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This paper analyzes the unmarked forms of discipline and punishment employed against Palestinian researchers in Israeli academia, attempting to decolonize it through critical knowledge production. Based on interviews with 15 researchers from a cross‐section of academic institutions in Israel, the paper identifies subtle mechanisms of discipline and punishment, directed toward normalizing the epistemology of the colonized. The findings suggest that the gatekeepers of Israeli academia not only seek to maintain the existing racial hierarchy between Israeli and Palestinian researchers but also seek to "eliminate" the indigenous epistemology of the latter through mechanisms of hidden surveillance, used to control them as colonized subjects unable to challenge the Zionist ideology that is an essential aspect of Israeli academia. The current paper aims to unpack these invisible mechanisms of surveillance, which are part of a broader colonial apparatus aiming to maintain not only territorial sovereignty but also epistemologic sovereignty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the formation of the ethnic division of labour within the Jewish population in Israel during the rapid economic growth of the first decade of the existence of the state. It is argued that the division of labour stemmed from the specific patterns of economic development and the expanding capitalist relations of production. This approach is opposed to the functionalist view which argues that the position of the oriental immigrants was determined by their ‘traditional&rsqou;, pre-immigration, characteristics. Four major economic spheres—argiculture, construction, industry and the civil services—are examined in terms of the specific pattern of growth in each sphere, the ethnic division of labour it entailed and the ethnic division of rewards. Finally, the paper discusses the function of the dominant ideology in disguising the concrete ethnic-class relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sociological analysis of factions has been developing rapidly in sociological research. According to the definition, a faction is stipulated to be an ephemeral group which emerges in order to operate in the interest of a specific aim or conflict. The criteria of recruitment of members to the different factions in the community are based on upon personal aspirations which are involved in the acute cause of rivalry or conflict and not upon any pre-existing connection among its members such as kinship ties, religious affiliations, common caste membership etc. By this definition, it follows that when a faction develops into a more stable group based on some permanent criteria of membership, it is no longer a faction. The paper discusses the phenomenon of factions in communities of immigrants. It presents findings of a research project in Israel which tried to reconstruct and analyze the history and conditions under which factions first emerged and then disappeared in some newly created communities of immigrants in the course of ten years. It attempts to develop further analysis about the conditions under which factions may arise, some possible variations they may display in their composition and structure and most importantly, the function that they possibly perform in the process of adjustment of immigrants to the new social, political and economic conditions.

Despite the fact that in many societies ethnicity plays an important role in stratification processes, a common view held by students of stratification argues that the role of ascriptive criteria in stratification processes is diminishing, and that the main axis of the modern stratification system is rooted in the division of labour in the marketplace. Despite this, most Israeli sociologists have taken the ethnic and national cleavages to be the main axes of stratification in Israel. This paper utilizes the 1974 and 1991 mobility surveys in Israel to examine changes over time in the association between ethnicity/nationality (i.e., Ashkenazi-Jews, Sephardi-Jews and Israeli-Arabs) and class position in the Israeli stratification structure. It also examines the extent to which inequality of opportunity within the Israeli class structure is affected by ethnicity/nationality. Here it is found that the ethnic/national cleavage in Israel appears to have played a less important role over time in the allocation of Israeli men to class positions. It is shown that class crystallization processes that result from the differentiation of employment contracts in the marketplace produce a relatively common level of inequality of opportunity in Israel, across sub-populations and over time. Any difference in the level of inequality of opportunity between the various sub-populations would appear to result, in part, from different historical process of, and government policy towards, the three sub-populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the internal stratification of Palestinian elites in the West Bank and Gaza Strip under Israeli occupation. Our general aim is to clarify the extent to which social and political subordination to outside rule influences the development of indigenous elites in stateless societies. In contrast to nation-state societies, such elites may be horizontally stratified into a wider range of institutional settings, and vertically stratified by anti-occupation activism alongside the attainment of occupational prestige. In addition,context-specific determinants of their stratification patterns, such as refugee status, regionality, and country in which educational credentials were acquired, should be considered. A secondary content analysis of interviews conducted by the Palestinian Panorama centre with 249 elite members reveals that the vertical stratification of Palestinian elites along occupational attainment and anti-occupation activism constitutes two quite independent status dimensions. A multinomial logit regression shows that, horizontally, elite groups are embedded in four distinct types of institutional activity, further demonstrating the multi-faceted formation of Palestinian elites.Contextual resources, such as refugee versus non-refugee status, regionality, and the acquiring of Western credentials, have differential effects on the vertical and horizontal stratification of Palestinian elites. The implications of these findings for further research on elite formation in the post-Oslo Palestinian society and in other stateless societies are discussed in conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a critical review and discussion of a major field of Israeli sociology — the study of immigration and absorption. It concentrates on the dominant school of Israeli sociology, that of S. N. Eisenstadt and his associates, and points to the close relation between this body of work and functionalist theory. The paper demonstrates the inadequacy of this approach for the study of the formation of Israeli society, and its inability to deal with important economic and political developments. It is argued that its omissions and conclusions both point to the basic affinity between this school of Israeli sociology and the dominant state ideology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the patterns of social life of youth in the social structure of Israel. A large part of adolescents in Israel participate in patterns of behaviour and social organizations specific to them. The predominance of groups of age-mates in immigration countries has been for long noticed and analysed by some American sociologists and this tendency can be even more strongly discerned in Israel. Moreover, this paper will discuss a proposition that the emergence of youth culture is closely related to the prevalence of the second type of social division of labour. The traditional oriental family may be seen as an example of the first type of division of labour. Almost the whole social organization has been organized on the basis of patriarchal families. The families were the units of occupational specialization. The cooperative-settlement and the moshava are less pure and extreme examples of a division of labour based on the family. In fact there is some degree of discrepancy between some important social roles and the familial roles. The second type of social division of labour is most clearly discernible in the urban sector, in which the family does not function either as a full economic or cultural and political unit. In the communal settlements (Kibbutzim) the clearest correlation between the unfamilial division of labour and a very intensive and formalized youth culture is discernible.

