New Article: Mosco, Noga & Atzaba-Poria, Socialization Goals of Mothers and Fathers From the Bedouin Society of the Negev

Mosco, Noga, and Naama Atzaba-Poria. “In Search of ‘the Bedouin Adaptive Adult’. Socialization Goals of Mothers and Fathers From the Bedouin Society of the Negev.” Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0022022115610632

 

Abstract

The Bedouins of the Negev are a unique minority group living in southern Israel. They are known to be a formerly nomadic society characterized by tribal collectivism. The purpose of this study was to improve the understanding of the broad context in which parenting and child development take place in Bedouin society by exploring the images Bedouin parents have of the adults they wish their children to become (the adaptive adult). We explored the images of the adaptive adult as expressed by parents’ ratings of individualistic and collectivistic socialization goals (SGs), while also examining the eco-cultural factors that may be related to these images. Specifically, we examined the relations between SG preferences and parental acculturation attitude, parental education, and child gender. Participants included 65 Bedouin mothers and 30 Bedouin fathers. Parents completed the Acculturation Questionnaire and the Socialization Goals Rating Task. Results indicated that mothers who had higher education and those who had higher levels of contact and participation in Israeli Jewish culture preferred more individualistic SGs over collectivistic SGs for their children. Furthermore, acculturation level was a stronger predictor of maternal SGs than level of education. Contrary to mothers, fathers’ SG preferences were found to be related only to their level of education and not to their acculturation levels. Finally, both mothers and fathers preferred individualistic SGs for their sons and collectivistic SGs for their daughters. The links between SG preferences and the factors of parental acculturation, parental education, and child gender are discussed, and implications are proposed.

 

 

New Article: Lachover, Signs of Change in Media Representation of Women in Israeli Politics

Lachover, Einat. “Signs of Change in Media Representation of Women in Israeli Politics: Leading and Peripheral Women Contenders.” Journalism (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1464884915610991

Abstract

The study seeks to examine gender portrayal of Israeli women politicians, and specifically that of candidates for Israel’s parliament on televised news and in print in the elections of 2013. The study is based on an interpretive analysis of all news items wherein the women candidates are mentioned during the month preceding the elections. This study joins recent studies that point to a change in how women politicians are portrayed in the media. Leading contenders succeed in influencing their coverage, and commensurately usually enjoy nonstereotypically gendered portrayal. Moreover, they occasionally seek to make use of hegemonic cultural norms to benefit what they perceive as structuring their positive gendered portrayal. In contrast, the coverage of peripheral contenders suffers from traditional patterns of sidelining. It emerges that peripheral contenders who gain relatively high exposure are portrayed as exceptional based either on their extraordinary other-ness or on the newsworthiness of their campaigns.

 

 

 

New Article: Dana & Walker, The Effects of Israeli Occupation on Palestinian Gender Roles

Dana, Karam, and Hannah Walker. “Invisible Disasters: The Effects of Israeli Occupation on Palestinian Gender Roles.” Contemporary Arab Affairs 8.4 (2015): 488-504.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17550912.2015.1090100

 

Abstract

Women’s participation in the First Intifada allowed for increased gender equality in Palestine. However, the weakness of the Palestinian Authority, established by the Oslo Accords, created space for non-state actors (dominated by the Islamist political organization Hamas) to emerge and gain popularity. Likewise, during the post-Oslo period conservative positions on gender resurged. This paper re-examines the structural factors that facilitated increased gender inequality and argues that the nature of the occupation itself serves as the greatest force for gender inequality in Palestine. To develop and test our theory, we draw on original, large-n survey data and in-depth interviews.

