New Article: Weiss, How a Gentler Israeli Military Prevents Organized Resistance

Weiss, Erica. “Incentivized Obedience: How a Gentler Israeli Military Prevents Organized Resistance.” American Anthropologist 118.1 (2016): 91-103.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/aman.12501
 

Abstract

In this article, I offer an ethnographic examination of neoliberal techniques of control through absence by the Israeli military, the state institution most associated with discipline, indoctrination, and direct coercion. I highlight the ways that the apparent withdrawal of the state from practices of indoctrination and the punishment of conscientious objectors are accompanied by a shift in recruitment and training that emphasizes self-advancement and social mobility above national and ideological commitments. While in the past the Israeli state and military focused exclusively on shaping self-sacrificing citizens, today it invests a great deal of its effort in structuring the calculated choices of self-interested individuals toward favorable outcomes. I explore the uneven but strategic deployment of incentivized governance and consider some of the effects of these techniques for the meaning of engaged citizenship and the politics of state violence in a militarized society. Further, I demonstrate that the lightening of disciplinary sanctions in favor of individual freedom is an effective form of weakening dissent and that it confounds efforts to constitute organized resistance to militarism, leaving activists floundering to find effective ways to express their political concerns.

 

 

 

New Book: Arar & Haj-Yehia, Higher Education and Palestinians in Israel

Arar, Khalid, and Kussai Haj-Yehia. Higher Education and the Palestinian Arab Minority in Israel. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.

 

 

Higher Education and the Palestinian Minority in Israel examines perceptions concerning the characteristics of higher education acquisition in the indigenous Palestinian Arab minority in Israel. Arar and Haj-Yehia show that Palestinian Arabs in Israel clearly understand the benefit of an academic degree as a lever for social status and integration within the state of Israel. The authors discuss difficulties met by Palestinian high school graduates when they attempt to enter Israel’s higher education institutes, and the alternative phenomenon of studying abroad. The cultural difference between Palestinian traditional communities and ‘Western’ Israeli campuses exposes Arab students to a mix of ethnicities and nationalities, which proves to be a difficult, transformative experience. The book analyzes patterns of higher education acquisition among the indigenous Palestinian minority, describing the disciplines they choose, the challenges they encounter, particularly for Palestinian women students, and explore the implications for the Palestinian minority and Israeli society.

This comprehensive study of higher education among the indigenous Palestinian Arab minority in Israel provides unique knowledge concerning the minority’s access to higher education in and outside its homeland. This knowledge can inform efforts to enhance Palestinian students’ access to Israeli universities, and advance Palestinians’ socio-economic status, with consequent benefit to Israel as a whole.

 

Table of Contents

• List of Tables vii
• List of Figures ix
• Acknowledgments xi
• Prologue 1
• 1 The Context of the Palestinian Arab Minority in Israel (PAMI) 11
• 2 Access to Higher Education among Minorities 23
• 3 Trends in Higher Education among the PAMI 41
• 4 Higher Education Abroad: The Case of the PAMI 73
• 5 Higher Education and PAMI Students’ Identity Formation 117
• 6 Employment Prospects of PAMI Graduates 137
• 7 Policy and Initiatives to Widen Access to Higher Education for the PAMI 161
• Epilogue 181
• Notes 187
• Bibliography 189
• Index 211

 

 

 

New Article: Yirmiyahu et al, Does Accessibility to Higher Education Reduce Wage Inequality?

Yirmiyahu, Albert, Ofir D. Rubin, and Miki Malul. “Does Greater Accessibility to Higher Education Reduce Wage Inequality? The Case of the Arab Minority in Israel.” Studies in Higher Education (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2015.1076781

 

Abstract

Many studies assessing national policy reforms in education focus on the likelihood of acquiring an advanced education and the associated returns in the labor market. In this paper, the authors investigate the impact of the Israeli Academic Colleges Law that was designed to promote the acquisition of higher education among all segments of the Israeli population. They found that this law, in fact, contributed to making higher education accessible more to the Israeli Arab minority than to the rest of the population. In addition, they demonstrate that the influence of the law on improving access to higher education is reflected in the increase in the earning potential of Israeli Arabs.