Israeli counterinsurgency doctrine holds that the persistent use of credible threat and disproportionate military force results in repeated victories that eventually teach the enemy the futility of aggression. The doctrine thus endorses classical rational choice theory's claim that narrow cost-benefit calculations shape fixed action rationales. This paper assesses whether Israel's strategic practice reflects its counterinsurgency doctrine by exploring the historical record and the association between Israeli and Palestinian deaths due to low-intensity warfare. In contrast to the expectations of classical rational choice theory, the evidence suggests that institutional, cultural and historical forces routinely override simple cost-benefit calculations. Changing domestic and international circumstances periodically cause revisions in counterinsurgency strategy. Credible threat and disproportionate military force lack the predicted long-term effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Israeli counterinsurgency doctrine holds that the persistent use of credible threat and disproportionate military force results in repeated victories that eventually teach the enemy the futility of aggression. The doctrine thus endorses classical rational choice theory's claim that narrow cost-benefit calculations shape fixed action rationales. This paper assesses whether Israel's strategic practice reflects its counterinsurgency doctrine by exploring the historical record and the association between Israeli and Palestinian deaths due to low-intensity warfare. In contrast to the expectations of classical rational choice theory, the evidence suggests that institutional, cultural and historical forces routinely override simple cost-benefit calculations. Changing domestic and international circumstances periodically cause revisions in counterinsurgency strategy. Credible threat and disproportionate military force lack the predicted long-term effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of the relationship between nationalism and localism have brought evidence that these orientations might maintain either relations of opposition or congruence. By conceiving of localism mainly as a strategy, this paper argues that localism can be used alternately as an anchor of nationalist narrative or as an alternative to nationalism by the exact same community. This argument is illustrated by the case of Sakhnin, an Arab-Palestinian town in Israel. Local pride in Sakhnin has developed around two separate foci: a nationalist heroic narrative of martyrdom and the success of the local football team. These two foci developed in complete isolation, since the first is embedded in a Palestinian nationalist narrative while the latter is oriented toward the Israeli Jewish public. An ethnographic study follows the construction of these separate spheres and a survey conducted among 174 men in the town confirms that involvement in the football sphere correlates with both local pride and integrative orientations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relationships between state organizations, big business corporations, non-governmental interest groups and institutional elites in a relatively unexamined site: the Israeli political-economic system. Relationships between the numerous participants in state policy-making are examined through research on policy forums in the economic domain. Policy forums are defined as institutional settings for encounters between state and non-state organizations, through their elites; importantly, these encounters establish exchange relation- ships among the participants in economic policy-making processes. This article homes in on one important dimension of these relationships: the network structure of ties within and among policy forums. Interlocking data serve as indicators of the ties among the participants in policy forums. As the research presented here illustrates, the significance of policy forum networks rests not in their formal functions, but rather in their structure and with the elite persons who sit on their boards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the growing elusiveness of the state apparatus in late modernity, military service is one of the last institutions to be clearly identified with the state, its ideologies and its policies. Therefore, negotiations between the military and its recruits produce acting subjects of citizenship with long-lasting consequences. Arguing that these negotiations are regulated by multi-level (civic, group, and individual) contracts, we explore the various meanings that these contracts obtain at the intersectionality of gender, class, and ethnicity; and examine how they shape the subjective experience of soldier hood and citizenship. More particularly, we analyse the meaning of military service in the retrospective life stories of Israeli Jewish women from various ethno-class backgrounds who served as army secretaries - a low-status, feminine gender-typed occupation within a hyper-masculine organization. Findings reveal that for women of the lower class, the organizing cultural schema of the multi-level contract is that of achieving respectability through military service, which means being included in the national collective. Conversely, for middle-class women, it is the sense of entitlement that shapes their contract with the military, which they expect to signify and maintain their privileged status. Thus, while for the lower class, the multi-level contract is about inclusion within the boundaries of the national collective, for the dominant groups, this contract is about reproducing social class hierarchies within national boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The individualization, privatization and marketization of risk management represent a fundamental dimension of the financialization of everyday life. As individuals are required to engage with financial products and services as the main way of protecting themselves from risks and uncertainties, their economic welfare and security are construed as depending largely on their own financial decisions. Within this setting, the concept of financial literacy and accompanying practices of financial education have emerged as a prominent institutional field handling the formulation and communication of the attributes and dispositions that arguably constitute the proper financial actor. This article analyzes financial education programmes currently conducted by state agencies in Israel, examining the notions and principles they articulate when defining and explaining proper financial conduct. The study indicates that moral themes and categories occupy a salient place in the formulation of the character traits that constitute the desired literate financial actor. Notions of individual responsibility, planning ahead and rational risk management are presented not merely as instrumental resources, but as moral imperatives. Through these notions, the programmes moralize a broad array of everyday practices of personal finance such as saving, investing, borrowing and budget management, thereby connecting the sphere of financial matters to the domain of moral virtues. Offering a representation of particular modes of financial conduct as constitutive components of morally virtuous personhood, these practices imbue the financial field as a whole, especially its current generalized logic of individualized and marketized risk management, with moral meanings, hence contributing to the normalization and depoliticization of the financialization of everyday life., (© London School of Economics and Political Science 2019.)