 

 

New Article: Lavie & Dhoest, Quality Television in the Making

Lavie, Noa, and Alexander Dhoest. “‘Quality Television’ in the Making: The Cases of Flanders and Israel.” Poetics (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.poetic.2015.08.006

 

Abstract

This article discusses the properties of ‘quality television’ as constructed within the field of television production. It does so by analyzing the discourse of television creators and critics in two countries, Israel and Flanders, taking a theoretical approach based in part on Bourdieusian theory. Most academic work about ‘quality television’ concentrates on Anglo-American television drama series. In this paper we offer a different perspective by focusing on two small but prosperous television markets outside of the Anglo-American world. Our findings suggest that the quality discourse in both countries contains autonomous-artistic alongside heteronomous-capitalist ideological elements, apparently under the influence of the Anglo-American discourse of quality. Our findings also suggest that both ideological elements contribute to the cultural legitimation of the television drama series in both countries, though the capitalist discourse plays a more evident role among creators than among critics. Finally, we also discuss the differences between the Flemish and the Israeli discourses of ‘quality television.’

 

 

New Article: Kulik and Kitaichik, Marital Intimacy ad Gender Roles: Israeli Husbands and Wives

Kulik, Liat and Danielle Kitaichik. “Marital Intimacy and Selected Correlates of Gender Roles: A Comparative Analysis of Israeli Husbands and Wives.” Women’s Studies 43.6 (2014): 823-42.

 

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00497878.2014.921509

 

 

Excerpt

In light of the finding that a liberal gender role ideology increases the sense of intimacy among husbands as well as among wives—and because men typically tend to maintain a more traditional gender role ideology than women do—marital counselors should encourage the adoption of a liberal gender role ideology not only as a goal in itself but also as a means of enhancing marital intimacy among husbands and wives.

Moreover, in the process of intervention, counselors should adopt an approach that emphasizes that if women are nurturing and compassionate they can also assert power and feel empowered in the marital relationship. Most important, the counseling approach should be based on the perception of the new woman, which combines both feminine and masculine characteristics as expressed in the term “agency in community.” Apparently, the challenge that counselors face today is to help women find the appropriate balance in the application of this concept in their daily lives.

New Article: Yarchi, The Effect of Female Suicide Attacks on Foreign Media Framing of Conflicts

Yarchi, Moran. “The Effect of Female Suicide Attacks on Foreign Media Framing of Conflicts: The Case of the Palestinian–Israeli Conflict.” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 37.8 (2014): 674-88.

 

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1057610X.2014.921768

 

Abstract

The study examines the effect of female suicide attacks on foreign media framing of conflicts. Examining the Palestinian–Israeli conflict, 2,731 articles were sampled that covered terrorist events (American, British, and Indian press); 625 appeared in the week following a female’s suicide attack, 97 reported an attack by a female perpetrator. The findings suggest that foreign media discourse around female suicide bombers promotes more messages about the society within which the terrorists are embedded. Since the coverage of female terrorists tends to provide more detailed information about the perpetrator, it focuses more on the terror organizations’ side of the conflict’s story.

Cite: Allon, Gender Segregation, Effacement, and Suppression: Trends in the Status of Women in Israel

Allon, Michal L. “Gender Segregation, Effacement, and Suppression: Trends in the Status of Women in Israel.” Digest of Middle East Studies 22.2 (2013): 276-291.

 

URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/dome.12030/abstract

 

Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyze the phenomenon of the exclusion of women from the public sphere in Israel. The article describes some of the causes of this phenomenon, its impact on Israeli society, and the difficulty in confronting it. Israeli women have made impressive gains on many fronts, but the exclusion of women from the public sphere as a result of the influence of the growing Ultra-Orthodox minority, which imposes its norms on the general public, raises serious concerns. The exclusion of women manifests itself in several forms: gender segregation in public spaces, the effacement of women’s images from the public sphere, and the suppression of women’s voice. The infiltration of Orthodox Jewish fundamentalism into Israeli society may cause the regression of advancements previously made in women’s rights in Israel. The article points to the limitations of the treatment of this phenomenon within a theory of multiculturalism, and suggests an alternative framework of discourse, which relies on concepts that are drawn from the literature on environmental ethics, public rights, and public ownership of space and resources.

