By the Sweat of Other Brows: Thai Migrant Labor and the Transformation of Israeli Settler Agriculture by Matan Kaminer A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Anthropology) in The University of Michigan 2019 Doctoral Committee: Professor Andrew Shryock, Chair Associate Professor Jason De León Professor Alaina Lemon Associate Professor Daniel Nemser Assistant Professor Scott Stonington “I was taking a part of the South to transplant in alien soil, to see if it could grow differently, if it could drink of new and cool rains, bend in strange winds, respond to the warmth of other suns, and, perhaps, to bloom.” – Richard Wright, Black Boy To Adam He said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your bread until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” – Genesis 3:17-19 “Now, Ananda, when a monk or brahman says thus: ‘It seems that there are evil kammas [karmas], there is the result of misconduct,’ I concede that to him. “When he says thus: ‘For I have seen that some person killed living beings, took what is not given, misconducted himself in sexual desires, spoke falsehood, spoke maliciously, spoke harshly, gossiped, was covetous, was ill-willed, and had wrong view. I saw that on the dissolution of the body, after death, he had reappeared in states of deprivation, in an unhappy destination, in perdition, in hell,’ I concede that to him. “When he says thus: ‘It seems that one who kills living beings ... has wrong view, will always, on the dissolution of the body, after death, reappear in the states of deprivation, in an unhappy destination, in perdition, in hell,’ I do not concede that to him. “When he says thus: ‘Those who know thus know rightly; those who know otherwise are mistaken in their knowledge,’ I do not concede that to him. “When he obstinately misapprehends what he himself has known, seen and felt; and insisting on that alone, he says: ‘Only this is true; anything else is wrong,’ I do not concede that to him. “Why is that? The Tathagata’s knowledge of the Great Exposition of Kamma is different.” – Maha Kammavibhanga Sutta: The Great Exposition of Kamma (Thera 1993) Dedication My father would often stop to look at people working, say on construction sites. An impatient child, I usually wanted to keep moving, but he would insist that we linger for a little while and observe. When I protested that watching people work was boring, he replied, “you’re wrong, there’s nothing more interesting in the world.” I didn’t get it then, but I think I get it now. This dissertation is dedicated to his blessed memory: Noam Kaminer, 1953-2014. May his soul be bound in the bundle of life. ii Matan Kaminer [email protected] ORCID iD: 0000-0002-1212-3345 © Matan Kaminer 2019 Acknowledgments I came to Michigan in the fall of 2012, four years into the Great Recession, a year after the Arab Spring, after Occupy and the Israeli “social protest” movement. Trump wasn’t even an orange smudge on the horizon yet, but a strong sense of political urgency was in the air at Michigan’s Department of Anthropology. This was unsurprising, given the tangible effects of the economic situation on the discipline. We new grad students had made it to a top school, so our chances were better than most in the horrific job market, though we could expect nothing like the clear path to tenure that our predecessors had enjoyed. We were particularly fortunate, even by elite university standards, to benefit from the struggles of previous generations of graduate student workers who had achieved a strong union, the Graduate Employee Organization, and a strong contract. Thanks to the union, everyone in my cohort enjoyed adequate funding, enabling an easier solidarity between us than existed among our peers in other universities, many of whom are still struggling to unionize. This solidarity got me through the endlessly difficult first years. The first vote of thanks thus goes to GEO and to my cohort-mates: Adrienne Lagman, Barry Brilliantes, Irisa Arney, Jeffrey Bradshaw, Nama Khalil, Niku T’arhechu, and Sandhya Narayanan. Particular love goes out to Adrian Deoanca, king of the railway punks; Georgia Ennis, wise mistress of herbal remedies and academic arcana; John Doering-White, who welcomed us immigrants to his Detroit and his amazing family; Obed Garcia, of indefatigable good cheer and good sense; iv philosopher-poet-prophet Prash Naidu; and Warren Thompson, that erudite gentleman of