creating a process of production of space with possible political consequences at group level. That is,violation of a space perceived and practised as consummate may lead to political action by group members. Thisconceptual framework, highlighting at high resolution the agency of space in culture, is demonstrated through adetailed analysis of a unique cultural group, the indigenous Bedouin of the Negev desert in Israel, through threephases of their spatial history over a period of two centuries – semi-nomadic pastoralism, sedentary farming andurban wage labour. This case may serve to illustrate the value of this theoretical approach for future analysis ofother unique cultural groups and a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of production of space.

Key words production of space; indigenous ontologies; consummate space; spatial intensity; Bedouin; Israel

1Department of Geography and Environmental Development, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, IsraelEmail: [email protected] and independent researcher, Beer Sheva, Israel

Revised manuscript received 6 July 2017

Introduction

This paper deals with the limited encounter betweensocial and cultural understandings of space and theincongruence of their research resolutions. We arguethat their limited mutual engagement results in over-sight of significant sub-processes that are masked bylow resolutions of spatial research. This propositionoriginates in our study of the spatial relationshipsbetween the spaces of the indigenous Bedouin in Israeland the enveloping Western culture. In our interpre-tation, studying these relationships at high resolutionsreveals concealed spatial situations that may producepolitical outcomes. The issue is related to the interfacebetween the spatial and cultural ‘turns’ of the socialsciences. The essence of the ‘spatial turn’ lies inrealising the centrality of the built environment inunderstanding social processes (Warf and Arias 2009).Space, as initially elaborated by, primarily, Harvey(1973 1985 1996), Lefebvre (1991) and Soja (19891996), and further interpreted by Elden (2004), Shields(1999 2013) and Stanek (2011), is generated by

individuals and institutions in the process of ‘Produc-tion of Space’ (henceforth PoS). In contrast, the‘cultural turn’, in its shifting away from positivistepistemology (Best 2007), attempts at understandingsociety through such concepts as meaning, conscious-ness, affect and symbols. It regards as essential anunderstanding of how individuals, communities, organ-isations and institutions bestow meaning on the world,establish identities, and define beliefs and values.

Our concern here is with the degree to which the‘spatial turn’ has fully embraced the ‘cultural turn’. Inour reading this has been accomplished only partially,primarily because there is a scale gap between them intheir conceptual and analytical applications. The ‘spa-tial turn’, and analysis of PoS, are customarily appliedat the macro scale, and fail thus to adopt high culturalresearch resolutions offered by the ‘cultural turn’, thoseworking at local specific and group scales (Howitt2003), resulting in its tendency to flatten culture.Adopting local or group analytical resolutions ofculture may unravel different cultural ontologies andhence various and finer processes often contradicting

The information, practices and views in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinion ofthe Royal Geographical Society (with IBG). ISSN 0020-2754 Citation: 2017 doi: 10.1111/tran.12210

© 2017 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)

those observed at coarser resolutions, carrying thepotential of producing new spatial concepts.

In this paper we wish to propose a set of conceptsarising in the encounter between entities at contrastingscales and cultures that may possibly produce a spatio-political process. We begin by presenting the maincomponents of the theory of PoS in modern urbansociety as the major representative of the ‘spatial turn’.We then highlight its shortcomings in neglecting otherspaces of unique cultural groups at local scales that nestwithin macro-level Western urban culture. Issues ofscale are thus inevitably introduced into the analysis.Following this we present the spatial concepts that mayunfold from understanding the encountered micro andmacro spatial scales of culture. This conceptualapproach is then illustrated with a case study of theindigenous Bedouin community in Israel. We concludeby discussing the potential of these concepts for a morenuanced understanding of processes of PoS.

‘PoS’ and its cultural shortcomings

From among the many components of Lefebvre’s ‘PoS’we have chosen to highlight those most relevant for ourcase. The concept of social spatiality (Harvey 1973 19851996; Lefebvre 1991 2003 2004 2009; Soja 1989) refersto capitalistic mechanisms of urban space as producedby social agents that are contextualised in theireconomic, cultural and political structures. Under-standing PoS involves comprehending the three simul-taneously constitutive facets of space (spatial triad).Perceived space (concrete space) is the space asperceived by the senses, the material arrangementsand characteristics of societal uses of space. Conceivedspace (representation of space) is an abstract formationproduced by administrators and technocrats thatimposes order on concrete space through laws, assignedvalues, demarcation of jurisdictions and administration.It may denote an arena for spatial appropriation bygroups from within society who hold alternative or evensubversive perceptions, conceptions and ideologies ofthe established space. Lived space (space of represen-tation) embodies the total experience of inhabitants intheir everyday life. Through its use space is produced,modified and invested with symbolism and meaning,offering a resolution of the concrete (perceived) andthe abstract (conceived) spaces as real-and-imagined. Itmay denote an emotional bonding between society andits space, an ideology of space and sense of place.

Highly relevant for our discussion is the question asto whether a congruent whole evolves between thesefacets of space. For Lefebvre, congruence evolvesunder supportive circumstances of common language,shared code of conduct and consensus of goals,generating a trialectic which resolves contradictionsand is capable of generating a new space. He

maintained that congruence implies the group is ableto ‘produce a space, its own space’ (1991, 53).

Lefebvre’s approach became a platform for muchtheoretical discussion and empirical research on socialconflict in urban space (to name a few examples:Charnock and Ribera-Fumaz 2011; Hillier 2002; Jaba-reen 2017; Leary 2009; Yacobi 2003). However, it alsoinvites criticism relevant to our discussion. Karplus andMeir (2014) remark that these discussions and researchare aimed mostly at the urban formation whichLefebvre views as the dominant spatial formation ofthe producing society, and not at the nature of theproducing society itself. In his framework the Westerncity, epitomised in the post-war French city, is themajor medium in human existence within which controlof space is an arena of conflict (Gregory 1994). In thisspace social heterogeneity, anchored in social classdifferences, generates contradictions which originate indisparities between experiences of local agents (theirlived or desired/imagined space) and its material andconceptual production by state and market agents. Thisturbulence, as suggested by Elden (2004) and Schmid(2008), and highlighted by Lefebvre himself, generatesthe dialectical nature of PoS.

