Tag Archives: single mothers

Bulletin: Israeli Palestinians and Arab Minorities in Israel

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Books

Nadim N. Rouhana, Israel and its Palestinian Citizens

 

 

Articles

 

New Article: Meier, Palestinian Divorced and Widowed Mothers in Israel

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Meier, Tal. ““I Do What I Please, but Even So, I See a Psychologist”: Palestinian Divorced and Widowed Mothers in Israel.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 11.3 (2015): 306-324.

 
URL: https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_middle_east_womens_studies/v011/11.3.meler.html
 
Abstract

Divorce, separation, and widowhood produce great psychological stress for Palestinian women in Israel. Very often family support is a set of demands seeking to regulate and reshape their conduct. This article is based on a study conducted between 2007 and 2011 with twenty-four divorced, separated, and widowed Palestinian single mothers in Israel. In contrast to claims in most existing scholarship, all of the women turned to nonfamilial sources of support to deal with family and community regulation, restrictions, and stigmatization and to acquire resources. Level of surveillance and regulation was most highly associated with socioeconomic class. The poorer the women, the fewer their choices and the less freedom they had to determine their lives and their children’s lives. The women interviewed disproportionately reported turning to outsiders, such as psychologists, spiritualists, and feminist activists, for “expressive” support.

 

 

New Article: Meier, Intersections in Palestinian Single Mothers’ Lives in Israel

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Meier, Tal. “Intersections in Palestinian Single Mothers’ Lives in Israel.” Social Identities (early view; online first).

 
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2015.1100990
 
Abstract

The present article addresses the support and supervisional relations of Palestinian Israeli single mothers vis-à-vis their families and communities. It links the theoretical discussion on intersectional analysis with power relations and gender. In this article I focus on the importance of employing analytical models that take into consideration the internal variance within this social category of ‘Palestinian Israeli single mothers’ which emerge due to the contradictory social trends typifying Palestinian society in Israel today – models that examine the implications of the complexity of women’s lives in discrete locations, the changes society is undergoing, together with processes of discrimination and the strengthening of conservative trends. The article is based on data gathered during in-depth, semi-structured interviews that were conducted and analyzed with a commitment to the principles of feminist research.

 

 

New Article: Meier, Palestinian-Israeli Single Mothers Accord Motherhood a New Meaning

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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.

 

 

New Article: Lahad and Shoshana, Singlehood in Treatment

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Lahad, Kinneret, and Avi Shoshana. “Singlehood in Treatment: Interrogating the Discursive Alliance between Postfeminism and Therapeutic Culture.” European Journal of Women’s Studies 22.3 (2015): 334-49.

 
 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1350506815580398

 

Abstract

This article offers a critical discourse analysis of the Israeli television series In Treatment. The series unfolds the therapy sessions of a 40-year-old single female attorney with her therapist. The main objective of the study was to identify the scripted tactics or narrative strategies that establish and maintain singlehood. The findings indicate that the therapeutic discourse plays a central role in the construction and interpretation of single women’s subjectivities, prompting a narrative that encourages the ‘discarding’ of singlehood as well as therapeutic work slanted towards a more familial and maternally oriented subjectivity. This narrative unfolds through two dominant scripted tactics: the symbolic annihilation of singlehood and the construction of feminine identity hierarchies (what the authors term ‘hierarchies of happy endings’). Moreover, it is also prompted by the discursive alliance between the therapeutic discourse and the postfeminist discourse. Consequently, long-term singlehood is portrayed as an unnatural and pathological life script characterized by its lack and deficiency. Furthermore, as opposed to childless singlehood, single motherhood by choice emerges as a preferred and desirable life option. The category of single motherhood is endowed with new forms of legitimacy, reinforcing new-old patriarchal and postfeminist conceptions of women’s reproductive potential and what is considered to be women’s primary life purpose.

