New Article: Moscovitz, Israeli Parliamentary Discussions over Asylum

Moscovitz, Hannah. “The Mainstreaming of Radical Right Exclusionary Ideology: Israeli Parliamentary Discussions over Asylum.” Journal of Political Ideologies (early view, online first).
 
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13569317.2016.1150138
 
Abstract

This study analyses the mainstreaming of radical right ideology in Israel. Focusing on the political discourse used to describe the current asylum issue in the country, the article claims that features of radical right ideology are not limited to the discourse of radical right parties, but increasingly pervade the mainstream. Through discourse analysis of parliamentary discussions over asylum, the study highlights the discursive strategies and linguistic properties used in the expression of radical right ideology. The findings reveal the distinct manner in which both party families express radical right ideology; while the radical right discourse is explicit, overall, the mainstream discourse is implicit, with traces of explicitness observed. The Israeli case reveals significant insights into the scope of radical right ideology and the manner in which, through language and discourse, its features make their way through the political spectrum.

 

 

 

New Article: Dvir-Gvirsman et al, Ideological Selective Exposure Online, data from the 2013 Israeli Elections

Dvir-Gvirsman, Shira, Yariv Tsfati, and Ericka Menchen-Trevino. “The Extent and Nature of Ideological Selective Exposure Online: Combining Survey Responses with Actual Web Log Data from the 2013 Israeli Elections.” New Media and Society 18.5 (2016): 857-77.

 

URL: https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=5427008

 

Abstract

Do users tend to consume only like-minded political information online? We point to two problems with the existing knowledge about this debate. First, the measurement of media preferences by the typical means of surveys is less reliable than behavioral data. Second, most studies have analyzed only the extent of online exposure to like-minded content, not the users’ complete web-browsing repertoire. This study used both survey data and real-life browsing behavior (661,483 URLs from 15,976 websites visited by 402 participants) for the period 7 weeks prior to the 2013 Israeli national elections. The results indicate that (1) self-report measurements of ideological exposure are inflated, (2) exposure to online ideological content accounted for only 3% of total online browsing, (3) the participants’ media repertoires are very diverse with no evidence of echo chambers, and (4) in accordance with the selective exposure hypothesis, individuals on both sides are more exposed to like-minded content. The results are discussed in light of the selective exposure literature.

 

 

 

New Article: Fuchs, The Study of Emunah in the Har Hamor Yeshiva

Fuchs, Ilan.”The Construction of an Ideological Curriculum: The Study of Emunah in the Har Hamor Yeshiva.” Journal of Israeli History (early view; online first).
 
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13531042.2016.1140925
 
Abstract

Beginning in 1997, the Har Hamor Yeshiva, a leading Jerusalem-based institute for Torah learning, has become the center of a unique stream of thought in religious Zionist philosophy. This article examines how religious Zionist yeshivas have developed an educational curriculum that translates theological beliefs and values into political action. The article seeks to evaluate to what extent this ideology and curriculum will be able to survive in a political reality in which the rift between religious and secular Zionism is constantly increasing.

 

 

 

New Article: John & Dvir-Gvirsman, Facebook Unfriending by Israelis During the 2014 Gaza Conflict

John, Nicholas A., and Shira Dvir-Gvirsman. “‘I Don’t Like You Any More’: Facebook Unfriending by Israelis During the Israel–Gaza Conflict of 2014.” Journal of Communication 65.6 (2015): 953-74.

 

URL: https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jcom.12188

 

Abstract

This article explores Facebook unfriending during the Israel–Gaza conflict of 2014. We suggest that politically motivated unfriending is a new kind of political gesture. We present an analysis of a survey of 1,013 Jewish Israeli Facebook users. A total of 16% of users unfriended or unfollowed a Facebook friend during the fighting. Unfriending was more prevalent among more ideologically extreme and more politically active Facebook users. Weak ties were most likely to be broken, and respondents mostly unfriended people because they took offense at what they had posted or disagreed with it. Although social network sites may expose people to diverse opinions, precisely by virtue of the many weak ties users have on them, our findings show these ties to be susceptible to dissolution.

 

 

 

New Book: Bekerman, The Promise of Integrated Multicultural and Bilingual Education

Bekerman, Zvi. The Promise of Integrated Multicultural and Bilingual Education. Inclusive Palestinian-Arab and Jewish Schools in Israel. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.