Yet, while Lefebvre’s lived space/space of represen-tation refers to shaping meanings of space through thedialectics between the individual and his/her culture, hedoes not sufficiently articulate societal diversity, bothwithin the same Western culture and among diversecultural conceptions of space within it. Within the sameculture, Lefebvre (1991) indeed suggests that differ-ences exist on the margins of the homogenised norma-tive realm due to the internal social contradictionsinherent within abstract space, generating what heterms ‘differential space’. This points to Leary’s (2012)notion that the abstract and homogenous space con-tains immanent vulnerabilities. However, Lefebvre’scontradictions referred primarily to urban spatialities.A more inclusive conceptual framework is Foucault’s(1986) notion of ‘other spaces’, heterotopia, that arethe real and effective, actually localisable spaces, whichmay carry a different and even a contradictory functionwithin a single society. This implies expressions of adifferent spatiality desired by people from within thesame grand culture who seek and struggle for alterna-tive codes of spatial conduct. Two examples come tomind. The first is the case of England’s ‘radicalruralities’ where a heterogeneous and multi-facetedcountryside is advocated in rejection of the homogenis-ing normativity of the ‘industrial agriculture’ model(Halfacree 2007). The second is the conflict betweenUC Berkeley and the homeless people over People’sPark in the early 1990s. Mitchell (1995) highlightedexperiences, affects and meanings expressed by thelatter towards the Park as a public space that contrastedwith those of university and city administrations,

2 Avinoam Meir and Yuval Karplus

ISSN 0020-2754 Citation: 2017 doi: 10.1111/tran.12210© 2017 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)

producing different spatialities within the same grandculture.

More significant for our case is the presence ofcontradicting cultural conceptions of space. Lefebvreoverlooks finer cultural resolutions of unique groupswhich do not necessarily represent the Western urbanformation and culture. Contemporary Western cul-ture’s space hosts numerous such sub-cultural enclavesdue primarily to 20th-century international migrationor earlier centuries’ colonisation. In many cases theseminority ethnic groups have a different language, codeof conduct and goals. These may contradict state’s ormajority society’s ideology by maintaining a logic,world-view and unique modes of thought which arenot necessarily sealed from external influences yet mayproduce cultural contradictions within the same spacethat are external to Lefebvre’s internal social contra-dictions.

These cultural contradictions and differences reflectpart of the ‘cultural turn’ (e.g. Alexander 1988; Best2007; Bourdieu 1977; Claval et al. 2003; Foucault 1977;Geertz 1973; Jameson 1998), posing thus a doublechallenge to the theory of PoS. First, the shift awayfrom Lefebvre’s singular narrative of space in searchfor a unitary theory (see Pierce and Martin 2015) hasushered the relational ontology of space as participa-tory, emergent and dynamic (Massey 2005 2007).However this ontological shift has itself been criticisedrecently for its own tendency towards abstraction anddeterritorialisation. In particular, concerns have beenraised over its view of space ‘as absolutely fluid, open orconceptual – that is, moving from one abstraction toanother’ and its ‘strange lack of materiality’, and hence‘[m]ust relational space be open ended and fluid?Might [it] be bordered, placed and material?’ (BawakaCountry et al. 2016, 459–60). These questions echoearlier concerns by Jones (2009) about lived experienceof many others that is neglected by relational ontology.Jones suggests that regions other than those servingearly relational thinking may produce different theo-retical perspectives, and cautions relational thinkersagainst ‘[t]he obvious danger of translating uniquenessinto one-region-tells-all scenarios’ (2009, 493). Byextension thus, spatial ontologies of many sub-culturalgroups, particularly indigenous ontologies, are absentfrom Lefebvre’s PoS.

The second challenge, as a by-product of the culturalturn’s high resolution observation of society and space,is that this tension between spatial ontologies isreflected in the issue of scale. In recent years scale asdimension of space has been brought into spatialdiscourse through notions of ‘localism, specificity anddiversity’ (Howitt 2003, 138). Obviously there is a scalegap between the Lefebvrean realm of PoS and the sub-cultural one. But it is not merely that the visible at onescale is invisible at the other. Moreover and more

specific, this gap involves competing, or as suggested byHowitt (2002 2013), ‘contested spatialities’ between thelocal sub-cultural or unique group and the surroundingmajority’s culture, as well as competing notions of scalebetween bounded space approaches and relationalthinking that are governing how people understandand produce spaces and places. This is particularlyhighlighted by Bawaka Country et al. (2016), whosuggest that, contra conventional openness-anchoredrelational thinking, relationality can also be stronglyplace-based through a complex and dynamic kinshipsystem. Scale to Howitt is thus ‘deeply implicated incore cultural concepts such as identity, subject anddifference’, implying thus ‘ontological pluralism’ (2002,306; 2006, 50). He highlights therefore the middle-ground approach of scale boundaries as interfaces,whereby larger and smaller scale entities are relation-ally and simultaneously contained within each other.These relations generate what he importantly terms‘messy overlaps’ between different scales (Howitt2006).

