Greenberg, Lev. “Sociology of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict” – Fall 2015 Syllabus.
URL: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/50b5/1f9d713efbc958e31d57775939bc70885e38.pdf (PDF)
Mechter, Eytan, and Avital Maya. Between the Intimate and the Anonymous in Urban Space. A Socio-Cultural Perspective on Tel Aviv. Tel Aviv: Resling, 2016 (in Hebrew).
This book seeks to contribute to the socio-cultural discourse on the first Hebrew-cosmopolitan city, a discourse that may serve as an alternative to the conventional economic content in relation to urban processes. The attempt to decipher the secret of the transformation of the first Hebrew city into a “world city” will be made by examining the uniqueness of the culture and ethos of Tel Aviv in connection with universal norms. The socio-cultural discussion presents the tension between rationality and desire that late capitalism is based on, while highlighting the manifestations of this tension in the urban, local, and general arenas–both by the conquest of space through capital and in the design of and objectified consciousness and consumerist styles.
Multiculturalism and density are distinct urban characteristics contributing to urban activity based on openness, creativity, innovation and sophistication, but also reflect expressions of convergence and alienation. The individuation process serves as a central axis f or the translation of the rational subject into an object of consumerist desire as a result of the capitalist system. Individuation and the process of self-branding encourage the growth of various forms of unique and dynamic identities and styles, but hinder the constructions of relationships based on emotions and commitment. “The neighborhood community” is offered in this book as a possible solution to anonymity and the instrumentalism of interpersonal relationships, a solution which enables interpersonal relationships in the metropolin without disrupting the dynamic nature of variability and diversity, while creating a stable core, whether territorial or virtual.
The concluding chapter discusses the spiritual challenge of the big city to cultivate expressions of “Hard Liberty” following Levinas, as a substitute for the splitting of the subject and the self-alienation which endanger the urban soul.
Eytan Mechter is a scholar and lecturer of sociology of culture at the NB Haifa School of Design, Holon Institute of Technology, and the Arts Faculty of the Kibbutzim College.Avital Maya Mechter was a lecture of creative education at Hemdat Hadarom college.
Shalev, Ofra, Nehami Baum, and Haya Itzhaky. “Religious Identity in Transition. Processes of Change in the Religious Identity of Young Religious Jewish Newlyweds in Israel.” The Family Journal 24.2 (2015): 132-9.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1066480716628598
Abstract
When researchers started to explore the cultural context of marriage, studies about how religious beliefs act within the marriage context have emerged. Most studies focused on Christian population, exploring how religiosity shape the nature of the marital relationship. The present study, however, examined the religious dynamics in one’s religious identity as a result of the transition to matrimony. Using qualitative tools, we interviewed 18 young Israeli Jewish Orthodox couples during their first year of marriage. The study exposes that although both partners come from the same religious group, the transition to marriage creates significant changes in their self-religious identity.
Sharvit, Keren, and Eran Halperin, eds. A Social Psychology Perspective on The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Celebrating the Legacy of Daniel Bar-Tal, volume 2. Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2016.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been waging for decades, resulting in mass losses, destruction, and suffering with profound effects on the members of the involved societies. Furthermore, its effects reach beyond the involved societies and influence regional and global stability. Many attempts have been made to bring this conflict to peaceful resolution, but so far without success. Due to its intensity and extensive effects, this conflict has drawn the attention of scholars from numerous disciplines, who attempted to explain the causes of the conflict and the reasons for the difficulties in resolving it. Among these one can find historians, geographers, political scientists, sociologists, and others. Social and political psychologists have also addressed this conflict, and one of the most influential among them has been Daniel Bar-Tal.
This is the second of two volumes intended to pay tribute to Daniel Bar-Tal’s scholarly contribution upon his retirement from his position at Tel Aviv University. While the first volume was devoted to Bar-Tal’s general theory of the sociopsychological foundations of intractable conflict and the theory’s relation to other prominent theoretical frameworks, this volume is devoted to applying Bar-Tal’s theory to the specific case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In his most recent book, published in 2013, Bar-Tal acknowledges the immense effects that living in Israel, being exposed to this conflict, and taking part in it have had on his thinking, theorizing, and empirical research regarding intractable conflicts. We too, as his former students, have been inspired by living in Israel and by Bar-Tal’s work to continue to investigate the sociopsychological dynamics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and through them to advance the understandings of intractable conflicts in general.
Table of Contents
Fast, Idit. “Understanding Educational Policy Formation. The Case of School Violence Policies in Israel.” Sociology of Education (early view; online first).
