Using the case of a boarding school for the gifted disadvantaged, I attempted to reach an understanding of how individuals who have experienced deliberate state intervention in the ethnic component of their selfhood come to terms with this intervention years after the (re)construction. The findings illuminate how boarding school graduates transformed the intervention into a unique ethnic identity: "Ethnicity without Ethnicity". This identity rejects any overt engagement with the ethnic component of the self. The findings also show that ethnic identity is not necessarily expressed in everyday practices, but rather in the ongoing cognitive engagement of the agent who has been distanced from the available ethnic classifications. The discussion section goes on to describe the relationship of this ethnic identity to the "unmarked" ethnicity amongst the upper-middle classes.
Halutzot: From Excluded Citizens to ‘Good’ Citizens — Hapoel Bnot Sakhnin
This study seeks to contribute to the existing body of knowledge pertaining to the interrelations between power, class, ethnicity and nationality, by using Hapoel Bnot Sakhnin as a case study. This research applies qualitative methodology and was carried out during 2004–2007. The guiding question addresses the manners in which an excluded female citizen is transformed into a ‘good’ citizen in a unique national, gender and local context. The study shows that football plays an important role in shaping the women’s gender and ethno-national identity and in creating an intimate connection between the two discourses. It further reveals that the women’s complicated place forces them to position themselves as ‘good Arabs’ vis-à-vis the society in Israel and as ‘good women’ whilst faced with the local, masculine Arab surroundings. Consequently they become ‘good Arab women’ in an attempt to refrain from threatening both groups. The football team thus demarcates the ‘correct’ borders as well as the meeting points of the various identities. The team generates a uniform identity relevant to the ‘approved’ form of femininity and the ‘proper’ manifestation of womanhood of Arab nationality-ethnicity.
Arab Education in Israel: A Claim to Material Resources or an Ideological Struggle?
Irit Harboun, Khaled Abu-Asbeh and Muhammed Abu-Nasra
The purpose of this study is to examine the reasons for the struggle of the Arab community in Israel for education: Is it a demand for equal dispersion of material resources or a more acute struggle for ideological resources? To answer this question we will examine the responses of the Arab public and its leaders to the non implementation of the goals of education, as reflected in the 2000 Amendment to State Education Law that for the first time referred to the existence of an Arab minority in Israel and to its wish to teach its language, culture and history. The findings are based on in-depth interviews with parents and representatives of Arab community who are involved in the struggle for Arab education in Israel. The results show that the Arab community is divided between two approaches: pragmatic and ideological. It is also evident that for Palestinians, nationalism and the sense of close affinity with West Bank Palestinians, which has been growing among the Arab minority in Israel, particularly since the events of 2000, influence their struggle for education in Israel.
The debate on the relations between the IDF and society vis-à-vis marginalized social groups has centered on the question of whether the IDF enables and facilitates social mobility, or rather reproduces and perpetuates existing social inequality. This article contributes to the relatively small body of empirical knowledge on specific ethnic or gender groups in the IDF by providing data regarding immigrant soldiers from the Caucasus (Kavkaz), and by using ethno-gendered perspective for analysis. The data is based on a comprehensive community mapping of the Kavkazi soldiers in Beer-Sheva, and on 153 telephone interviews with soldiers, which supply data regarding their unit, status and role, characteristics of military promotion and of difficulties during the service, and the soldiers’ attitudes towards their army service. In addition, the data enabled a comparison between soldiers whose parents immigrated to Israel during the 70’s and immigrant soldiers who came to Israel during the 90’s. The data proves that in comparison to other soldiers, as a whole, and especially for Kavkazi men, the IDF does not serve as a framework for social mobility. The discussion focuses on ethno-gendered analysis and on diversity management in the IDF.
Display of Institutional Power between Race and Gender
In light of the renewed interest in the Black Panthers’ protest movement, 40 years after it had emerged and on the background of summer 2011 social protest, I wish to return to the press photographs of the Black Panthers demonstrations and claim that the coverage of the protest in the popular newspapers in Israel produced a strict alienation between the Israeli public and the demonstrators by using racial markers, precisely during a period in which racial markers were diminishing due to the Six Days War. I will compare between photographs from the 1967 war and from the Black Panthers’ demonstrations and expose the role of the latter as an attempt to recreate racial markers in the Israeli visual sphere after the war. As a result, I suggest to read the demonstrations’ photographs as a display of racial differences, where the same male body which signified the erasure of racial boundaries in the ‘67 war photographs, functioned in the ‘71 protest photographs as a platform on which these differences were engraved.
Leaving the Ultra-Orthodox Society as an Encounter between Social-Religious Models
In this article I will examine the process of changing religious identities and the difficulties faced by those who go through this process of Leaving the Fold (Hazara Beshela). This process is reflected in the encounter between socialreligious models: traditional, modern and marginal (liminality). I will base my argumentation on Eisenstadt, who claimed that religious and cultural systems are temporary stabilizers of social order but at the same time serve as a challenge and a catalyst for a change. This claim will be tested in three circles of identity—community, family and personal—in the process of leaving the ultra-orthodox society and integrating into the new modern society. The process of separation, transition and integration—models of rites of passage—will be used to move beyond the rigid model, which emphasizes dichotomy of tradition vs. modernity, to a more flexible and appropriate socialreligious model of social marginalization for understanding the world of those who leave the ultra-orthodox society. The model will show that leaving the fold is very complex in both places: It is here and there, and at the same time betwixt and between.
Zikui Harabim (Granting Merit to the Many): The Capitalist Logic in a Religious Revival Movement
In the present article I will present the concept of zikui harabim (“Granting merit to the many”), and will demonstrate how this concept motivates and animates the religious revival movement in Judaism (the Teshuvah Movement). Zikui harabim, I argue, is propelled through the process of ‘cycles of tesuvah’ in which the ‘repentant’ person engages in facilitating the ‘return’ of others to religious practice, even before he or she has undertaken the rigorous observance of religious commandments. I will show how calculating rationality, which is often considered one of the hallmarks of modernity, is manifested in the Teshuvah Movement, as many teshuvah recipients and initiators regard commandments, implicitly and explicitly alike, as a type of currency they can collect for their own benefit. Thus, I will prove how zikui harabim implements a modern, capitalist logic, thereby showing how modernity manifests itself in religious revivalism.
Two perspectives on the book "Town of Sundown: Aging Nationalism in Jaffa" by Haim Hazan and Daniel Monterescu
Book Reviews:
On: Code of Israeliness: The Ten Commandments for the 21th Century \ Gad Yair
On: Theocratic Democracy: The Social of Religious and Secular Extremism \ Nachman Ben-Yehuda
On: Law and the Culture of Israel \ Menachem Mautner
On: Zionist Arabesques: Modern Landscapes, Non-Modern Texts \ Hadas Yaron
On: Who Governs the Military?: Between Control of the Military and Control of Militarism \ Yagil Levy
On: Security and Suspicion: An Ethnography of Everyday Life in Israel \ Juliana Ochs
On: Tours That Bind: Diaspora, Pilgrimage, and Israel Birthright Tourism \ Shaul Kelner
On: Walking on a Tightrope: Life Stories of Druze Women beteewn Cultural Spaces \ Naomi Weiner-Levy
On: Patrons of Women: Literacy Projects and Gender Development in Rural Nepal \ Esther Hertzog
On: The Autism Matrix: The Social Origins of the Autism Epidemic \ Gil Eyal, Brendan Hart, Emine Onculer, Neta Oren and Natasha Rossi
On: Violence: A Micro-Sociological Theory \ Randall Collins