Ontological pluralism thus implies spatial pluralism– subcultural groups strive at their own PoS nestingwithin that of the grand space. This corresponds withLefebvre’s (1991) important notion of the unavoidable‘trial by space’ and the imperious role of space in agroup’s existence: ‘[A]ny “social existence” . . . failing toproduce its own space . . . would . . . sooner or laterdisappear’ (1991, 53; see also Elden 2004; Halfacree2007). We will return to this concept below. For now,however, we argue that from the perspective of the‘cultural turn’ this notion has not been pursued furtherinto diverse cultural conditions of PoS that contradictthose dealt with by proponents of the ‘spatial turn’. Inits Western urban orientation Lefebvre’s PoS, as asuper concept, was perhaps relevant for the mid-20thcentury when post-modern ideas of the condition ofhumanity were just emerging. As noted above, thissuper concept no longer satisfies the great culturaldiversity contemporarily hosted in it. This calls in a newconceptualisation which may adapt PoS to theseconditions and processes and facilitate its understand-ing more authentically and at the appropriate scale.

Proposed concepts

Consummate spaceThe universal supremacy of modern Western knowl-edge has been seriously questioned since the 1950s (e.g.Santos 2007) in an attempt to de-centre Westernconstructions. This knowledge has been home forLefebvre’s PoS. As part of the ‘cultural turn’, a bodyof research has developed about indigenous, local andvernacular modes of knowledge particularly throughthe prism of landscape and their resilience againstWestern culture’s rational knowledge (e.g. Boissi�ere

Production of space, intercultural encounters and politics 3


2009; Heckler 2009; Hirsch 1995; Ingold 2000; Stewartand Strathern 2003; West 2005). Revealed landscapesreflect resilience or transformation of vernacular com-ponents of the knowledge held by a local groupconcerning environment, production processes andsocial relations articulated within its belief systemsand values. As noted, many such groups are nowadaysindigenous peoples within post-colonial spaces.

These groups often occupy distinctive spaces consti-tuting group-based customary patterns and practices,implying their search for an optimally desired trialecticof their own PoS. Under the supportive circumstancesof common language, shared code of conduct andconsensus of goals, a congruent tri-space may formwhich we now suggest as a consummate space (Meir2013). Ideally it implies perfection in the sense ofco-constitution of the components vital for properexistence of a community or a cultural group. That is, inan ideal consummate space congruence betweenperceived (land use patterns), conceived (spatial man-agement procedures) and lived (ideologies of place)facets is balanced and sustainably built into group’s life.This harmonious tri-space produces Harvey’s (1985)‘structured coherence’ between economy, environmentand society. As suggested by Halfacree, there emergesa ‘clear degree of stability . . . [whereby] what isconceived is perceived is lived. At its extreme, wemay have what I will call cultish spaces’ (2007, 128;emphasis in the original). Halfacree is, however,rightfully and importantly careful to express this stablecongruence in relative rather than absolute terms. Thispoints also to the vulnerability and dynamism ofconsummate space, much the same as PoS of thegrand space is vulnerable itself.

This poses the question whether a consummatespace and its perfection are not ideal expressions.While care should indeed be taken with this idealism,Larsen’s and Johnson’s (2016) pluriversal (versusuniversal) approach of indigenous-based ontology onplace and being is highly significant for our case. Wesuggest that a consummate space or place is both anabstract and real entity and therefore both desired andpractised. It exists within the imagination of those wholive in it and sense it or wish it as consummate and it isreal as ‘[p]lace and self are mutually essential condi-tions not only for the knowledge of being but for beingitself’. In this ontology place is ‘the first being . . . thesource of all things’, it is ‘originary’ and has ‘seniority’and ‘agency irrespective of human presence or aware-ness’ (Larsen and Johnson 2016, 150–1). This may beinterpreted such that its consummate nature is givenand precedes human existence, and that being isincomplete in a non-consummate space. The imaginedand memorised stability of the consummate spacethroughout group’s history constitutes its greatest valuefor the group. It is manifested in intimate familiarity

with its material components and acceptance of rulesand regulations concerning conduct within it, facilitat-ing thus individual and collective economic, environ-mental, social and political wellbeing and mentalpeacefulness. This is particularly so when all these arepursued with significant longevity under autonomousconditions of little external interference. These prop-erties shape the group’s spatial identity and sustainedresilience within its space facing pressures applied byother modes of knowledge which produce otherspatialities.

Emergent mosaic and imbrication of PoSIt follows that a culturally unique group, situated withina Western-culture space, can produce its space inde-pendent of state and market macro powers. Indeed,from a cultural perspective, as shown above (see alsoCastree 2004; Hewson 2010; Howitt et al. 2009; Porter2010) the geographies of these groups are fundamen-tally contrasting with Western ones, and group mem-bers seek control over their PoS. This implies, assuggested by Karplus (2010; also Karplus and Meir2013), an ‘endogenic PoS’, as against the ‘exogenic’production of the grand space by the hegemonicsectors. As state and market powers desire spatialhomogeneity and smoothness of society–space rela-tionships at a macro scale (see also Howitt 2006), theendogenic PoS is often unrecognised by the hegemonyand is viewed as informal (Roy and AlSayyad 2004).

As this takes place at local scale there emerges amosaic of ‘PoS’s and scales with contrasting logics andinterests. The consummate space is desired by the localunique group for cultural and social sustainability andas buffer against the external hegemony. FollowingLefebvre’s concept of ‘the right to the city’, we suggestthe group may insist on what in another context hasbeen referred to as indigenous right for endogenousspatiality (Karplus and Meir 2010). It follows thatspaces exist and co-exist not only due to internal socialdialectics within the grand space, as per Lefebvre, butalso due to encounters with spaces of sub-culturalgroups. In these groups’ culture, place (and space) issupreme and given, and its agency determines people’srelationship with it, thus shaping their identity. In thegreater society, in contrast, space and place areemerging and evolving due to the social agency ofsocial relationships and contradictions. That is, amongthe former space is, whereas among the latter spaceevolves. This implies that Lefebvre’s notion of ‘trial byspace’ may not be relevant in such indigenous ontolo-gies, as space and place exist regardless of humanagency, or in Larsen and Johnson’s words (2016) placeis a more-than-human geographical self.

