The 47th Annual Conference of the Association for Jewish Studies will take place in Boston, December 13-15, 2015.
The full program is now available on the AJS website: http://www.ajsnet.org/conference-menu.htm
You may also download the program here: PDF
Barak-Brandes, Sigal and Einat Lachover. “Branding Relations: Mother–Daughter Discourse on Beauty and Body in an Israeli Campaign by Dove.” Communication, Culture & Critique (early view; online first).
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cccr.12111
Abstract
In March 2013, Unilever Israel, owner of the Dove brand, launched a new campaign calling for a dialogue between mothers and their adolescent daughters around the issue of self-esteem and body image. The Israeli campaign was part of the global “Campaign for Real Beauty” launched by Unilever in 2004. The Israeli campaign was run primarily on 2 Internet platforms that appeal to women, and was based mainly on the talk of “ordinary” mothers and daughters on online videos and blogs—ostensibly personal yet produced by advertisers. Based on discourse analysis and critical examination of the consumerist and postfeminist context in which the campaign was produced, this article explores how the mother–daughter relationship suggests a new sphere for processes of branding.
Shechory-Bitton, Mally, Sarah Ben David and Eliane Sommerfeld. “Effect of Ethnicity on Parenting Styles and Attitudes Toward Violence Among Jewish and Arab Muslim Israeli Mothers. An Intergenerational Approach.” Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 46.4 (2015): 508-24.
URL: http://jcc.sagepub.com/content/46/4/508
Abstract
The cultural heterogeneity of Israeli society creates a unique opportunity to study the effects of ethnicity and intergenerational differences on parenting styles, attitudes, and practices. Three groups of mother–daughter dyads took part in the study: Native-born Jewish (NBJ) Israelis (155 dyads), Jewish Mizrahi (JM) immigrants (immigrants from Muslim countries (133 dyads), and native-born Arab Muslim (NBA) Israelis (86 dyads). Participants were located through a “snowball” process in which participants referred their friends to the researchers or gave the researchers names of potential participants. Interethnic differences were found in the mothers’ generation, with JM mothers falling in between NBJ and NBA mothers. This trend changed when we examined differences between the daughters. Although intergenerational differences were found in all groups, the differences were more prominent among Jewish mother–daughter dyads than among mother–daughter dyads in the Muslim population. Contrary to the research hypothesis, the parenting style of JM women was closer to that of NBJ mothers than to NBA mothers. The findings are discussed with reference to the complexity of Israeli society and to the encounter between the culture of the immigrant women who came from Muslim countries and the Western culture of the host society.
Shechory-Bitton, Mally and Sarah Ben-David. “Intergenerational Differences in Parenting Styles of Mother–Daughter Dyads among Immigrants and Native-Born Israelis.” Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 45.9 (2014): 1453-70.
URL: http://jcc.sagepub.com/content/45/9/1453
Abstract
The study examined and compared intergenerational differences in parenting styles, attitudes toward child-rearing, and corporal punishment (CP) in three groups of mother–daughter dyads in Israel: immigrants from Ethiopia and from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) and native-born Israelis. Results show that ethnicity, mothers’ parenting styles, and mothers’ attitudes toward CP significantly explain 21% to 26% of the variance in daughters’ parenting styles. However, the results also indicate the differential effect on parenting style of exposure to a culture other than the culture of origin. This is also reflected in the fact that the younger generation, especially among immigrants from Ethiopia, is more affected by the encounter with the host society than is the older generation.
Online Israel Studies Bulletin Board 