 

 

New Article: Rebhun and Brown, Patterns of Urban/Rural Migration in Israel

Rebhun, Uzi, David L. Brown. “Patterns and selectivities of urban/rural migration in Israel.” Demographic Research 33.5 (2015): 113-44.

 

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.4054/DemRes.2015.33.5

 

Abstract

Background: Movement from one type of area to another attests to factors of distance, socioeconomic barriers, and heterogeneity. Movement between two localities of one type entails fewer and different types of changes.

Objective: We examine urban-rural migration in Israel, a country that has experienced extensive development outside of its major cities.

Methods: We first describe and compare the urban and rural migration patterns of Jews and non-Jews. However, due to the small number of non-Jewish migrants in the 2008 census data set, the explanatory analysis focuses solely on Jews, probing the characteristics of migrants and non-migrants and differentiating among the former by whether migration is between urban and rural places, or among urban or rural areas.

Results: Examination of migration over five years points to a strong tendency to change residence, often involving a change of residence type. Urban-rural migration emphasizes the importance of specific individual characteristics and reflects the impact of life course and sociodemographic characteristics. We found a favorable sociodemographic profile of persons who leave the city for rural places, and a somewhat less favorable profile of people who are likely to move in the opposite direction. Migrants who move within settlement types are also somewhat more highly selected than persons moving toward cities.

Conclusions: Urban-rural population exchanges among Jews in Israel, while generally in accord with studies in other countries, tend to be less definite with respect to educational attainment and age.

Comments: Regardless of these differences, urban-rural exchanges of Jewish population in Israel are not a random process.
.

 

 

New Article: Popper-Giveon & Keshet, Choice of a Medical Career Among the Arab Minority in Israel

Popper-Giveon, Ariela, and Yael Keshet. “‘It’s Every Family’s Dream’: Choice of a Medical Career Among the Arab Minority in Israel.” Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10903-015-0252-7

 

Abstract
Application to medical studies and the choice of medicine as a career are influenced by many factors, some internal (academic ability, intellectual curiosity, interests) and some external (parental pressure, peer pressure, teacher and school expectations). Ethnicity plays a role in motivational orientation and belonging to an ethnic minority group may influence both internal and external motives and priorities in choosing medicine as a career. In this article, we present a qualitative study of the motives that impel Arab physicians in Israel to choose a medical career. As a theoretical framework, we apply self-determination theory (SDT) (Ryan and Deci in Am Psychol 55:68–78, 2000), consisting of three principal categories situated along a continuum: Amotivation, extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation. We show that extrinsic motivation is dominant among Arab physicians in Israel, demonstrating specifically the unique political context and cultural characteristics of Arab society in Israel. These findings, and the attention to the unique motivations of people from different ethnic minority groups who choose medical career, may increase the number of physicians from minority groups, a step known to decrease health gaps in multi-cultural contexts.

 

 

Dissertation: Doron, The Impact of Social Housing on the Empowerment of the Poor in Israel

Doron, Guy. Is Empowerment of Disadvantaged Populations Achievable through Housing Policies? A Study of the Impact of Social Housing on the Empowerment of the Poor in Israel, PhD Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science, 2015.