 

 

The Promise of Integrated and Multicultural Bilingual Education presents the results of a long-term ethnographic study of the integrated bilingual Palestinian-Jewish schools in Israel that offer a new educational option to two groups of Israelis–Palestinians and Jews–who have been in conflict for the last one hundred years. Their goal is to create egalitarian bilingual multicultural environments to facilitate the growth of youth who can acknowledge and respect “others” while maintaining loyalty to their respective cultural traditions. In this book, Bekerman reveals the complex school practices implemented while negotiating identity and culture in contexts of enduring conflict. Data gathered from interviews with teachers, students, parents, and state officials are presented and analyzed to explore the potential and limitations of peace education given the cultural resources, ethnic-religious affiliations, political beliefs, and historical narratives of the various interactants. The book concludes with critique of Western positivist paradigmatic perspectives that currently guide peace education, maintaining that one of the primary weaknesses of current bilingual and multicultural approaches to peace education is their failure to account for the primacy of the political framework of the nation state and the psychologized educational perspectives that guide their educational work. Change, it is argued, will only occur after these perspectives are abandoned, which entails critically reviewing present understandings of the individual, of identity and culture, and of the learning process.

 
Table of contents

• Introduction
• Part 1
• 1. Positioning the Author
• 2. Theoretical Perspectives
• 3. Methodology: From Theory to Implementation
• 4. Schools in Their Contexts
• Part 2
• 5. The Parents
• 6. Teachers at Their Work
• 7. The Children
• Part 3
• 8. School Routines: Culture, Religion, and Politics in the Classroom
• 9. Ceremonial Events
• 10. Conflicting National Narratives
• Part 4
• 11. The Graduates
• 12. Conclusions
• Author Index
• Subject Index

 

ZVI BEKERMAN teaches anthropology of education at the School of Education and The Melton Center, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His main interests are in the study of cultural, ethnic, and national identity, including identity processes and negotiation during intercultural encounters and in formal/informal learning contexts. He is particularly interested in how concepts such as culture and identity intersect with issues of social justice, intercultural and peace education, and citizenship education.

 

 

 

New Book: Rosenfeld, Deciphering the New Antisemitism

Rosenfeld, Alvin H., ed. Deciphering the New Antisemitism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015.

Deciphering the New Antisemitism addresses the increasing prevalence of antisemitism on a global scale. Antisemitism takes on various forms in all parts of the world, and the essays in this wide-ranging volume deal with many of them: European antisemitism, antisemitism and Islamophobia, antisemitism and anti-Zionism, and efforts to demonize and delegitimize Israel. Contributors are an international group of scholars who clarify the cultural, intellectual, political, and religious conditions that give rise to antisemitic words and deeds. These landmark essays are noteworthy for their timeliness and ability to grapple effectively with the serious issues at hand.

 

Table of Contents

Introduction Alvin H. Rosenfeld

Part I. Defining and Assessing Antisemitism
1. Antisemitism and Islamophobia: The Inversion of the Debt – Pascal Bruckner
2. The Ideology of the New Antisemitism – Kenneth L. Marcus
3. A Framework for Assessing Antisemitism: Three Case Studies (Dieudonné, Erdoğan, and Hamas) – Günther Jikeli
4. Virtuous Antisemitism – Elhanan Yakira

Part II. Intellectual and Ideological Contexts
5. Historicizing the Transhistorical: Apostasy and the Dialectic of Jew-Hatred – Doron Ben-Atar
6. Literary Theory and the Delegitimization of Israel – Jean Axelrad Cahan
7. Good News from France: There Is No New Antisemitism – Bruno Chaouat
8. Anti-Zionism and the Anarchist Tradition – Eirik Eiglad
9. Antisemitism and the Radical Catholic Traditionalist Movement – Mark Weitzman

Part III. Holocaust Denial, Evasion, Minimization
10. The Uniqueness Debate Revisited – Bernard Harrison
11. Denial, Evasion, and Anti-Historical Antisemitism: The Continuing Assault on Memory – David Patterson
12. Generational Changes in the Holocaust Denial Movement in the United States – Aryeh Tuchman

Part IV. Regional Manifestations
13. From Occupation to Occupy: Antisemitism and the Contemporary Left in the United States – Sina Arnold
14. The EU’s Responses to Contemporary Antisemitism: A Shell Game – R. Amy Elman
15. Anti-Israeli Boycotts: European and International Human Rights Law Perspectives – Aleksandra Gliszczynska-Grabias
16. Delegitimizing Israel in Germany and Austria: Past Politics, the Iranian Threat, and Post-national Anti-Zionism – Stephan Grigat
17. Antisemitism and Antiurbanism, Past and Present: Empirical and Theoretical Approaches – Bodo Kahmann
18. Tehran’s Efforts to Mobilize Antisemitism: The Global Impact – Matthias Küntzel

List of Contributors
Index

ALVIN H. ROSENFELD holds the Irving M. Glazer Chair in Jewish Studies and is Professor of English and Founding Director of the Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism at Indiana University Bloomington. He is editor of Resurgent Antisemitism: Global Perspectives (IUP, 2013) and author of The End of the Holocaust (IUP, 2011), among other books.