The question is what is the nature of space that isproduced by such an encounter? Addressing thisquestion requires understanding of the specific



relationships between the modes of PoS. Karplus andMeir (2014) propose the concept of imbricated spacewhich involves superimposition of a layer of spaceproduced by a group onto that of another in a partialoverlap. In its layering meaning this notion correspondswith Massey’s metaphor of a ‘palimpsest’ (2005, 110).Studying the pre-imbrication perceived, conceived andlived nature of each space facilitates understanding thenewly imbricated space produced by the synthesis. Inthis synthesis certain components of the tri-spaces(perceived, conceived and lived), that are in conflict orobsolete in both the endogenic and exogenic layers, areabolished while others that are vital and in mutualcongruence are preserved.

The relationships between the spaces raise thequestion of whether the imbrication process is capableof an irreversible erasure of all space layered under-neath. The partial overlap may leave unabolished partof the once-perceived space and its material compo-nents. A group can preserve various manifestations ofthe earlier space partially in what Salzman (1980)referred to as institutionalised cultural alternatives inreserve. These can be re-constituted when circum-stances emerge for a new cycle of PoS. The imbricationis thus not necessarily irreversible, depending onexperiences in the previous situation and presentcontexts. The concealed components may become aplatform for re-constituting some past settings andcomponents of the endogenic PoS which are presentlyimagined by group members as historically consum-mate. Such is the case with the spread of informalspaces into formal ones (Yiftachel 2009), re-nomadisa-tion of settled pastoral nomads (FAO 2001; Janzen2005), and contemporary religious re-formulatedspaces of fundamental Islamic communities in manyWest European cities (Varady 2008).

Spatial intensityThe major question from our perspective concerns nowthe impact of spatial imbrication with the grand spaceon the particular sub-cultural group. This questionassumes an inter-group tension over the imbricatedlayer, particularly under conditions of hegemonicrelations with PoS by state apparatus, what we referredto above as scale gap or Howitt’s (2009) scale politics.The imbrication process may then emerge as an issue inthe agenda of the local group. Space, previouslyexisting passively at backstage of individual and collec-tive consciousness due to its relative or ideal consum-mate nature, requiring thus little attention, is nowchallenged and moved to the fore. While indigenouscultures are our central concern here, this notiongenerally corresponds with the rise of space in politicssince the 1990s as manifested in Lefebvre’s ‘right to thecity’ (Brenner et al. 2012). Even more interesting forus, however, is England’s new ‘politics of the rural’ and

the conflict over the meaning and regulation of ruralityand rural identity, as activists ‘seek to defend . . . thecountryside, as they imagine it’ (Woods 2006, 593; italicsadded). This corresponds with Jones’ notion that

when performing their practical politics, agents imagine andidentify a discrete, bounded space characterised by a sharedunderstanding of the opportunities or problems that aremotivating the very nature of political action. (2009, 494)

Space thus assumes a property of presence in a group’sindividual and collective consciousness and existence.This expands on Larsen and Johnson’s notion that ‘infact human embodiment and awareness are an exten-sion of the agency of place’ (2016, 151). Thereforeanother question concerns the degree to which space asan issue is capable of mobilising the group to assert itsconsummate nature. Meir’s (2013) concept of spatialintensity reflects the level of prominence of space in theinternal agenda of the group. Spatial intensity isstretched along a range depending on specific circum-stances. At the ‘low’ edge, spatial issues are absent fromgroup’s consciousness and daily agenda, representinggroups who are balanced endogenously, i.e. their spaceis imagined and experienced as consummate. As thisbalance can be obstructed due to a swift culturalchange or external political intervention, threateningthe consummate nature of space, the spatial issuebegins to appear in group’s agenda. It may generatestress such that at the opposite edge of spatial intensity,reflecting presence of the spatial discourse at highintensity, the group is mobilised into political action. Incertain respects the circumstances of movementbetween these poles correspond with Halfacree’s(2007) three formats of rural coherence.

Bridging the ‘turns’Here, through observing PoS at a high inter-culturalresolution, the spatial and the cultural ‘turns’meet. PoSoriginates thus in the contradictions between differentforms of PoS held by different cultural groups withinthe grand space and not from social contradictions.This high-resolution observation produces the conceptsof consummate space, a mosaic of imbricated spacesand, finally, spatial intensity within the minority group.There is a logical succession of these concepts whichmay be possibly viewed as a process, but not necessarilya deterministic one. Imbrication may not necessarilyviolate consummate space to a degree of positioningspace high on a group’s collective and individualconsciousness that requires assertion of rights forspatiality.

The final question is hence, when does spatialimbrication lead to place or space-based struggles thusreflecting high spatial intensity? This depends on thenature of the inter-cultural gaps. In this paper we referparticularly to indigenous groups vs Western culture.



However, we suggest these issues are relevant to othersituations such as highly orthodox religious minoritiesvs secular majorities, or groups with unique socialideologies requiring distinctive and exclusive territorialexpressions vs the grand hegemonic space. Each ofthese cultural groups carries sufficient uniqueness foran endogenously produced space, with conditions forbecoming consummate. As such its degree of intensitymay rise during imbrication, with the consequent actionby group members for defending this uniqueness.

