Constructing a Symbolic Desert: Place and Identity in Contemporary Israel

The paper focuses on images of the Negev desert in Israel among the Jewish population of Israel, presented in marketing websites of tourism and leisure resorts. The analysis of the data, focused on verbal and visual images of desert, shows a significant change in the symbolic construction of the desert compared to the first decades of Israeli statehood: from a desert conceived in light of national ideology and its imperatives, to one who’s images highlight consumerism and individual preferences, fantasies and desires. This change in the symbolic construction of the desert is treated as a part of some major changes in Jewish-Israeli collective identity thus pointing towards the link between two social processes: place-making and identity-work.