 

New Article: Bar, The Nexus of Enmity: Ideology, Global Politics, and Identity in the Twenty-First Century

Bar, Eyal. “The Nexus of Enmity. Ideology, Global Politics, and Identity in the Twenty-First Century.” CrossCurrents 65.3 (2015): 392-400.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cros.12148

 

Extract

The discourses that framed nationalist movements, as soon as they proved useful tools for political power, became tools that could be wielded in a violent fashion under the guise of liberal equal rights. As the French case of laïcité demonstrates, the liberal urge for equal rights is already parasitic on an identity chauvinism that works to assimilate, homogenize, and manage various life worlds. In the name of freedom, these approaches advance constraints on the possible social and political imaginings that we might conjure. Through these ideologies of identity, the demand that Muslims renounce Daish can appear seemingly reasonable. Similarly, the blame cast on Jews the world over for the policies of the Israeli government are strengthened by the presumptive affiliation between Judaism and nationalism. In either case, the identity politics appears necessary for modern-day nationalism to function within an era of so-called globalization. Without recourse to identity, the imperative to manage and maintain power-political hierarchies through the division of the sociopolitical terrain (i.e., nationalism) would be rendered impotent. The first step toward eliminating the recent forms of prejudicial political violence is the recognition that modern identity politics militates against a world where physical barriers, political boundaries, and discursive networks are rapidly reorganizing.

 

 

 

 

New Article: Molad, Zionism: An Unfinished Revolution?

Molad, Yoni. “Zionism: An Unfinished Revolution?” Arena 44 (2015): 178-190.

 

URL: http://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=512951196182719;res=IELAPA

 

Abstract

In a recent and fascinating study published in Israel, the history and achievements of Israeli – or Hebrew – modernist art, music, architecture and literature have been documented and discussed under the title ‘How Do You Say Modernism in Hebrew?’ Clearly, the authors and editors of the collection felt that, despite the rich modernist artistic heritage of modern Hebrew culture, the status of modernism in Israeli culture is still underappreciated or misunderstood and its rehabilitation is an important intellectual task. However, the editors did not explicitly raise any political consideration in their book. This essay seeks to address this question and argues that the modernist history of the Zionist movement needs to be re-examined in order to rehabilitate the universalist aspects of the project of Jewish nationalism that lie dormant in its intellectual heritage. This paper is not intended as a definitive statement and does not offer a detailed empirical or historical analysis but rather raises some theoretical and more generally philosophical questions based on what I take to be the ideological heritage of Zionist thought. I am aware that some of the following reflections may fall on deaf ears or even provoke hostile reactions due to the sensitivity of the topic, so I will try to be as clear as possible.

 

 

New Article: Awayed-Bishara, Cultural Content of Materials Used for Teaching English to High School Speakers of Arabic

Awayed-Bishara, Muzna. “Analyzing the Cultural Content of Materials Used for Teaching English to High School Speakers of Arabic in Israel.” Discourse & Society (early view; online first).

 
 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0957926515581154

 

Abstract

This article analyzes English textbooks used in Israel to examine whether their cultural content is appropriate for the Palestinian Arab learner. This topic is significant, as the English curriculum in Israel is uniform in all sectors. The article presents a critical discourse analysis of six English textbooks used in Israeli high schools to examine the recurrence of seven discursive devices that might possibly serve as a means for shaping or (re)producing ideological values: (1) culturally distinctive names, (2) pronouns, (3) the passive/active voice when relating to the Other, (4) explicit statements defining the target audience, (5) narratives involving faraway cultures that perpetuate Western stereotypes and exclude the Other, (6) a demand for culturally specific prior knowledge, and (7) discourse constructing identities and collective memories. These devices serve to foster English learners imbued with Western oriented Jewish-Zionist ideology, while reproducing and perpetuating hegemonic ideology. Thus, English textbooks in Israel marginalize the Palestinian Arab minority, its culture and common traditions, thereby engendering a learning environment that creates a negative learning experience for students of this sector.