Below we outline a case study illustrating theseconcepts consecutively as a process among the Bedouinin southern Israel. This case represents a space of anindigenous semi-nomadic culture that has been nestingwithin the space of a hegemonic imperial/state power.The study spans almost two centuries. Methodologi-cally, it is based on fieldwork (Karplus 2010) whoseprimary findings were already published (Karplus andMeir 2013 2014) and its insights serve now as raw datain our analysis here. Due to the limited scope, thesedata are presented only in a summary tabular format.Countless other studies of this unique group (e.g.Center for Bedouin Studies and Development 2016),several of which are cited below, have also served assources of raw data for outlining the nature of Bedouinspace. These data are discussed and interpreted in twoways: synchronically, the spatial triad is presented forthree phases of Bedouin spatial history – semi-nomadicpastoralists, sedentarised farmer pastoralists and urba-nised wage labourers; diachronically, facets of the triadare compared across these phases for highlighting theencounter with external spatialities. Throughoutthe analysis, the phases are interpreted in terms ofthe above proposed conceptual framework.

The case of the Bedouin

Pastoral semi-nomadic spaceWe attempt first to elaborate the meaning of space atBedouin’s most fundamental condition as a pastoralist-tillers culture that existed until the mid-19th century.This is the base-point for understanding the emergenceof subsequent processes of spatial intensity. Nesting

within the Ottoman Empire’s macro-level space, thecritical component in understanding this society is itsindigenous customary law system as an internal judicialand regulative social institution. It constitutes an oralsystem of rules of conduct sharply distinguished fromits surrounding cultural systems. Despite beingunrecognised externally by all state systems, it hasbeen very constitutive and highly formative withinBedouin culture to the present day (Bailey 2009;Stewart 2006) leaning on historical accumulation ofsocial and environmental knowledge and on customarysocial contracts and behavioural codes. It serves as aninfrastructure for the social system which is anchored intribal organisation, and characterised by hierarchical,patriarchal, patrilocal and gerontocratic relations(Marx 1974 2005). It also covers various spatial aspects:delineation of territorial hierarchical boundaries (fromtribe to clan and down to extended family); manage-ment and regulation of access to material resources(grazing and arable land, water, flora, fauna andothers); and cyclical movement and location of fixedand mobile residential sites (Mintzker 2015; Perevolot-sky 1987; Stewart 1986). Taken together, these compo-nents were the central pillars of Bedouin culture. Somerelics of its landscape still persist today among sometribes and our study revealed the congruence of itsperceived, conceived and lived spaces. Its major com-ponents are presented in Table I.

Within this system land ownership was a centralcomponent within Bedouin customary law and cultureand was determined and agreed on internally, free ofany external intervention, shaping very considerablytheir indigenous spatiality (Meir 2009a). Its centralityin their affairs spans their entire modern history.

The internal balance between these facets of Bed-ouin grazing-tilling PoS generated personal and collec-tive security and wellbeing with coherence among itseconomy, society and environment. This sense ofwellbeing was supported by the group’s commonlanguage, vernacular indigenous-local knowledge,agreed custom and conducts and consensus of goals,facilitating thus its sustained existence for many gen-erations. Such long evolution reflected relative stability

Table I Pastoral semi-nomadic PoS

Perceived space Conceived space Lived space

Utilising natural resources andtopographic featuresFixed-permanent residential area andtemporary pasture landsSelf-built family dwellings symbolicallyfenced, animal pens and a communalshig (hospitality tent)

Functional-egalitarian and kin-relatedsocio-spatial homogeneitySemi-private area and no man’s area aredistinguished

Unobstructed movement and view of the desertexpanse, living close to nature and retracingancestors’ tracks to familiar pastures

Source: Adapted from Karplus and Meir 2014



and overall Bedouin cultural identity despite consider-able tribal fragmentation and rivalry. Negev space wasa distinct Bedouin cultural space, and until the mid-19th century it was practically free of political andadministrative intervention (Yiftachel and Roded2015). Hence endogeneity of its PoS was almostentirely independent of the production of any hege-monic imperial or state space. It is the combination ofcongruence between the facets of PoS, the coherence ofsociety/economy/environment, the longevity of endoge-nous production on lands customarily possessed fromtimes immemorial and owned under their tribalcustomary law and its autonomous nature that war-ranted this space a consummate ‘trial by space’.

Shifting to agricultureTilling was not alien to Bedouin pastoralists (Meraiot2011). However, the Ottoman Empire’s new Land Lawof 1858 required the Bedouin to cultivate their grazingland continuously intensively and at greater expanses toavoid its becoming crown land. This was a major spatiallandmark in Bedouin subsistence economy, contrastingtheir inclination towards tilling as only supplementaryto pastoral subsistence, with a substantial impact ontheir endogenous PoS (Table II). It also encouragedthe migration of fellaheen (peasants) into Bedouinspace as sharecroppers from the mid-19th century,which also had an impact.

Several spatial imbrication effects emerged in theevolving PoS. In perceived space, the first effect is thepartial disassociation of material-physical characteris-tics of land use from their environmental qualities.Pastoral PoS relied entirely on the physical infrastruc-ture of topography and pasture. In farming in contrast,topography remains as an environmental component,but resources (means of agricultural production) beginto incline towards exogenous purchase in the market.Second, in pastoral space flocks are moved acrossspatially extensive and seasonally alternating grazingfields within tribal territories while preserving house-hold tilling plots. In farming the range of actuallyproduced space contracts considerably. Abodes gravi-tate towards the concentrated permanent tilling fields,while flocks are moved over space only part of the time.

The perceived space gradually becomes an intensivelybuilt and tilled sedentary one. Third, advanced adap-tation of means of delineating household abodes isrequired for protecting the supreme socio-culturalvalues of privacy and honour, even within lineagegroups. In pastoralism, resort to delineation of abodeswas minimal and passive (e.g. natural landmarks),because delineation was realised primarily throughmovement with flocks. The group was thus employingthe socio-spatial resource of physical distanciationbetween families. In contrast, in sedentary denserresidential and agricultural space, this resource isgradually depleted and peasants resort to plantingshrubs as fences around abodes. Sediments of pastperceived space, such as the self-constructed householdtent and pastoral storage facilities, the traditionalhospitality tent and the flock pen, are still retained.Together with the new means of physical delineation,they generate the imbricated space at the microhousehold scale as part of PoS.