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0038040715615923
Abstract
This study explores mechanisms underlying processes of educational policy formation. Previous studies have given much attention to processes of diffusion when accounting for educational policy formation. Less account has been given to the day-to-day institutional dynamics through which educational policies develop and change. Building on extensive governmental archival data, complemented with interviews and media analysis, I study the development and transformation of school violence policies in Israel. I argue that diffusion of global policy ideas and practices provides the menu of possible policies, while within-country struggles over legitimacy in the policy domain serve as a mechanism shaping which items on the menu becomes actual policy. Specifically, in the Israeli case, the interest in and action toward school violence were influenced by a global trend, but the actions of Psychological-Counseling Services (PCS) who struggled to assert their legitimacy as the authority on school violence in the Israeli Ministry of Education (MOE) shaped the adoption, rejection, and institutionalization of the specific school violence policy ideas and practices.
Meier, Tal. “Palestinian-Israeli Single Mothers Accord Motherhood a New Meaning ‘I would like to teach my children a new way of life … I’m responsible for them now’.” International Review of Sociology (early view; online first).
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03906701.2015.1065563
Abstract
Over the last three decades, Palestinian society in Israel has undergone numerous changes, reflected in the rising numbers of families headed by single mothers. This article is based on a study conducted between 2007 and 2011 among 24 divorced, separated, and widowed Palestinian single mothers in Israel. I analyze this emerging family configuration, focusing on these women’s experiences as mothers and on how they accord new meaning to motherhood. My analysis will deal with the diverse ways these women ‘do motherhood’ and negotiate with different familial players. It will extend beyond the discourse on motherhood to shed light on the current changes in power and gender relations taking place in Palestinian-Israeli society.
Omer, Atalia. “Hitmazrehut or Becoming of the East: Re-Orienting Israeli Social Mapping.” Critical Sociology (early view; online first).
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0896920515604475
Abstract
Through developing of the concept of hitmazrehut, the article highlights avenues for decolonializing and de-orientalizing sociopolitical theory and practice in Israel/Palestine. Hitmazrehut (literally ‘becoming of the East’) is understood as the transformation of relations between space, identity, and narrative through an intersectionality framework of social movement activism and intellectual counter-discourse. Exposing the intersections among sites of marginality as well as cultivating localized interpretations of identity (delinked from the orientalist positing of Israel in the ‘West’) would contribute to the possibility of the formation of transformative coalition building across national boundaries. Hitmazrehut is both an outcome and a necessary process for enabling geopolitical reframing. The article begins with the ahistorical and orientalist biases of sociological inquiry into the region. It continues with an analysis of efforts to localize and re-orient Jewish identity as well as the Mizrahi discursive critique of epistemological violence guiding sociological scholarship, double consciousness and patterns of ethnic passing.
Harris, Brent David. “Beyond Guilt and Stigma: Changing Attitudes among Israeli Migrants in Canada.” International Migration 53.6 (2015): 41-56.
URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-2435.2011.00732.x/abstract
Abstract
Over 60 years ago, the Jewish nationalist movement known as Zionism culminated in the creation of the State of Israel. Millions of Jews immigrated to Israel over the twentieth century, a process known as aliya (literally, “going up”). Yet over the years, thousands of Israelis have also chosen to leave Israel in a movement termed yerida (“going down”). As the term suggests, this reverse migration has been highly stigmatized. During the 1960s and 1970s, emigrants were publicly disparaged in the Israeli media for having abandoned a struggling state. Consequently, Israeli migrants suffered strong feelings of guilt that often, hampered their integration process abroad, a phenomenon observed as late as the 1990s. This paper, however, reveals that feelings of stigmatization have greatly decreased among Israeli migrants in recent years. The study is based on research that I conducted in 2008–2009, involving nine months of participant observation in Vancouver’s Israeli community and 34 in-depth interviews. Unlike in previous studies, most of my informants expressed no feelings of guilt over having left Israel. Of those who did, most framed their guilt as a longing for family and friends rather than the patriotic longing for the land as expressed by previous generations. Previous studies have also found that Israelis harbour a “myth of return”– a continuously expressed desire to return to Israel and a reluctance to accept their stay abroad as permanent. However, I have not found that the myth of return is still strong today, despite the continued prevalence of a strong sense of Israeli identity among Israelis abroad. I suggest that these changing attitudes are the product of shifting ideals in Israeli society that have developed as the state of Israel has matured. This paper thus serves to update the outdated image of Israeli migrants as it exists in the prevailing literature.
