Despite its rich scholarship, research on nation building has paid little attention to the role of cultural practices and aesthetic perceptions. Taking “Eretz Israel” (the “Land of Israel”) as a highly suitable case study, this project explores the history of migration through clothing, fashion and ideals of beauty, and contends that examining these cultural practices brings to the fore the agency of vastly different migrant groups, thus adding a personal dimension to the history of nation building. By looking at Eastern European and German Jewish immigrants as the two largest diaspora groups from the 1880s until the foundation of the Israeli state in 1948, the project investigates how clothing became fashion and to what extent and to what purpose a consensual mode of dress emerged within a heterogeneous migrant society that was influenced simultaneously by the local Arab population, the Ottoman and British occupying authorities, and the socio-cultural and political practices of the countries of origin. With an unprecedented focus on gender, visual materials and the development of a common mode of aesthetic perception and sense of fashion within a community, the project offers a highly original perspective on the emergence of a nation and national identities.
The project has a strong and timely social relevance. In times of mass immigration, economic exploitation and mobility in a global dimension, it contributes to an understanding of aesthetic perceptions, dress and beauty ideals as an expression of power relations, cultural hybridity, integration and exclusion. By underlining the historical role of Europeans as immigrants and the constructed character of national identities, it promotes a perception of migration and diversity as cultural enrichment. It aims at promoting tolerance and openness in times in which nationalist and right wing groups propagate an image of immigrants as a threat to ‘national identities’.