Conceived space refers to social structure andeconomic mode of production. In pastoral economyspace expanse per se is regarded as an economicresource for grazing. However, similar to many otherpastoralist cultures (Janzen 2000; Matampash 1993),its material manifestation as land is ‘owned’ by asupra-natural power. In agriculture in contrast, spaceassumes a different meaning as an economic resourcebecause considerably more units of land have apotential of high-yielding assets. Thus, conceivedspace is produced under two new principles of spatialmanagement. First, intensification of the productivevalue of space means introducing the concept of‘land’ as a valuable asset more intensely into localbeing in space compared to pastoralism. Thisrequires more complex mechanisms for allocatingthe productive value of space among group membersunder whose pressures space becomes now suscepti-ble to a new range of ownership categories – private,semi-private and tribal, still under the purview ofBedouin customary law. In this imbrication the relicof the previous principle of space management, thatof tribal non-private land ownership, is still mani-fested within tribal space.

Table II Sedentary farming PoS


Utilisation of topographic featuresResidential area, rainfall-dependentwheat-field, an olive-groveSelf-built family dwellings, plantedvegetation for privacy, agriculturalsheds and a communal shig

A three-layered territorialisation andkin-related socio-spatial homogeneityA range of private, semi-private andcommunal land ownership aredistinguishedAn ideology of space under thepatronage of life

A communal paternal bond towards space,strong sense of ownership, accomplishment andhistorical commitment to tradition of landrevival




The second principle refers to space as a socialrather than an economic resource. The imbricatedspace contains relics of pastoral practices of socio-spatial homogeneity that generated a very distinct tribalterritory. Territory is essential in facilitating strongmaterial and emotional bonds between individuals,tribe and territory in both pastoralism and farming. Theemerging sedentary-farming principle of managingconceived space is, however, one of social definitionof spatial relations whereby affiliation of the individualwith a predefined space a priori depends on tribalaffiliation. While in pastoral production such associa-tion is based too on tribal belonging, the individual hasno specific material ownership of a distinct piece oftribal space. In contrast, in the farming mode ofproduction this practice gradually yields to one of par-cellation of tribal space to individual holders, but is stillbased on tribal belonging and customary law ifeconomic benefits are desired.

This principle is also essential in the production oflived space and communal sense of place. As shown,the transition involves fundamental changes in thematerial relations with space, from pastoral depen-dence on dispersed pasture and water resources tointensive and spatially concentrated production infarming land. This dynamic entails changes in the waylived space is ideologically experienced. In pastoralismcertain qualities were highlighted as experiential com-ponents of consummate space. These include unob-structed movement within tribal territory, foot-steppingancestral pastoral tracks, unobstructed fields of visioninto desert expanses and landscapes, and living close torelatively uninterrupted nature. In contrast, sedentarypeasant spatial ideology highlights qualities such asstronger paternalistic bond to a particular parcel ofland rather than to whole tribal territory, growing senseof property, commitment to its perpetual cultivation asper the Ottoman Land Law, and a fulfilment pride inretaining its ownership, all still pursued within theprotective tribal territory. The noticeable new compo-nents of the imbricated lived space of sedentaryagricultural spatiality are thus material and emotionalbonds of family ownership of a land parcel withinuninterrupted tribal territory and residential places,and developing sense of place and place attachment atthe local internal tribal scale.

These components of peasant sedentary farmingspace began to replace the previous ones of semi-nomadic pastoralism. However, within two decades ofthe promulgation of the new Ottoman Land Law thecompeting spatialities began to generate dynamics inthe intensity of space. This took place at the meso-scaleinter-tribal arena, and between the latter and Empirescale. Space has become very intensive as the growingbenefits from land, due to high-yielding agriculture,and internal pressures for expanding cultivated lands,

clashed with the needs for pastoral resources andspaces by those still grazing-oriented groups. The inter-tribal conflicts and wars over these lands in the 1880s(Ben-David 2004) reflect the competition betweenthese spatialities at different scales – the endogenousPoS and the exogenously driven one. This internal highspatial intensity was echoed by the Ottoman govern-ment. In pursuing its interest in furthering Bedouinfarming and pacifying the tribes, it took action in PoS in1895 by issuing an official tribal territorial map withagreed boundaries (conceived space) and establishingBeir-a-Saba (presently Beer-Sheva) as a regional gov-ernment centre in 1905 (perceived and conceivedspace). This contributed to reduced spatial intensitywithin the Bedouin public agenda both internally andexternally vis-�a-vis the imperial government.

In the coming decades, particularly with the collapseof the Ottoman Empire in 1917 and the incomingBritish Mandate in Palestine, the Bedouin expressedconsiderable confidence in their autonomy-like life(Yiftachel et al. 2012). This implies a sustained con-gruent sedentary farming spatiality and sense of con-summate space. Even the land registration act in 1921,a failed space action conceived by the Western-cultureBritish Mandate government, was not regarded by theBedouin as a threat. They mostly ignored it, preferringto rely on their traditional customary law whichremained intact, regarding it fully capable of protectingtheir indigenous property rights. This state of affairsprevailed until Israeli statehood in 1948.