 
URL: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.647167

 

Abstract
This research project investigates whether the empowerment of Israel’s population — and in particular those who suffer multiple disadvantages — is achievable through housing policies and whether successive Israeli administrations have helped or hindered this process. The research focuses on communities in publicly-subsidised areas during social housing programmes. The housing programmes analysed in this research were: The Demolish and Rebuild Programme, which represents a top-down process, implemented with little residents’ involvement. Neighbourhood Renewal, which was a programme that formally offered partnership, giving residents partial share in decision-making. Finally, Right to Buy represented a resident-led partnership, in which residents felt empowered to overcome their own disadvantaged conditions by taking a leading role in transforming housing policy. The database complementing this research was compiled, in part, from 91 in-depth interviews with residents, policy makers and officials representing these three programmes. It is a unique aspect of this research, as it draws on perspectives about participation from those who have not necessarily had an opportunity to express an opinion before, and communicates a variety of views regarding the projects and residents’ participation in them. This study focuses on how it actually affects people and can even create behavioural change among those who are normally considered dependent. Another exceptional and distinctive factor provided by this research is its analysis of empowerment in the social and political context of Israel. By analysing the Israeli case, this research will contribute both to international knowledge and academic scholarship, highlight the conditions of an individual state and generate an original and provocative narrative. The issue of participation and empowerment in a society so riven with political, social, religious and ethnic tensions is particularly important. Learning from the Israeli experience has the potential to promote understanding of empowerment under pressure. Empowerment related to social housing policy is distinctive in Israel because housing is synonymous with security. Housing is more than a cultural issue, since in Israel owning a property is a matter of security. Another key feature is the focal role of central government which determines almost every aspect in the shaping of social and housing policy. Also critical is the influence of national politics on local decision-making. In Israel the political agenda is based upon bilateralism and the demographic dispersal of population across the state’s formal and informal borders. Empowerment is a complex term. This research, however, explores examined and evidenced empowerment using just two main features: examination of residents’ participation; and evaluation of public policy towards resident participation. This research offers a unique view on empowerment within social housing policies that are subject to multiple pressures, and offers interpretations that could be usefully applied to issues of empowerment in other pressure scenarios.

 

 

 

New Article: Rotman et al, Educational Stratification in Israel

Rotman, Assaf, Yossi Shavit, and Michael Shalev. “Nominal and Positional Perspectives on Educational Stratification in Israel.” Research in Social Stratification and Mobility (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rssm.2015.06.001

 

Abstract

This paper examines whether the rising accessibility of educational qualifications attenuates the association between social origin and educational attainment. Research is divided on the question of persistence of inequality of educational opportunities (IEO). Currently most studies on this issue focus on attainment of nominal levels of education and fail to acknowledge that educational expansion is accompanied by change in the value of qualifications and in their scarcity. This study employs measures of educational attainment that capture the changing scarcity and economic value of qualifications. Data from the 1995 and 2008 censuses in Israel are used to compare the association of socioeconomic origin with educational attainment between two birth cohorts. The results show that IEO tends to persist or decline, when attainment is measured in absolute terms, but tends to increase when relative measures of qualifications or measures representing their economic value are employed. The familiarity of better off parents with the school system and their awareness of changes in the value of qualifications are offered as a central factor that explains the findings.

New Article: Bodankin & Semyonov, High-Skilled Immigrants in Israel

Bodankin, Moran, and Moshe Semyonov. “Geo-Cultural Origin and Economic Incorporation of High-Skilled Immigrants in Israel.” Population, Space and Place (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/psp.1934

 

Abstract

The present study focuses on differential modes of economic incorporation and economic success of highly skilled immigrants in Israel. Data were obtained from the 2009–2011 Labor Force and Income Surveys. The analysis pertains to recent immigrants aged 25–64 years who attained academic education prior to migration. Three major geo-cultural groups of immigrants are compared with Israeli-born. The groups are as follows: Europe and the Americas, the Former Soviet Union, and Asia and Africa. The multivariate analysis (conducted separately for men and women) reveals significant differences across geo-cultural groups in labour-market performance (i.e. economic participation) and in economic outcomes (i.e. attainment of professional occupation, occupational status, and earnings). An ethnic hierarchy is observed with Israeli-born at the top, followed by immigrants from Europe and the Americas; the groups of immigrants from the Former Soviet Union and from Asia or Africa are placed at the bottom of the hierarchy. Although all high-skilled immigrants are disadvantaged when compared with Israeli-born, all tend to improve their labour-market status with the passage of time in the country. However, only immigrants from Europe and the Americas are able to reach economic assimilation with high-skilled Israeli-born. Asian–African immigrants and immigrants from the Former Soviet Union are less successful in converting skills into economic success; they remain economically disadvantaged even after 20 years of residence. The impact of geo-cultural origin on differential ability of immigrants to transmit credentials from one country to another is discussed.