 
 
 

New Article: Changes among Israeli Youth Movements: A Structural Analysis

Cohen, Erik H. “Changes among Israeli Youth Movements: A Structural Analysis Based on Kahane’s Code of Informality.” Cambridge Journal of Education 45.2 (2015): 223-43.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0305764X.2014.934205

 

Abstract

Multi-dimensional data analysis tools are applied to Reuven Kahane’s data on the informality of youth organizations, yielding a graphic portrayal of Kahane’s code of informality. This structure helps address questions of the whether the eight structural components exhaustively cover the field without redundancy. Further, the structure is used to examine changes in Israeli youth movements over two time periods (1925–1960 and 1960–1990). It is found that social aspects of the group have become more important, while ideology (especially socialist ideology) is less emphasized. Directions for continued research among youth movements since 1990 are explored.

New Article: Barak and Leichtentritt, Ideological Meaning Making After the Loss of a Child

Barak, Adi and Ronit D. Leichtentritt. “Ideological Meaning Making After the Loss of a Child: The Case of Israeli Bereaved Parents.” Death Studies 39.6 (2015): 360-368.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07481187.2014.958626

 

Abstract

The study provides a view of ideological meaning-making processes of 10 Israelis who lost a child examining the parents’ perspectives and written public documents. The texts and interviews were analyzed using Gadamer’s hermeneutic philosophy. Findings indicate that bereaved parents construct conflicting ideologically oriented viewpoints: doubting and affirming the Zionist ideology; ascribing sense and senselessness to the loss; and joining the ethos but keeping personal meanings. Our conclusion is consistent with theorists who reject the notion that the human narrative should be coherently unified. We point to potential links between relational dialectics and meaning-making theory and outline implications for practice.

New Article: Lavie-Dinur et al, Media’s Coverage of Israeli Female Political Criminals

Lavie-Dinur, Amit, Yuval Karniel, and Tal Azran. “‘Bad Girls’: The Use of Gendered Media Frames in the Israeli Media’s Coverage of Israeli Female Political Criminals.” Journal of Gender Studies 24.3 (2015): 326-46.

 

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09589236.2013.841572

 

Abstract

The study examined news media coverage of Israeli female political criminals to determine how the media construct and portray women who commit ideological crimes against the state, ultimately to discern what these framing choices suggest about women involved in political crimes. Studies show that the media tend to rely on stereotypical gender frames to portray female criminals and their motivations to the public. These frames depict women perpetrators as motivated to commit political crime for personal reasons as opposed to political reasons, which are often cited for male criminal behavior. The study examined the Israeli news media’s use of stereotypical gender news frames when reporting on three Israeli women who committed ideological crimes against the state. The study compared the coverage of these cases among three Israeli newspapers representing different political affinities. As a country with a long history of political conflict, Israel offers a unique opportunity to examine gender bias in the media’s coverage of female actors in the public sphere. The study’s theoretical contribution lies in its analysis of Israeli female political criminals who, by definition of their crime, acted within the political sphere. The study confirms previous research on the subject – mainly that the media rely on gender frames and explanations of personal motive in its portrayals of female criminals.

New Book: Omer-Sherman, Imagining the Kibbutz

Omer-Sherman, Ranen. Imagining the Kibbutz. Visions of Utopia in Literature and Film. University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015.

 

URL: http://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-06557-1.html

 

Abstract

In Imagining the Kibbutz, Ranen Omer-Sherman explores the literary and cinematic representations of the socialist experiment that became history’s most successfully sustained communal enterprise. Inspired in part by the kibbutz movement’s recent commemoration of its centennial, this study responds to a significant gap in scholarship. Numerous sociological and economic studies have appeared, but no book-length study has ever addressed the tremendous range of critically imaginative portrayals of the kibbutz. This diachronic study addresses novels, short fiction, memoirs, and cinematic portrayals of the kibbutz by both kibbutz “insiders” (including those born and raised there, as well as those who joined the kibbutz as immigrants or migrants from the city) and “outsiders.” For these artists, the kibbutz is a crucial microcosm for understanding Israeli values and identity. The central drama explored in their works is the monumental tension between the individual and the collective, between individual aspiration and ideological rigor, between self-sacrifice and self-fulfillment. Portraying kibbutz life honestly demands retaining at least two oppositional things in mind at once—the absolute necessity of euphoric dreaming and the mellowing inevitability of disillusionment. As such, these artists’ imaginative witnessing of the fraught relation between the collective and the citizen-soldier is the story of Israel itself.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Introduction