 
 
 

Symposium: Private Sphere as Public Policy in Israel (Berkeley, Feb 17, 2015)

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THE PRIVATE SPHERE AS PUBLIC POLICY?:

A Symposium on Law and Society in Israel

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2015

RECEPTION: 2:30; SYMPOSIUM 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM

GOLDBERG ROOM (297 BOALT HALL), BERKELEY LAW

INTRODUCTION

Jonathan Simon, Adrian A. Kragen Professor of Law; Director, CSLS

PRISON PRIVATIZATION

Hila Shamir, Associate Professor, Buchman Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University

JUDGING IN THE SHADOW OF THE LAW: PRIVATE FORUMS AND PRIVATIZED ADJUDICATION IN ISRAEL

Ori Aronson, Assistant Professor, Bar-Ilan University Faculty of Law

‘I’VE GOT NO ONE TO LEAN ON’: THE NEGOTIATION OF NETWORK RELATIONS AMONG LOW-INCOME MOTHERS IN ISRAEL UNDER A NEOLIBERAL DISCOURSE

Shira Offer, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Bar-Ilan University

THE (LEGITIMACY) PRICE OF PRIVATIZED WELFARE

Avishai Benish, Assistant Professor, Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

RESPONDENT

Malcolm Feeley, Claire Sanders Clements Dean’s Professor of Law

 

 

Publoc Sphere

Click here for a PDF of the flyer.

New Article: Lavie, The Knafo Chronicles

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Lavie, Smadar. “The Knafo Chronicles: Marching on Jerusalem With Israel’s Silent Majority.” Affilia 27.3 (2012): 300-315.

 

URL: http://aff.sagepub.com/content/27/3/300

https://www.academia.edu/2021590/The_Knafo_Chronicles_Marching_on_Jerusalem_With_Israels_Silent_Majority
Abstract

In summer 2003, Vicky Knafo marched 125 miles from her desolate development town to the Finance Ministry in Jerusalem to protest welfare cuts for Israel’s single mothers. Single mothers from all parts of Israel joined her. Most of the mothers were Mizrahim—Jews with origins in the Arab and Muslim World. They constitute 50% of Israel’s citizenry. But like the 20% Palestinian Israeli citizens, they are treated as a racinated minority by the ruling 30% Ashkenazim (European Jews of Yiddish-speaking origins). This article consists of diary fragments recording the author’s participation in the protest as a single welfare mother, ethnographer, and Mizrahi feminist.

ToC: Israel Studies Review 28,2 (2013)

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Guest Editors’ Introduction: Rethinking the Family in Israel

pp. vii-xii(6)
Authors: Fogiel-Bijaoui, Sylvie; Rutlinger-Reiner, Reina

Articles: The Transformation of Intimacies

pp. 1-17(17)
Author: Engelberg, Ari

Articles: Families in Transition

pp. 83-101(19)
Author: Rutlinger-Reiner, Reina

Articles: The Boundaries of Family Life

pp. 140-156(17)
Author: Lustenberger, Sibylle

Articles: Legal Discourse, Private Life

pp. 210-227(18)
Author: Fogiel-Bijaoui, Sylvie

Articles: Articles: Legal Discourse, Private Life

pp. 247-263(17)
Author: Mazeh, Yoav

pp. 300-313(14)
Author: Kreiczer-Levy, Shelly

Book Reviews

pp. 314-324(11)

Cite: Lavie, Writing against Identity Politics: An Essay on Gender, Race, and Bureaucratic Pain

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Lavie, Smadar. “Writing against Identity Politics: An Essay on Gender, Race, and Bureaucratic Pain.” American Ethnologist 39.4 (2012): 779-803.

URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1548-1425.2012.01395.x/abstract

Abstract

Equating bureaucratic entanglements with pain—or what, arguably, can be seen as torture—might seem strange. But for single Mizrahi welfare mothers in Israel, somatization of bureaucratic logic as physical pain precludes the agency of identity politics. This essay elaborates on Don Handelman’s scholarship on bureaucratic logic as divine cosmology and posits that Israel’s bureaucracy is based on a theological essence that amalgamates gender and race. The essay employs a world anthropologies’ theoretical toolkit to represent bureaucratic torture in multiple narrative modes, including anger, irony, and humor, as a counterexample to dominant U.S.–U.K. formulae for writing and theorizing culture.