 
 
 

ToC: Israel Studies 20,1 (2015)

 

 

1. Special Section: Landscapes
   1. Zippori National Park as a Composite Narrative (pp. 1-30)

      Tal Alon-Mozes and Matanya Maya
   2. The Geopolitics of Interment: An Inquiry into the Burial of Muhammad Ali in Jerusalem, 1931 (pp. 31-56)

      Maoz Azaryahu and Yitzhak Reiter
   3. Greening the Curriculum: Current Trends in Environmental Education in Israel’s Public Schools (pp. 57-85)

      Gonen Sagy and Alon Tal
2. Articles
   1. The Need to be Part of Europe: Israel’s Struggle for an Association Agreement with the EEC, 1957–1961 (pp. 86-109)

      Gadi Heimann
   2. Crisis and Development: Menachem Begin’s Leadership Throughout the 1960s (pp. 110-133)

      Amir Goldstein
   3. Imperialism and the Arab-Israeli Conflict: Revisions in Matzpen’s Historical Perspective (pp. 134-158)

      Joshua Blass
   4. Pinchas Sadeh’s Religiosity (pp. 159-179)

      Gideon Katz
   5. Homogeneity vs. Heterogeneity in the Young Adult and Children’s Literature of Devorah Omer (pp. 180-194)

      Rima Shikhmanter
3. Notes on Contributors (pp. 195-197)
4. Guidelines for Contributors (pp. 198-200)

ToC: Holy Land Studies 13.1 (2014)

1  Nakba Memoricide: Genocide Studies and the Zionist/Israeli Genocide of Palestine

Haifa Rashed, Dr Damien Short and Professor John Docker

25  Liberating Methodologies and Nakba Studies: Palestinian History and Memory from below as Sites of Lifelong Learning

Professor Nur Masalha 

71  Pedagogy under Siege in Palestine: Insights from Paulo Freire

Najwa Silwadi and Professor Peter Mayo

89  Resisting Colonialism through Nature: An Ecopostcolonial Reading of Mahmoud Darwish’s Selected Poems

Dr Hamoud Yahya Ahmed and and Dr Ruzy Suliza Hashim

Book Reviews

• 109 Palestinian Cultural Production
  Anna Ball, Palestinian Literature and Film in Postcolonial Feminist Perspective (New York and Abingdon: Routledge, 2012). xvi+ 223 pp. ISBN: 978-0-415-88862-2. Hardback

  Professor Bart Moore-Gilbert

• 111 Challenges to Zionism: Christian Perspectives
  Carole Monica Burnett (ed.), Zionism Through Christian Lenses: Ecumenical Perspectives on the Promised Land (Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 2013). 201 pp. ISBN-13: 978-1610977715. Paperback

  Dr Mark Braverman

• 114 Philosophical Reflections on Zionism and Jewish Thought
  Eyal Chowers, The Political Philosophy of Zionism: Trading Jewish Words for a Hebraic Land (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). 274 pp. ISBN: 9781107005945. Hardback

  Professor Oren Ben-Dor

• 117  Instrumentalising the Bible
  Nur Masalha, The Zionist Bible: Biblical Precedent, Colonialism and the Erasure of Memory (London: Acumen, 2013). 295 pp. ISBN-13: 978-1844656578. Hardback

  Ramona Wadi

  Books Received

• 121 Citation

ToC: Israel Studies 19.1 (2014)

1. Special Section—Arabs as Israeli Citizens
   1. Defense Minister Pinhas Lavon and the Arab Draft That Never Was (pp. 1-23)