Waterman, Stanley. “Ideology and Events in Israeli Human Landscape Revisited.” Jewish Journal of Sociology 57.1-2 (2015).
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.5750/jjsoc.v57i1/2.107
Abstract
This paper casts a retrospective gaze at an article written as a beginning academic who had immigrated to Israel just two years prior, some 40 years ago. Not wanting to alter anything I had written, it was subsequently published nearly five years later. In that paper, I observed a deep abyss between the Israel I “understood”—mainly through reading—before I immigrated and which I thought I “knew”, and the Israel I was experiencing following my arrival. This chasm led me to identify Israeli myths contra an Israeli reality and caused me to pose what were for me, at the time of writing, some disturbing questions about Israeli landscape and society. I did this by choosing three iconic landscapes — new towns, kibbutzim and the desert — and picking away at misunderstandings about them and the way in which we perceived Israel. Four decades on, I ask whether I had been impulsive in writing that paper then with so little experience and if a similar paper in a similar vein were to be written, set in 2015 rather than 1974, what questions might be asked about Israel now and what would they say about Israeli society and culture?
Lavie, Noa. From HaBurganim to . Tel Aviv: Resling, 2015 (in Hebrew).
Against the flood of a global and local television genre considered “inferior” – “reality” TV – there are growing public, official, and scholarly voices who distinguish between purely commercial television and quality, or even artistic, television. The quality discourse, which originated in the United States, revolves mainly around serialized drama shows, which as a television genre is even a competitor to the cinema in its artistic innovation.
Israeli television is heavily influenced by this global quality discourse. Moreover, during the 1990s Israeli television was revolutionized with the privatization of the television market in Israel and the establishment of commercial TV channels and cable and satellite channels. This revolution enabled, in parallel with the institutionalization of the global quality discourse, the production of original Israeli TV drama series immeasurably higher than during the sole reign of the IBA. Accordingly, this book explores how the serialized television drama became a “quality” television genre which is treated as a work of art in every respect.
This book does not deny the possibility that there is such thing as “high art,” or television productions that bears artistic marks; but Noa Lavie’s sociological spotlight seeks to illumine the struggles and the social and organizational causes that defined, beginning in the 1990s and down to the first decade of the 2000s, drama series such as “The Bourgeois” or “In Treatment”, along with other series, as high-quality and artistic television. This is achieved through an analysis of interviews with prominent creators of television drama in Israel, analysis of TV reviews published in major newspapers, and an account of the institutional-organizational field and the technological, regulatory, and other changes it underwent in the early 1990s.
Dr. Noa Lavi is the head of the political communication division and a lecturer in the School of Government and Society at Tel Aviv-Yaffo Academic College.
Piterberg, Gabriel. “Israeli Sociology’s Young Hegelian: Gershon Shafir and the Settler-Colonial Framework.” Journal of Palestine Studies 44.3 (2015): 17-38.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/jps.2015.44.3.17
Abstract
In April 2014, the Center for Near Eastern Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) convened a conference titled “The Settler Colonial Paradigm: Debating Gershon Shafir’s Land, Labor and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict on Its 25th Anniversary.” This essay emanates from the conference. I first chart the dialectical emergence of Shafir’s thought out of Israeli sociology, and then gauge its impact on the growing presence of the settler-colonial framework in the study of Palestine/Israel. The analysis of Shafir’s book shows how a powerful hegemony has produced its disavowal. The examination of Palestine/Israel as a settler-colonial situation past and present underscores the benefit of studying this topic comparatively and as part of a global phenomenon.
Kaplan, Dana, and Rachel Werczberger. “Jewish New Age and the Middle Class: Jewish Identity Politics in Israel under Neoliberalism.” Sociology (early view; online first).
URL: https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0038038515595953
Abstract
This article asks why middle-class Israeli seculars have recently begun to engage with Jewish religiosity. We use the case of the Jewish New Age (JNA) as an example of the middle class’s turn from a nationalised to a spiritualised version of Judaism. We show, by bringing together the sociology of religion’s interest in emerging spiritualities and cultural sociology’s interest in social class, how after Judaism was deemed socially significant in identity-based struggles for recognition, Israeli New Agers started culturalising and individualising Jewish religiosity by constructing it in a spiritual, eclectic, emotional and experiential manner. We thus propose that what may be seen as cultural and religious pluralism is, in fact, part of a broader system of class reproduction.
