New Article: Dominguez, On Anthropology in Israel

Dominguez, Virginia R. “On Anthropology in Israel.” American Anthropologist 118.1 (2016): 142-158 (with responses).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/aman.12506

 

Extract

The following subsection includes responses to three questions I formulated and sent to all living past heads of the Israel Anthropological Association. Marked with asterisks below are the past and living IAA heads who responded to my request, but I nonetheless include the full list of past heads (called chairs until relatively recently but now called presidents). Nineteen colleagues have served the IAA in that capacity since the founding of the association in 1973; nine of them responded to my three questions, and those answers appear in this special World Anthropology subsection.

My questions were as follows:

• (1)What kind of work do you associate with Israeli anthropology—Now? Twenty to thirty years ago? Fifty to sixty years ago?
• (2)What do you find most challenging in Israeli anthropology or as an anthropologist in Israel?
• (3)What do you find most praiseworthy and productive in (the practice of) anthropology in Israel?

Responses by Henry Abramovitch, Tel Aviv University; Nurit Bird-David, University of Haifa; Harvey E. Goldberg, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; André Levy, Ben-Gurion University; Dan Rabinowitz, Tel Aviv University; Amalia Sa’ar, University of Haifa; Moshe Shokeid, Tel Aviv University; Alex Weingrod, Ben-Gurion University; Meira Weiss, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

 

 

 

New Article: Gilboa and Magen, Crisis Communication Research in Israel

Gilboa, Eytan, and Clila Magen. “Crisis Communication Research in Israel. Growth and Gaps.” In The Handbook of International Crisis Communication Research (ed. Andreas Schwarz, Matthew W. Seeger, and Claudia Auer; Malden, Mass. and Oxford, UK: Wiley Blackwell, 2016): 327-36.

 

Extract

Gesser-Edelsburg and Zemach (2012) explored CC strategies used by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to deal with the December 2010 Carmel forest fire disaster. Ostensibly, this crisis belongs to the national type, but the focus on the prime minister moves it to the individual crisis category… They concluded that Netanyahu made effective use of CC principles including inclusion, clarity, and addressing the public’s values and norms. They claimed, however, that those strategies were used to produce what they labeled “cover-up risk communication,” because the end result was a cover-up of a failure rather than an admission of malfunction and willingness to correct defects. The analysis is interesting but the conclusion ignored important measures applied by the government in the post-crisis era. While the government refused to admit guilt, it took immediate and bold measure to correct the defects.

 

 

ToC: Journal of Jewish Education 81.2 (2015): special issue on Israel Education (Part 2)

Journal of Jewish Education, Volume 81, Issue 2, April-June 2015 is now available online is now available online on Taylor & Francis Online. Special Issue: Israel Education, Part II This new issue contains the following articles: Editor’s Note Approaching Israel Education: New Agendas Helena Miller Pages: 97-100 Articles What’s in a Name? In Pursuit of Israel Education Shlomit Attias Pages: 101-135 Mature Zionism: Education and the Scholarly Study of Israel Hanan A. Alexander Pages: 136-161 Harnessing Teacher Potential as Israel Education Curriculum Developers Meredith Katz Pages: 162-188 The Educational Mission of the Shaliach: A Case Study in Australia Yosef Aharonov Pages: 189-211 Educational Travel to Israel in the Era of Globalization Elan Ezrachi Pages: 212-225 Book Reviews Erik H. Cohen, Identity and Pedagogy: Shoah Education in Israeli State Schools (Academic Studies Press, Brighton, MA, 2013) Daniel Osborn Pages: 226-230 Jack Schneider, From the Ivory Tower to the Schoolhouse: How Scholarship Becomes Common Knowledge in Education (Harvard Education Press, Cambridge, MA, 2014) Miriam Heller Stern Pages: 231-235

New Book: Ram; The Return of Martin Buber (in Hebrew)

רם, אורי. שובו של מרטין בובר. המחשבה הלאומית והחברתית בישראל מבובר עד הבובריאנים החדשים. תל אביב: רסלינג, 2015.

Martin Buber (1878-1965) was the first chair of the first Department of Sociology at the first university in Israel – but who remembers this today? This book discusses the history of ideas of national and social thought, and of sociology in Israel, through the question of Buber’s changing status: what was his initial place in sociology? Why did he disappear from the sociological canon? And why has interest in his works resurged in recent years?

This significant book by Uri Ram presents a new look at Buber’s philosophy and offers a critical reading of it. While Buber was a prominent figure of the pre-state peace movements (“Brit Shalom” and “Ihud”), he was also a German thinker of his time, who utterly rejected modernism and fully embraced the conservative-right visions of traditional Gemeinschaft Community, the nationalist Volk culture, and the Congregation of the Faithful.

