Liquid Distinctions: Negotiating Boundaries Between Agriculture and the Environment in the Israeli Desert

Relations between humans and "nature" have long been a focus of social research and, in particular, anthropological inquiry. In recent years, scholars have generally dismissed the distinction between these categories as empirically and conceptually irrelevant. Based on fieldwork in an agricultural community in the Israeli desert (2010–2015), this article shows that the boundaries between nature and culture remain salient to social and critical analysis that focuses on interpretive aspects of environment and space, as well as the ongoing negotiation of these distinctions. This research demonstrates that some actors in the Arava see environmental preservation as part of "nature" and agricultural lands as part of "culture," thereby emphasizing the boundaries between the two. But their relations to the culture/nature complex are dynamic, changing in accordance with personal circumstances, external pressures, and evolving definitions of these categories. In this sense, the division between nature and culture is not necessarily dichotomous, but rather a multidimensional space of Nature(s) and Culture(s). Insofar as local actors saw the blurring of the boundaries between agriculture and the environment as part of the development of the agricultural economy and a means of responding to changing realities, they viewed this melding as legitimate, notwithstanding some cynicism. But when challenges to the boundary between agriculture and environmentalism were seen to threaten the livelihood and development of the region, locals objected, eliciting conflict amidst gradual, qualified acceptance.