Tennessee. I am also grateful to the valuable friends from other cohorts and departments that I eventually made: these include Drew Haxby, Geoff Hughes, James Meador, Lauren Whitmer, Maayan Eitan, Maire Malone, Rachna Reddy, Regev Nathanson, Sam Molnar, Sam Shuman, Seçil Binboğa, Yanay Israeli, and many others. Ben Schuman-Stoler was a precious possession – a friend outside the academic world, keeping me sane on visits to Chicago. In Israel as in the US, I have been fortunate to enjoy the privileges of belonging to an elite institution – the Adi Lautman Program for Excelling Students at Tel Aviv University, which covered my tuition and a stipend as well as providing a quick route to a Master’s degree. Many thanks go to The Program’s director, Naama Friedman, to my mentors Ilana Arbel and Ran Hacohen, to then-program coordinator Simha Menahem, and to my cohort-mates. At the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, which welcomed me with open arms, I owe special debts of gratitude to my thesis adviser, Dan Rabinowitz, to my teachers Adriana Kemp, Khaled Furani, Ofra Goldstein-Gidoni, Nissim Mizrahi, and Ronen Shamir, to my dear friends Avi Golzman, Maya Wallenstein and Mor Shilon, and to Administrative Coordinator Seffi Stieglitz. Relocating to the US was perhaps the most difficult thing I have done in my life. I even dare say, despite the obvious differences, that some of my empathy for the plight of Thai migrants in Israel derives from the suffering I myself experienced as a (very privileged) transnational migrant. My father, Noam, was already ill when I left, but made his support for my studies crystal clear. So did my mother Smadar and my sister Carmel, who never once questioned whether I was right to leave home again and again as his situation worsened, though I often did. I will always be grateful for this, as I am for the selfless care they provided v on his deathbed, when I could not be there. My aunt Tali did tell me to come back, and just in time; this is also a debt I can never repay. I am nothing without my family, which has stood by me at my darkest hours – my mother and sister, my grandparents Reuven and Dafna, uncles and aunts Tali, Shalom, Micah, Sybil and all their kids, Selma and the Midwestern branch of the family, and the Nehab clan in Kibbutz Hazorea and the diaspora. Being unofficially related to Tsur Shezaf opened a lot of doors in the Arabah, and I am grateful to him, to Dorit and the rest of their family for a whole lot more than that. Leaving Israel was made that much more difficult by the need to tear myself away from the intimate network of friends and comrades I have been so lucky to foster over the years. The members of this network have stood by me and I am glad to say that today they still do. Adam Maor, Alma Katz, Alma Yitzhaki (who drew the amazing illustrations in Chapter Three), rabbi ve-mori Asi Tamari, Basma Fahoum, Danya Vaknin, Dror Boymel, Edo Konrad, Eran Hakim, anthro twin sister Eilat Maoz, Eyal “Giuseppe” Goldstein, Haggai Matar, chef de cuisine Hemi Paska, Keren Sheffi, Maisalon Dalashi, Matan Boord, Michali Baror, Nimrod Flaschenberg, Noa Kaufman, Noa Levy, Noam Bahat, Or Yizhar, Rozeen Bisharat, Saar Szekely, Shimri Zameret, Tal Giladi, Tamar Gomel, Tslil Regev, Yasmin Wachs, Yoav Beirach – my love to you all. I am grateful to the chain of dhamma which links my teacher Galia Tanay to the Tathāgata, as I am to the managers of that co-owned affair of the heart, the Anna Loulou Bar – Marwan Hawash, Ruben Rais and Vlad Boroshevsky. Back in the frozen wastes of the North, I received an exquisite schooling in anthropology from the faculty of the Department of Anthropology at U of M. As befits experts in humanity, my professors understood that a student is also a human being with duties beyond those of the academy and went out of their way to minimize the extent to which I had to make a choice between the two. Bruce Mannheim, Krisztina Fehervary, Ruth Behar, and Stuart vi Kirsch were generous readers and advice-givers. My all-star committee believed in the project and my ability to undertake it when I was in doubt: Alaina Lemon with acerbic observational skills, Jason De León with nonchalant ethnographic courage, and Dan Nemser with political conviction. It was a stroke of good chok for me that Scott Stonington joined the department faculty and my committee – almost nothing Thai in this dissertation could have been done without him.