      Randall S. Geller

      DOI: 10.2979/israelstudies.19.1.1

      Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/israelstudies.19.1.1
   2. The Contemporary Historiographical Debate in Israel on Government Policies on Arabs in Israel During the Military Administration Period (1948–1966) (pp. 24-47)

      Arik Rudnitzky

      DOI: 10.2979/israelstudies.19.1.24

      Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/israelstudies.19.1.24
   3. The Politization of History and the Negev Bedouin Land Claims: A Review Essay on Indigenous (In)justice (pp. 48-74)

      Seth J. Frantzman

      DOI: 10.2979/israelstudies.19.1.48

      Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/israelstudies.19.1.48
   4. Increased Constructive Engagement Among Israeli Arabs: The Impact of Government Economic Initiatives (pp. 75-97)

      Robert Cherry

      DOI: 10.2979/israelstudies.19.1.75

      Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/israelstudies.19.1.75
   5. Democracy, Clan Politics and Weak Governance: The Case of the Arab Municipalities in Israel (pp. 98-125)

      Yakub Halabi

      DOI: 10.2979/israelstudies.19.1.98

      Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/israelstudies.19.1.98
   6. The Quest for Identity in Sayed Kashua’s Let It Be Morning (pp. 126-144)

      Michael Keren

      DOI: 10.2979/israelstudies.19.1.126

      Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/israelstudies.19.1.126
2. Articles
   1. From Peace in the South to War in the North: Menachem Begin as Prime Minister, 1977–1983 (pp. 145-165)

      Yechiam Weitz

      DOI: 10.2979/israelstudies.19.1.145

      Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/israelstudies.19.1.145
   2. Societal Values: Impact on Israel Security—The Kibbutz Movement as a Mobilized Elite (pp. 166-188)

      Zeev Drory

      DOI: 10.2979/israelstudies.19.1.166

      Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/israelstudies.19.1.166
   3. Postsecular Jewish Theology: Reading Gordon And Buber (pp. 189-213)

      Hagar Lahav

      DOI: 10.2979/israelstudies.19.1.189

      Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/israelstudies.19.1.189
3. Notes on Contributors (pp. 214-215)

   DOI: 10.2979/israelstudies.19.1.214

   Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/israelstudies.19.1.214
4. Guidelines for Contributors (pp. 216-218)

   DOI: 10.2979/israelstudies.19.1.216

   Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/israelstudies.19.1.216

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

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.

Cite: Abu-Rabia-Queder and Karplus, Bedouin women’s mobility higher education

Abu-Rabia-Queder, Sarab and Yuval Karplus. “Regendering Space and Reconstructing Identity: Bedouin Women’s Translocal Mobility into Israeli-Jewish Institutions of Higher Education.” Gender, Place & Culture 20.4 (2013): 470-86.

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0966369X.2012.701200

Abstract

This article offers a geographic perspective on the mutually constitutive
relations between institutions of higher education and Bedouin women’s
gendered spaces, identities and roles. Situated beyond Bedouin women’s
permitted space and embedded in Israeli-Jewish space, institutions of
higher education are sites of displacement that present Bedouin women
students with new normative structures, social interactions and
opportunities for academic learning. As such, they become a discursive
arena for the articulation and reconstruction of their previously held
conceptions and identities. Often the journey to institutions of higher
education signifies for Bedouin women the first opportunity to venture
out of their community. Traveling to the university as students,
returning home as educated women and embarking on professional careers
outside tribal neighborhoods and villages involves moving across and
beyond different locales. Such translocal mobility necessitates constant
negotiation between seemingly contradictory cultural constructs and the
development of varied spatial bridging strategies. The article seeks to
contribute to Bedouin gender studies by going beyond the functional
role of higher education institutions as well as the gendered
hierarchies of women’s mobility, placing emphasis, instead, on the
effects of socio-spatial contextuality that shapes Bedouin women’s
experiences.