Consuming Projects in Uncertain Times: Making Selves in the Galilee1

Abstract

Reception and identification processes, crucial to understand situations of political conflict, have been studied in relation to particular events, rituals, or media. This article proposes a different approach. It explores how ordinary people, through projects of their own which exhibit particular forms of intentional cultural production and consumption, manifest historically situated notions of selves. I use the idea of “projects” to understand the interconnections between global consumer culture, identity, and nationalism as they are manifested in the everyday lives of Palestinian citizens of Israel. To exemplify these interconnections, I focus on two significant, creative projects through which Palestinian inhabitants of the Western Galilee shape and manifest selves in history. Though these projects appear very different on the surface, they are used to address the same central question – that is, to understand how senses of self in history and attending identities are materially and discursively constituted by members of a national minority in the ever-present context of political conflict. They show that people are not passive consumers of homogenizing rituals and discourse and reveal how, through a bricolage of objects and ideas, people inscribe intentions, meanings, ways of thinking, and self-narration in places and histories.