Mapping Power, History of Landscape in the Jordan Valley

Humans have always shaped and been shaped by the landscapes they inhabit. Landscapes bear witness to the earth’s geological past and the trajectories of human civilizations. Land and water have been a nexus of power struggles for millennia. Ben Gitai takes as a case study a site of emblematic biopolitical significance: Naharayim/ Al-Baqoura in the Jordan Rift Valley. Adopting a hybridized approach at the intersection of landscape architecture, political geography and history, he excavates this site, revealing in intricate detail how cartography and maps have been instrumentalized by successive power regimes – Ottoman, British, and Israeli Jordanian – and how this instrumentalization has transformed the landscape over the past 150 years. What emerges is a story of the Jordan Valley that encompasses competing visions and aspirations for the development of the Holy Land.

“Ben Gitai’s work goes well beyond the boundaries of the history of landscape architecture conservatively understood, and sheds light on important aspects of political history, revealing in the most precise, undisputable manner the complex networks through which a territory is surveyed, represented, appropriated and disputed.” Jean-Louis Cohen