1. Trepidation and Exultation in Early Kibbutz Fiction

2. “With a Zealot’s Fervor”: Individuals Facing the Fissures of Ideology in Oz, Shaham, and Balaban

3. The Kibbutz and Its Others at Midcentury: Palestinian and Mizrahi Interlopers in Utopia

4. Late Disillusionments and Village Crimes: The Kibbutz Mysteries of Batya Gur and Savyon Liebrecht

5. From the 1980s to 2010: Nostalgia and the Revisionist Lens in Kibbutz Film

Afterword: Between Hope and Despair: The Legacy of the Kibbutz Dream in the Twenty-First Century

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

Index

 

Ranen Omer-Sherman is the Jewish Heritage Fund for Excellence Chair of Judaic Studies at the University of Louisville.

New Article: Ellis, Discursive Dilemmas for Israeli Religious Settlers

Ellis, Donald. “Three Discursive Dilemmas for Israeli Religious Settlers.” Discourse Studies 16.4 (2014): 473-87.

 

URL: http://dis.sagepub.com/content/16/4/473

 

Abstract

Israeli religious settlers live in contested territory that they claim is promised to them by God. The settlers are at the center of the Israeli–Palestinian dispute and are the recipients of international condemnation for their illegal behavior. Because the territories are neither sovereign nor legally recognized by Israel, their definition is open to construction. Religious settlers make arguments to satisfy three discursive dilemmas that must be solved in order to normalize their lives. They must 1) construct their own authenticity, 2) marginalize the native others, and 3) establish cultural authority. These dilemmas are explicated in this essay.

New Article: Natkovich, “Tristan da Runha” as Jabotinsky’s Social Fantasy

Natkovich, Svetlana. “A Land of Harsh Ways: ‘Tristan da Runha’ as Jabotinsky’s Social Fantasy.” Jewish Social Studies 19.2 (2013): 24-49.

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URL: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/jewish_social_studies/v019/19.2.natkovich.html

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Abstract

This article discusses Jabotinsky’s social fantasy “Tristan da Runha” (1925) as one of the central works in his literary oeuvre, which formulates his artistic and ideological predilections on the eve of the founding of the Revisionist movement. By imagining an island community of exiled criminals cut off from civilization, Jabotinsky investigates the conditions necessary for the creation of his vision of an ideal society, one organized in accordance with primal intuition and thus without need of coercive regulatory mechanisms. “Tristan da Runha” offers a key to understanding Jabotinsky’s political and aesthetic affinities with English literature and the British colonialist narrative, his underlying social thought, and the underpinnings of his political views in the 1920s.

New Article: Jobani and Perez, Israel’s Ultra-Orthodox ‘Society of Learners’

Jobani, Yuval and Nahshon Perez. “Toleration and Illiberal Groups in Context: Israel’s Ultra-Orthodox ‘Society of Learners’.” Journal of Political Ideologies 19.1 (2014): 78-98.

 

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13569317.2013.869454

DOI: 10.1080/13569317.2013.869454

 

Abstract

This article aims to demonstrate the virtues of the contextual approach to political theory through an examination of a well-known question: should liberal states tolerate illiberal groups? This question will be analysed via the illustrative case of the Israeli Ultra-Orthodox Jews’ request to win an exemption from mandatory military conscription. We aim to demonstrate how a careful examination of the Ultra-Orthodox culture, and especially some core texts with regard to military service, will reveal significant insights, as the Ultra-Orthodox formative texts demonstrate a long-standing dispute regarding military service. This ‘internal’ dispute would not have been available to the researcher of toleration via a purely analytical approach. Several distinctive advantages follow the usage of the contextual approach, among them a better acquaintance with the group, the ability to structure adequately the tolerating approach and the likelihood that the chosen tolerating approach will win more legitimacy from both the general public and the illiberal group itself.

Cite: Shpiro, The Intellectual Foundations of Jewish National Terrorism

Shpiro, Shlomo. “The Intellectual Foundations of Jewish National Terrorism: Avraham Stern and the Lehi.” Terrorism and Political Violence 25.4 (2013): 606-20.