Tarablus, Tamar, Tali Heiman, and Dorit Olenik-Shemesh. “Cyber Bullying Among Teenagers in Israel: An Examination of Cyber Bullying, Traditional Bullying, and Socioemotional Functioning.” Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma 24.6 (2015): 707-20.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10926771.2015.1049763
Abstract
In this study, the relationships between cyber bullying and involvement in traditional bullying, with reference to social support and gender differences, was examined. Social support plays an important role in empowering victims of cyber bullying and has a significant influence on children and teenagers’ well-being. A sample made up of 458 Israeli junior high students (242 female, 216 male) in the age range of 11 to 13 completed 4 questionnaires. Results indicated that there is an overlap between involvement in cyber bullying and involvement in traditional bullying. The findings indicate that girls were more likely to be cyber victims than boys and that boys were more likely to be cyber bullies than girls. Examination of the relationships between gender and social support variables such as friends, family, and others, shows that girls who were cyber victims reported having more support in all 3 types than cyber bullied boys. These findings can serve as a basis for prevention and intervention programs to cope with cyber bullying.
Guggenheim, Noga and Orit Taubman – Ben-Ari. “Women as a Key to Enhancing Road Safety in Ultraorthodox Communities in Israel.” Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour 30 (2015): 22-29.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.trf.2015.02.004
Abstract
The ultraorthodox sector in Israel, while an integral part of society, has unique cultural characteristics along with limited media exposure. Both these features impact the perceptions of driving and road safety, as well as the ability to influence them. In view of the scarcity of research literature on these issues, the present study sought to gain further insight into the community in an attempt to find a creative way to leverage road safety among ultraorthodox road users in Israel.
Using the phenomenological qualitative method, 60 face-to-face in-depth interviews were conducted with women and men of different ages and backgrounds from the major ultraorthodox communities. Findings reveal that for the ultraorthodox, driving is a controversial subject that represents much more than its normative practical function in modern Western societies. It is subject to sociocultural restrictions that are reflected, inter alia, in limited public discourse on road safety. Moreover, the findings highlight the prominent educational role of women in this sector: they are exclusively responsible for raising young children, and are the sole educators of girls of all ages. In addition, as people tend to marry young, and men do not generally drive before marriage, women can influence the safety habits of their spouse as well as their children. The authors suggest building on this potential to increase awareness of road safety by empowering ultraorthodox women to serve as agents of social change in their family and community.
Yair, Gad. “The Germans: Cultural Trauma and the Israeli Habitus.” American Journal of Cultural Sociology 3.2 (2015): 254-79.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/ajcs.2015.2
Abstract
This article reports results from a qualitative study of Israelis living in Germany, focusing on their traumatized national habitus. The study is based on 80 in-depth interviews and on replies of more than 100 respondents to an online questionnaire. The present article focuses on one specific aspect of the Israeli traumatized habitus: ‘the wounded eye and the scratched ear’. Specifically, it explores the ways by which the trauma of the Holocaust is inscribed in Israeli senses. It details how respondents’ eyes, ears and thoughts are activated by German mundane episodes, linking day-to-day experiences to the trauma of the Holocaust. Trains, suspect on-boarding Israelis, might end up in Auschwitz; snow brings up associations of the death marches; old people are perceived as Gestapo officers; and contemporary child-rearing practices ‘explain’ to Israelis the obedience and collaboration of ordinary Germans with the Third Reich. Using thick description from the interviews I expose the suspicious Israeli habitus – which always looks for ‘signs’ that might explain what happened in Germany 80 years ago.
Weiss, Erica. Conscientious Objectors in Israel. Citizenship, Sacrifice, Trials of Fealty. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014.
Reviews
Ram, Uri. “Israeli Sociology: Social Thought amidst Struggles and Conflicts.” Irish Journal of Sociology 23.1 (2015): 98-117.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.7227/IJS.23.1.6
Abstract
The basic challenge of Israeli sociology always has been, and continues to be to present days, the designation of its object of study; i. e.’Israeli society’. The history of Israeli sociology and its conception of ‘Israeli society’ may be discerned into the five following modules: 1. Proto-sociology. In the pre-state era, sociological thought thrived within the context of the socialist Zionism. The two prominent’ proto-sociologists’ were Arthur Ruppin and Martin Buber, who professed German communal perspectives. 2. Modernization sociology. The formative phase of sociology as a discipline was from 1950 to 1977. It was led by Shmuel Noah Eisenstadt, who effected a transition from the German anti-modernist paradigm to an American modernization theory. 3. Critical sociology. The critical phase took place in the 1970s and 1980s. Critical sociology was manifested in elitism, pluralism, Marxism, feminism and colonization approaches. Simultaneously there emerged a robust branch of’ quantitative sociology’. 4. Post-modern sociology. The turn towards post-modernity started in the 1990s. The three noticeable post-modern perspectives are: post-structuralism, post-colonialism and post-Marxism. 5. Palestinian Arab sociology in Israel. Palestinian Arab sociology is emerging and coming to its own since the 1990s. It reflects integration as well as alienation.