Berkovitch et al., Blind Spots of Women’s Discrimination in Academy

Berkovitch, Nitza, Anat Waldman & Niza Yanay. “The Politics of (In)Visibility: On the Blind Spots of Women’s Discrimination in the Academy.” Culture and Organization 18.3 (2012): 251-275.

 

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14759551.2011.644669

 

Abstract

The aim of this study is to show how invisible institutional culture participates in the production and propagation of gender difference and hierarchy. To that end, we examine the official publications of one Israeli university in order to explore cultural mechanisms that signify hidden conceptions, ideologies and iconic images of women in the academe. Conceptualizing these publications as cultural products that operate as the public image of the university and hence participate in its overall construction of ideologies of gendered reality, we analyze, both qualitatively and quantitatively, images, visual representations and scripts of university women as they appear in the university bulletins, president’s reports, and various newsletters from 1974 to 2004 (in Hebrew and in English). Having looked at over 5000 articles and photographs, we found that although the presence of women in the publications has increased over the years, their images and roles continue to be feminized and sexist. Thus, more space is devoted and more visibility given to stereotyped femininity and womanhood. Moreover, we explore the ways in which mechanisms that create a complex politics of visibility and invisibility produce contested and contradictory messages and participate in the creation of what we call the blind spots of discrimination.

Cite: Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Palestinian Women in Israel

Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Nadera. “The Grammar of Rights in Colonial Contexts: The Case of Palestinian Women in Israel .” Middle East Law and Governance 4.1 (2012): 106-151.

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URL: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/brill/melg/2012/00000004/00000001/art00003

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Abstract

This article examines the limitations of human rights activism in a colonial context by invoking the voices, experiences, and insights of Bedouin women living in Israel. Through extensive interviews, Bedouin women living in unrecognized villages in the Naqab/Negev reveal their struggles as unrecognized and “invisible“ members of society. The article explores the ways in which the prevailing “grammar of rights“—the formal and informal mechanisms constructed and maintained by the colonial power to accord or withhold rights—delimits and confines the lives of the women, and also human rights activism. The women’s personal stories are juxtaposed against the legal justifications used to regulate and discriminate against them, as members of the indigenous Palestinian community, within the context of a “fear industry“. The article explores, from the perspective of the interviewed women, the internalization of that culture of fear, where they are constructed as the ones to be feared, and its personal, familial, and communal implications.

The interviewed women offer a critique of the existing human right framework, and question whether a human rights activism operating in a colonial context can be an emancipating force, so long as it is constrained by the regime’s rules. Furthermore, their voices assert that acknowledging historical injustice and its effect on women’s rights is central to re-thinking feminist human rights activism. The article ends by returning to the voices of women living in the unrecognized villages of the Naqab/Negev to investigate whether, and how, feminist politics and human rights activism could operationally function together within the context of Israeli state law. The article concludes that, in order to create a “grammar of rights“ that is based on equality, respect, and dignity, and which challenges the balance of power in colonial contexts, it is essential to fully include the lived experiences and insights of “invisible“ and unrecognized women.

CFP: Framing Ethnicity in Israel, Temple U (Deadline Feb 15)

 

The Mirowski Family Foundation, Jewish Studies and the Center for Afro-Jewish Studies at Temple University invite submissions for a one and a half day workshop, April 19-20, at Temple University in Philadelphia, PA.

 

Israeli society is punctuated by a variety of sectors and social identities. The aim of the workshop is to examine trends since the 1980s of framing identity, "race" and ethnicity in Israel in the light of neo-liberalism, globalization and domestic politics.

 

We are interested in groups that have been underexamined in Israeli society and those which have undergone interesting quantitative and qualitative changes in the last few decades. We encourage proposals from a variety of disciplines-Sociology, Demography, History, Political Science, Anthropology, etc. Topics might include, but are not limited to:

 

· New identities-political, cultural, religious

· Racism, chauvinism, discrimination

· Subcultures and cultural hybridity

· Orientalism and its critics

· Migration and absorption

 

 

Please submit a 1 page proposals by February 15, 2012 to

 

or