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09546553.2013.814502

Abstract

The Lehi, a fringe Jewish paramilitary group created in 1940, conducted a
concerted terrorist campaign against the British authorities in
Palestine during and after World War II, proclaiming that its activities
were undertaken in the name of national liberation. Lehi was founded
and led by Avraham Stern, also known as “Yair.” Scholar, intellectual,
and poet, Stern developed a fundamental ideology of national and
messianic Jewish terrorism, which became the ideological basis not only
for the work of the Lehi, but also for later Jewish terrorist activism.
The present article examines the intellectual foundations of Lehi
terrorism and how its intellectual and ideological principles influenced
Lehi’s most controversial activities—internal terrorism and the
execution of its own members. In conclusion, the author traces the
impact of Stern’s intellectual legacy on later generations of Jewish
terrorists.

Cite: Raijman, South African Jews in Israel

Raijman, Rebeca. “Moving to the Homeland: South African Jews in Israel.” Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies 11.3 (2013): 259-77.

 

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15562948.2013.801728

 

Abstract

This article focuses on Jewish South African immigrants migrating to Israel. It examines motives for migration, the ways by which migrants organized their move to the new country, and the types of resources (individual and institutional) on which they relied to make and implement their decision. Our study suggests that both push and pull factors explain South African Jewish migration to Israel. The unstable socioeconomic and political situation prevalent in South Africa was the main push factor explaining the desire to leave the country, whereas a strong Jewish and Zionist identity acted as a strong pull factor driving South African Jews to Israel. In addition, the existence of social networks and institutional frameworks linking the two countries helped perpetuate the migration over time. Two salient conceptual points emerge. First, theories that stress the economic aspects of migration alone are not helpful in explaining South African Jewish migration to Israel. We must also consider how ethnic identities related to the host society (e.g., their Jewish and Zionist identity) affect potential migrants’ decision making. Second, in order to understand the process of the migration of Jews to Israel, it is important to refer to the communal and social structures in the countries of origin and of destination.

ToC: Journal of Israeli History 32,1 (2013)

 

 

Special Issue: House as Home in Israeli Culture

Articles

Introduction

Orit Rozin
pages 1-5

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• DOI:10.1080/13531042.2013.768026

 

Separate spheres, intertwined spheres: Home, work, and family among Jewish women business owners in the Yishuv

Talia Pfefferman
pages 7-28

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• DOI:10.1080/13531042.2013.768028

 

Just ring twice: Law and society under the rent control regime in Israel, 1948–1954

Maya Mark
pages 29-50

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• DOI:10.1080/13531042.2013.768029

 

The evolution of the inner courtyard in Israel: A reflection of the relationship between the Western modernist hegemony and the Mediterranean environment

Hadas Shadar
pages 51-74

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• DOI:10.1080/13531042.2013.768031

 

The P6 Group and critical landscape photography in Israel

Jochai Rosen
pages 75-85

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• DOI:10.1080/13531042.2013.768033

 

Visions of identity: Pictures of rabbis in Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) private homes in Israel

Nissim Leon
pages 87-108

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• DOI:10.1080/13531042.2013.768035

 

Soft power: The meaning of home for Gush Emunim settlers

Michael Feige

pages 109-126

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• DOI:10.1080/13531042.2013.768041

 

Heading home: The domestication of Israeli children’s literature in the 1960s as reflected in Am Oved’s Shafan ha-sofer series

Yael Darr
pages 127-139

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• DOI:10.1080/13531042.2013.768042

House and home: A semantic stroll through metaphors and symbols

Tamar Sovran
pages 141-156

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• DOI:10.1080/13531042.2013.768044

Cite: Barromi Perlman, Public & Private Photographs of Children on Kibbutzim

Barromi Perlman, Edna. “Public and Private Photographs of Children on Kibbutzim in Israel: Observation and Analysis.” Photography and Culture 5.2 (2012): 149-166.

 

URL: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/berg/pgcj/2012/00000005/00000002/art00003

 

Abstract

This article analyzes the private and public practices and conventions of photographing children on kibbutzim between 1948 and 1967. It examines the effects of kibbutz egalitarian socialist ideology and lifestyle on the practices of creating photographs of children and the role of the photographers on kibbutzim. Photographs of children in children’s homes and communal child rearing, created on kibbutzim in Israel, were viewed as a representation of the epitome of kibbutz life. The photographs were created to serve the needs of the community and its ideology and eventually developed into a genre of their own. The analysis relates to the process of creation of private photographs of children, found in photo albums of individual families on kibbutzim. The article relates to the role of the kibbutz archive and the practices of archiving and their effect in consolidating collective memory. The research employs a semiotic approach to the analysis of the photographs and relates to social communications that developed and their contribution to the construction of meaning in the images.