Safir, Marilyn P., Helene S. Wallach, and Albert Rizzo, eds. Future Directions in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: Prevention, Diagnosis, and Treatment. New York: Springer, 2015.
Ours is an era of increasing tension, both global and local. And not surprisingly, PTSD is recognized not only in combat veterans and active military personnel, but also disaster and assault survivors across the demographic spectrum. As current events from mass shootings to the debate over trigger warnings keep the issue in the public eye, the disorder remains a steady concern among researchers and practitioners.
Future Directions in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder presents findings and ideas with the potential to influence both our conceptualization of the condition and the techniques used to address it. A multidisciplinary panel of experts offers new analyses of risk and resilience factors, individual and group approaches to prevention, the evolving process of diagnosis, and effective treatment and delivery. Chapters on treatment allow readers to compare widely-used prolonged exposure and VR methods with innovative applications of cognitive processing therapy and interpersonal therapy. And an especially compelling contribution surveys empirically-based programs relating to what for many is the emblematic trauma of our time, the events of September 11, 2001. Included in the coverage:
While millions experience trauma, relatively few develop chronic PTSD. Future Directions in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is a practical and proactive reference for the health and clinical psychologists, sociologists, psychiatrists, and primary care physicians dedicated to further decreasing those numbers.
Table of contents
Israel Affairs, Volume 21, Issue 3, July 2015 is now available online is now available online on Taylor & Francis Online.
Special Issue: Judea and Samaria Jewish Settlers and Settlements – Cultural Sociology of Unsettled Space: A Look From Within
This new issue contains the following articles:
Introduction
Introduction: Judea and Samaria Jewish settlers and settlements – cultural sociology of unsettled space
Miriam Billig & Udi Lebel
Pages: 309-312
Section 1: History and Philosophy of Jewish Settlement
Settlement in Samaria: the ethical dimension
Tamar Meisels
Pages: 313-330
The Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria (1967–2008): historical overview
Miriam Billig
Pages: 331-347
Section 2: Place Identities – Reality and Representation
Self-segregation of the vanguard: Judea and Samaria in the religious-Zionist society
Nissim Leon
Pages: 348-360
Settling the Military: the pre-military academies revolution and the creation of a new security epistemic community – The Militarization of Judea and Samaria
Udi Lebel
Pages: 361-390
Hilltop youth: political-anthropological research in the hills of Judea and Samaria
Shimi Friedman
Pages: 391-407
Judea and Samaria in Israeli documentary cinema: displacement, oriental space and the cultural construction of colonized landscapes
Eithan Orkibi
Pages: 408-421
Section 3: Dynamics of Regional Policy Making
Regional framing: Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip in the eyes of the security elite
Asaf Lebovitz
Pages: 422-442
Against all odds – the paradoxical victory of the West Bank settlers: interest groups and policy enforcement
Ami Pedahzur & Holly McCarthy
Pages: 443-461
‘A simple historical truth’: Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip in Menachem Begin’s ideology
Arye Naor
Pages: 462-481
Guy, Anat. “The Impact of Cultural Orientation and Higher Education on Young Israeli Jewish and Arab Adults’ Notion of the Adaptive Adult.” Children & Society (online first, early view).
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/chso.12124
Abstract
This quantitative study compares young adults’ notions of the adaptive adult prior to becoming parents in Israel together with the moderating effect of academic education and culture on these notions. Participants were drawn from Israel’s two largest ethnic groups: Jews and Muslims. The research findings indicate that each group’s ideal image of the adaptive adult is constructed prior to parenthood. The findings may also indicate acculturation process among Muslim Arabs in Israel who are exposed to individualistic values (Israeli Jewish society). This process may modify personal values and preference regarding the ideal adaptive adult in order to integrate themselves and their future offspring into that society. This trend was found to be more common among highly educated members of the collectivist society.
Online Israel Studies Bulletin Board 