Transition to urban spaceSince the 1960s the Bedouin have been undergoing asecond major cultural transition, again an involuntaryone, through an aggressive policy of modernisation.The Israeli state adopted a spatial approach anchoredin what was described as ‘abstract space’ (Meir 2005).This meant emptying space’s previous economic socialand cultural code, with its rich vernacular knowledge,and implanting instead a modern urban code in orderto align with the grand Western culture space. Thiscoercive state project has been radically re-shapingBedouin space in terms of settlement and subsistencemodes. Its major tool was the adoption of manycomponents of the Ottoman Land Law as state law in1958, which implied rejection of practices of Bedouincustomary law and transformation of unregisteredland to state ownership. Following this, since the mid-1960s the state initiated seven planned townships towhich all Bedouin were to be relocated from theirtraditional tribal territories. This took place amidst amassive Jewish settlement effort within these territo-ries (see Figure 1). Once again the Bedouin faced anexogenous spatiality infiltrating their culture. Thefacets of the urbanised Bedouin PoS are outlined inTable III.



Bedouin relocation to towns since the mid-1960sre-activated the formation of imbricated spaces. Per-ceived space is now produced in several manners. First,the Bedouin are situated within an increasingly denserand more intensely built environment. Thus, whilenature exists within urban space, space continues itsdisassociation from its environmental properties interms of relevance to their subsistence, becoming thusmore abstract. Second, the actually produced spacecontinues its shrinkage as extensive agricultural fieldsare replaced by denser and condensed residential plotsin very close proximity. Third, similar to urbanisingnomadic groups elsewhere (Rapoport 1978), increasedundesired inter-group and personal social encountersand exposure of women within town space reflect thetotal depletion of distance as a social resource. This

requires taller and even more robust fencing withoutward sight-fields almost completely blocked. Fourth,the most fundamental change is commodification ofthe construction of the brick home and urban physicalinfrastructure through greater reliance on externallyproduced materials and expertise, with greater linkag-ing into and dependence on the Western marketeconomy. Notwithstanding, the relics of past perceivedspace, such as small pens for animals and the hospi-tality tents, are preserved in the back yard of homes.

In conceived space, peasants viewed their space asan area resource with high-yield value, requiringmanagement through tight territorial rules. In urbanhired-labour economy, space as area has no productivevalue for the individual household or even the com-munity, as in certain respects (e.g. public spaces or

Figure 1 Bedouin contemporary space in the Negev



street-roads) a considerable part belongs to the state ormunicipality as part of being subject now to an externalspatial planning regime dictated by the state. Also,despite assignment of residential plots by the state asowned property to individual families, the absence of areal housing market among the Bedouin (Ben-Israel2009) renders plots valueless. In the imbricationprocess, past practices of quasi-communal ‘ownership’of space are maintained. They are applied in leveraginginter and intra-tribal political arrangements such ascreating distinct and protected group territory (neigh-bourhood) barred for other groups, or various munic-ipal space-based benefits such as representation intown council on a tribal neighbourhood basis.

These properties project on lived space. The expe-riential space of pastoralists and peasants implied analmost complete merger of daily life with local spaceand knowledge. That is, space was controlled by theirlife, beliefs and culture rendering it consummate. InBedouin hired-labour urban space, life and culturebecome disassociated from local space, being nowcontrolled by extra-territorial and extra-communityknowledge and experiences of a market society. Thisreflects state attempts at emptying space’s previouseconomic social and cultural code. Spatial imbricationstill takes place as family life, contrary to work life, isstill practised in homogenous lineage spaces (neigh-bourhoods), but this is perhaps the sole lived compo-nent remaining from traditional PoS. Thus, withinurban reality a sense of alienation and unrest towardsspace develops due to the compulsive urbanisationprocess. This is followed by emergence of narratives offorced uprooting from ancestors’ territories and yearn-ing for the imagined consummate spatiality of theagricultural and even pastoral past (Abu-Rabia 2013).

It follows that lived space is no longer congruentwith the perceived and conceived spaces. This conclu-sion is supported by insights from other recent studies(Abu-Rabia-Queder 2013; Ben-David 2004; Ben-Israel2009 2013; Kissinger and Karplus 2015; Tamari et al.2016). They report significant tensions in the townsaround insufficient integration into the labour market,unemployment, a demanding urban cost of living,declining power of tribal coherence and leadership,

growing individualism and a general reality of aregressing physical and social environment, all of whichare reflected in deep bottom socio-economic nationalrankings (Dinero 2010; Lithwick 2000). Bedouin townspace is not consummate, and as such does not supportany longer the built-in coherence that existed previ-ously between economy, society and environment.

Thus, contra an exclusive autonomous Bedouinagro-pastoral spatiality, Bedouin urban space hasbecome an arena for exogenous and endogenouscompeting spatialities. Yet, there are dozens unrecog-nised Bedouin squatter villages (100 000–120 000 pop-ulation, 40–50% of the total Bedouin population) withsustained significant relics of pastoral and peasant life(Figure 1). These villages are unrecognised because thestate does not recognise dwellers’ claims for historicalland ownership. In comparison to what they perceive asthe evil urban space (Ben-David 2004) they still largelyproduce their local space endogenously, asserting their‘right for indigenous spatiality’ under the same pastprinciples of perceived, conceived and lived spaces andthus view it as consummate. Yet their space is heavilyobfuscated by the nature of the new spatiality of theneighbouring towns. Space has thus become a con-scious and active entity in the being of dwellers of thesevillages that fear both loss of their property rights andinfiltration of urban spatiality into their consummaterural space.