The Department of Sociology was founded in the academic year of 1947/8 and Buber was appointed as its chair. His sociology was somewhat consistent with the spirit of the pre-state Jewish community, but not the spirit of statehood that followed independence. In 1950, the leadership of Sociology shifted to Buber’s student Eisenstadt, who designed the discipline in the coming decades in the spirit of American modernization. Buber’s figure became marginal for many years. However, since the 1990s, Buber’s status has enjoyed a revival, against the backdrop of the crisis of secular nationalism, alongside the rise of postmodern and postcolonial approaches in intellectual discourse. New sociological studies was inspired by Buber is defined in this book as “neo-Buberian”, and the book raises questions as to whether this trend promotes a civil and democratic culture or rather empowers the national-religious culture in contemporary Israel.

 

New Article: Gechtman, Zionist Historiography and the Jewish Labour Movement

Gechtman, Roni. “Nationalising the Bund? Zionist Historiography and the Jewish Labour Movement.” East European Jewish Affairs 43.3 (2013): 249-264.

 

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13501674.2013.852802

 

Abstract

This article examines the academic historiography on the Jewish Workers’ Bund produced by Israeli and Zionist scholars. While the contribution of Israeli scholars to the historiography on the Bund has been significant in both quantity and quality, their works have had to grapple with the tension between the goals of Zionist historiography and the Bund’s political and ideological commitments, namely the party’s radical opposition to nationalism in general and to Zionism in particular. To various degrees, Israeli scholars sought to “nationalise” the Yiddish-speaking labour movement in Eastern Europe and incorporate it into a coherent narrative of the Jews’ past as an “organic” nation. As a result of their authors’ ideological and methodological preconceptions, and by portraying it as a nationalist movement, these works often misrepresent the Bund’s ideas, policies and activities.

ToC: Israel Studies Review 28,1 (2013)

This title was previously known as Israel Studies Forum.

Publisher: Berghahn Journals

• Editors’ Note pp. v-vi(2)

Forum

•  The Fragile Boundary between the Political and the Academic pp. 1-7(7)
  Author: Feldhay, Rivka

Articles

• Party Membership in Israel: An Overview pp. 8-32(25)
  Authors: Kenig, Ofer; Philippov, Michael; Rahat, Gideon
• Multiculturalism, Conversion, and the Future of Israel as a Modern State pp. 33-53(21)
  Author: Waxman, Chaim I.
• The Cultural Divide: Book Reading as a Signifier of Boundaries among Co-Cultures in Israeli Society pp. 54-77(24)
  Authors: Adoni, Hanna; Nossek, Hillel
• Public Silence and Latent Memories: Yitzhak Rabin and the Arab-Palestinian Citizens of Israel pp. 78-97(20)
  Author: Sorek, Tamir
• The Bourgeois Construction of the Rural: An Israeli Case pp. 98-119(22)
  Author: Shavit, Ze’ev
• The Hebrew Teachers as Creators of the Zionist Community in (the Land of) Israel pp. 120-141(22)
  Authors: Tadmor-Shimony, Tali; Raichel, Nirit

Review Essay

• Post-Post-Zionism: A Paradigm Shift in Israel Studies? pp. 142-155(14)
  Author: Kaplan, Eran

Book Reviews

• Book Reviews pp. 156-175(20)

Cite: Strömbom, Identity Shifts and Conflict Transformation – Probing the Israeli History Debates

Strömbom, Lisa. “Identity Shifts and Conflict Transformation – Probing the Israeli History Debates.” Mediterranean Politics (2013), online first edition.

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URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13629395.2012.745707

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Abstract

This article investigates narratives of Israeli history and identity and ways in which they can be understood as linked to the transformation of intractable conflicts. By using the case of Israeli New History, this study elaborates on the interplay between master and counter-commemorative narratives of identity and history, and the potential impact of that interaction when it comes to the development of conflict. The Israeli case exhibits an elaboration on societal boundaries and understandings of identity, which makes it apt to illustrate processes in which new understandings of history tie into the development of conflicts.

Cite: Stein, Rewriting Israel’s History

Stein, Leslie. “Rewriting Israel’s History.” Shofar 30.1 (2011): 129-140.

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URL: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/shofar/v030/30.1.stein.html

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Abstract

This article provides a brief survey of the major works of the so-called New Israeli Historians. It attempts to explain what distinguishes them from mainstream Israeli scholars and considers the extent to which their writings constitute a unified school of thought. The article makes it clear that there are indeed various gradations of dissent. For one, Benny Morris, while basing himself on archival material that reveals unsavory aspects of Israel’s history, nevertheless remains faithful to the Zionist ideal. At the other end of the spectrum Ilan Pappé is far less interested in the veracity of his sources and is far more concerned to denigrate the entire Zionist enterprise by falsely accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing.