New Publication: Russell, Hanneman, & Getz, eds. The Renewal of the Kibbutz

Russell, Raymond, Robert Hanneman, and Shlomo Getz, eds. The Renewal of the Kibbutz. From Reform to Transformation. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2013.

Description

We think of the kibbutz as a place for communal living and working. Members work, reside, and eat together, and share income “from each according to ability, to each according to need.” But in the late 1980s the kibbutzim decided that they needed to change. Reforms—moderate at first—were put in place. Members could work outside of the organization, but wages went to the collective. Apartments could be expanded, but housing remained kibbutz-owned. In 1995, change accelerated. Kibbutzim began to pay salaries based on the market value of a member’s work. As a result of such changes, the “renewed” kibbutz emerged. By 2010, 75 percent of Israel’s 248 non-religious kibbutzim fit into this new category.

This book explores the waves of reforms since 1990. Looking through the lens of organizational theories that predict how open or closed a group will be to change, the authors find that less successful kibbutzim were most receptive to reform, and reforms then spread through imitation from the economically weaker kibbutzim to the strong.

Author / Editor Bio

RAYMOND RUSSELL is a professor of sociology at the University of California, Riverside. He is the author of Sharing Ownership in the Workplace and Utopia in Zion: The Israeli Experience with Worker Cooperatives.
ROBERT HANNEMAN is a professor of sociology at the University of California, Riverside. He has authored four books, including State Intervention in Medical Care: Consequences for Britain, France, Sweden, and the United States.

SHLOMO GETZ is a research associate at the Institute for Kibbutz Research at the University of Haifa and a senior lecturer at Emek Yezreel College in Israel. He has authored or coauthored numerous publications, including The Kibbutz in an Era of Changes and The Kibbutz: The Risk of Enduring (both written in Hebrew).

Table Of Contents

List of Tables
Acknowledgments

Introduction: Perspectives on Change in the Kibbutzim
1. Development of the Kibbutzim
2. From Crisis to Reform, 1985-2001
3. Consideration and Adoption of Innovations, 1990-2001
4. Transformation of the Kibbutzim, 1995-2011
5. From Transformation to Renewal

Appendix: Data Sources and Statistical Analytics
References
Index