@article{alff_2023, title={Changing Capitalist Structures and Settler-Colonial Land Purchases in Northern Palestine, 1897-1922}, ISSN={["1471-6380"]}, DOI={10.1017/S0020743823001290}, abstractNote={Abstract}, journal={INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MIDDLE EAST STUDIES}, author={Alff, Kristen}, year={2023}, month={Nov} }
 @article{alff_2020, title={Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine}, volume={42}, ISSN={["2043-6920"]}, DOI={10.13169/arabstudquar.42.4.0312}, abstractNote={This remarkable work of activism from human rights attorney and scholar, Noura Erakat, places the Palestinian-Israeli conflict within the analytical framework of international law.Revealing the respective legal failures and successes of the Palestinian and Israeli administrations to employ legal strategy over time, Erakat highlights inequities between the two political groups: Palestinian Arabs had fewer opportunities and the Zionists, and later Israelis, had more.Beginning with the signing of the Balfour Declaration in 1917 and concluding with Palestine's unsuccessful bid for UN statehood and Trump's Jerusalem announcement, Justice for Some "explores the role and potential of law in the pursuit of Palestinian freedom" (xi).The small openings in international law for Palestinians throughout the past century, Erakat affirms, suggest that this freedom is not completely out of reach.Erakat's main argument in Justice for Some is twofold.First, and most broadly, Erakat comments on the function and character of international law itself.She claims that international law is not, as is commonly assumed, merely a byproduct of colonial power.Nor is it completely hollow due to the lack of a sovereign international arbitrator.Rather, international law is "like the sail of a boat" that "guarantees motion not direction" (11).It can be strategically deployed as a means to dominate and justify violence, or as a tool for liberation and an object of protest.The most innovative of Erakat's broad claims in Justice for Some is her second assertion.She contends that Zionists possessed and continue to possess the power of "sovereign exception" (15).In the specific case of Palestine/Israel, she characterizes "sovereign exception" as Israel's ongoing ability to deny precedent.This describes Israel's deliberate choice to claim that the legal situation in Palestine is sui generis-unlike anything that came before it.This does not completely raze the legal playing field.Palestinians indeed possessed opportunities to direct the sail of international law.However, either as subjects of this sovereign exception or products of their own disorganization, Palestinians have been comparatively hampered at harnessing international law to their ends.The book's five chapters develop this history of Palestinians, on one hand, and Jews/Zionists/ Israelis, on the other, through the dual frameworks of "sovereign}, number={4}, journal={ARAB STUDIES QUARTERLY}, author={Alff, Kristen}, year={2020}, pages={312–314} }
 @article{alff_2020, title={The Business of Property: Levantine Joint-stock Companies and Nineteenth-Century Global Capitalism}, volume={21}, ISSN={["1467-2235"]}, DOI={10.1017/eso.2020.56}, abstractNote={1 Whether the spark that caused 3,000 tons of ammonium nitrate to detonate was accidental or intentional, many scholars and Lebanese citizens claim that blame rests with the negligence of individuals in the Lebanese state Since at least the eighteenth century, labor has not been a friend, a neighbor, or a family member, but rather a number in an account book that conceals its humanness 8 In a similar fashion, scholars of India suggest that bonded labor is not a residue of tradition that has vanished with the arrival of modernization of production but rather integral to the development and endurance of capitalism itself 9 Given this understanding, I narrate a history of capitalism in the Levant in “The Business of Property” as a nonlinear process, building on variable social conditions, legal regimes, and attendant relations of production In the nineteenth century, members of a new patriarchal capitalist class began to operate on the basis of dualisms, whose underlying ontologies had become mechanical: capital was separated from labor power, members were distinct from their companies, and society was removed from the physical environment}, number={4}, journal={ENTERPRISE & SOCIETY}, author={Alff, Kristen}, year={2020}, month={Dec}, pages={853–865} }