California Dreaming

Download or read book California Dreaming written by Nahum Karlinsky and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The citrus industry of Palestine has often been associated with the myths and ideals of the Labor Movement and its Zionist-Socialist ideology. The Jaffa orange, like the young pioneer and the collective kibbutz, was emblematic of a colonizing meta-narrative that marginalized or even denounced the private entrepreneurs—both Arabs and Jews—who were the true founders and proponents of the flourishing citrus industry in Palestine. California Dreaming reveals that these private entrepreneurs regarded the California citrus industry as their primary model of emulation. Utilizing an innovative multidisciplinary approach, Nahum Karlinsky vividly reconstructs the social fabric, economic structure, and ideological tenets of the Jewish citrus industry of Palestine in the early twentieth century. Also accentuated is the role of Palestinian-Arab citrus growers, whose industry predated that of their Jewish counterparts, and the complex relationship between the two national sectors that operated side by side.