This reality generates an increase in the intensity ofspace to a point where the Bedouin begin to takeaction. Indeed, they have been involved in growingpolitical protest against the state particularly since thelate 1970s. The protest revolves primarily, but notexclusively, around state non-recognition in theunrecognised villages as a product of the land owner-ship conflict. In terms of our current conceptualisation,this is a demand for recognition in the right toindigenous endogenous spatiality based on state recog-nition in their historical land ownership within indige-nous traditional tribal territories. The protest has takenvarious forms (Meir 1997 2009b), and for severaldecades has been leading the Bedouin’s personal andcommunal as well as the regional, national andinternational agenda. The major recent milestones

Table III Wage-labourers urban PoS


Intensively built environment bare ofany natural featuresHousehold residential lotOutsourced planned and built familydwellings screened by high fences forprivacy; self-built backyard pens, a yardshed and a communal shig

Two-layered territorialisation and kin-related socio-spatial homogeneityPrivate territory and tribal territory aredistinguished

An ideology of spatially dissociated lifeSpatial alienation, resentment on beingcoerced to urbanise, narratives offorced displacement and a utopianlonging of return to traditional landsand villages




have been the establishment of the Regional Council ofthe Unrecognized Bedouin Villages as an NGO shadowlocal government in 1997, submission of an alternativeregional plan for recognition of their villages in 1998, ahighly critical response to the governmental GoldbergCommittee Report for Settlement of the Bedouin in2009 and its successor the Prawer Report in 2011,submission of a second alternative regional plan in2012, and violent riots in 2014 and 2017 against stateintensions to implement the Prawer Report and evac-uate villages.

Conclusion

While until mid-19th century Bedouin PoS was pre-dominantly endogenous and autonomous, in the pasttwo centuries it has been a target for exogenousintervention by hegemonic political entities thatattempt to impose their own spatialities. The majortool has been legislation that culturally contradictsBedouin customary tribal law. Bedouin PoS haschanged, and in transition from semi-nomadic pas-toralism to sedentary farming generated imbricationprocesses that at the tribal-local spatial scale quitesuccessfully stood the trial by space and produced analternative consummate space. At a greater spatialscale (the inter-tribal and imperial arenas), however,spatial intensity increased due to these competingspatialities. The transition to urbanity was considerablymore coercive and the associated urban space hasbecome in-consummate. In order to preserve theirremaining consummate space Bedouin recent attemptsto thwart imposition of an urban mode of PoS over therest of their space (that of the unrecognised villages)has ignited its growing intensity, this time however,wholly exogenously, that is, vis-�a-vis the culturallyexternal state governing hegemony. There is thus anexpansion of scales at which the tension between theinternal and external spaces emerges through time.

As shown by Karplus (2010), there is certaindiversity in PoS among Bedouin tribal sub-groups.There are various degrees of closeness/openness oftheir cultural boundaries and of violation of theirconsummate space, and diverse consequences in termsof spatial intensity, depending primarily on the specificland ownership status. This diversity reflects our notionthat progression from consummate space to spatialintensity is not deterministic, and space does notnecessarily become intensive due to penetration ofthe exogenous PoS of the hegemonic cultural group.There is a host of conditions and circumstances thatyield smoother processes of spatial integration. Con-versely, spatial intensification is not necessarily aproduct of a weakening group’s congruence of PoSand deteriorated or threatened consummate space.High spatial intensity is due possibly to internal

demographic growth and expanding group’s spacewhose consummate nature it asserts even when pene-trating the grand space.

We attempted here, through the case of the Bedouinin Israel, to adapt the super concept of ‘production ofspace’ to unique cultural groups whose culture andspace are significantly distinct from the greater societyand grand space. In so doing we advocate the notion ofspatial pluralism that corresponds with ontologicalpluralism which originates in indigenous ontologies.This constitutes a post-humanistic view of space andplace as more-than-human (Larsen and Johnson 2016).We maintain that the above proposed conceptualframework is particularly suitable for these groups. Itis a product of implanting high cultural analyticalresolutions into the Lefebvrean concept of PoS. In sodoing it de-centres the latter’s inclination towards themacro-level urban Western culture which reflects itstendency to universally dominate constructions andunderstandings of space and place. In illustrating theinter-cultural spatial encounter of the Bedouin we haveshown that spatial intensification is a possible productof an external hegemonic intervention, with bothexternal and internal impacts.

Several insights from our discussion point to thesocial and cultural significance of the concept of spatialintensity. First, intercultural conflicts can erupt due to amultitude of non-spatial causes, such as school curric-ula or religious beliefs and practices. We submit that aviolated consummate space is capable too of generatingsuch conflicts through growing spatial intensity, some-thing which research on PoS has overlooked. Second,the Lefebvrean approach views space as a socialproduct, that is, it is produced by society. However,our analysis of the intercultural dynamics of PoSreveals also the opposite, that is, society is mutually aproduct of space in the sense that its intensive long-term presence in societal agenda is capable of shapingsocietal nature and spatial identity. This insight corre-sponds somewhat with that of the agency of place andspace (Larsen and Johnson 2016). In general terms,this notion is supported also by Lefebvre himself(1991), who suggests that a changing space changessociety. Third, the mutual process may be manifestedfrom the cultural perspective too. That is, the group’saction for asserting its need to live within a spaceproduced as consummate, and the conflict generatedwith needs of other groups, become a significantpolitical power capable itself of reshaping group’sculture.

These insights are significant for social and culturaltheorisation of integrating space and culture. Weopened our article with the question of whether andto what degree the ‘spatial turn’ has introjected the‘cultural turn’. In our attempt to bridge this gap,through the proposed conceptual framework, the



opposite question becomes now obvious: whether andto what degree the ‘cultural turn’ itself is now capableof introjecting the above reproduced insights andunderstanding of PoS and the ‘spatial turn’.

Acknowledgements

We are deeply grateful to the three reviewers for highlyvaluable comments and to Ms Roni Livnon for drawingthe map. The first author wishes to express his deepgratitude to the second author, Yuval Karplus, for hiscollaboration and inspiration. This paper builds on ourearlier work published in Hebrew in 2015 in HaReshetHaGeografit.

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