ABSTRACT
Informed by a variety of theories of the state and 'the new working class', as well as questions of gender, white-collar research has joined forces with studies of the lower-middle classes in shifting attention away from the more distinct and organised manual and industrial workers. This chapter addresses the relationship between white-collar workers and nationalism. It introduces a cultural-symbolic approach to examine how national discourse became an essential 'point of production' of white-collar identities, particularly those of clerks and clerical work. The association between white-collar workers and nationalism, has long attracted the attention of sociologists and historians. The institutionalisation of Zionism, Palestine's economic development and the way in which Zionism handled the Arab-Jewish conflict, brought about enormous growth in the number of clerks assigned the tasks of control and administration. Through the control of the Histadrut and Zionist institutions, Mapai, the leading party in the labour movement, made organised labour the focus of politics, economics, and culture.