The relative standings of four ethnic groups – Muslim Palestinians, Christian Palestinians, Asian-African Jews, European Jews – were compared, using mobility data from 1974 and 1991. The findings show that despite the lack of government support and the prevalence of inexorable discrimination against Israeli Palestinians, they have narrowed the gap with Asian-African Jews in both education and occupational prestige. This finding demonstrates that ideological and political hegemony is not always effective in improving the socio-economic standing of preferred minorities (Asian-African Jews), and that social and economic structures may counterbalance the anti-Palestinian nationalist ideology. The analysis suggests that residential and educational segregation of Palestinians protects them from direct competition with European Jews, whereas Asian-African Jews have to compete with this dominant group in schools, as well as in the labour market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Israeli protest movement `Women in Black' is studied by focusing on the movement's mode of protest, which is used as a prism through which to analyse the manner in which the structure, contents and goals of protest challenge the socio-political and gender orders. The article analyses the protest vigil of `Women in Black' in Jerusalem, and characterizes it, following Handelman (1990), as a minimalist public event. After examining and analysing the sources of minimal- ism it was concluded that minimalism was the result of two social processes attendant at the formation of `Women in Black' as a social movement: personal interpretation of the political field, and avoidance of ideological deliberation amongst the participants. The minimalism of the public event preserved the movement for six years and created a collective identity that emphasized the symbolic difference between those within the demonstration and those outside it. This difference was symbolized by a juxtaposition of opposites. The essence of opposites is analysed by means of `thick description', i.e., by deciphering them in the context of Israeli society. The study concluded that the mode of protest of `Women in Black' has created a symbolic space in which a new type of political woman is enacted. This identity challenges established socio-cultural categories Israel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the influence of kibbutz socialism, with reference to its educational system on the kibbutz youth. The kibbutz socialization has succeeded in establishing a balance between achieving collectivistic and individualistic orientations. The kibbutz educational system induces a collectivistic value commitment in its members, which encourages them to volunteer for services meant for the betterment of the society such as serving in border settlements, developing towns and participating in youth movements. The kibbutz educational system is similar to the one followed in English public schools, in terms of their structural totality.

This article is aimed at discussing some theoretical and methodological issues involved in the study of occupational prestige hierarchies. The theoretical discussion is supplemented by some preliminary findings from Israel which serve mainly to illustrate the approach advocated. One of the theoretical issues underlying much of the research on occupational prestige has been the debate over the relative importance of the industrial structure as determining the prestige scale of occupations within society. Studies of correlates of occupational prestige have been conducted by several investigators. But almost none has been concentrated on intersocietal comparisons in general and on the issue of "structural" vs. "cultural" determination in particular. It is the contention that the comparative study of correlates of occupational prestige will enhance the understanding of the meaning of such scales and their sociocultural background. In spite of the limitations of the data, the empirical analysis still indicates the potential fruitfulness of the approaches advocated in the article.

This article provides a mathematical presentation of the political parties in Israel. The basic proposition of the author is that five major issues presently surface in Israeli political life. Each one of these issues is identified as distinguishing two or more political parties from others. These five issues are detailed, along with associated party alliances. A comparison is given of 15 logically possible cases and the actual political ideologies found in Israel. Observations, critique of this form of analysis, and conclusions are given.

This article presents a study on the social class structure of the Jewish community in Israel. Israel has been, not only since its political foundation, but ever since the beginnings of the Zionist settlement in the last decades of the nineteenth century, the arena of repeated influxes of immigration from a great variety of countries and of great social and cultural diversity. This fact has been a decisive factor working against social and cultural stabilization, and it has also exercised a preponderant influence on the class stratification of modern Israel. It can be generally stated that the class gradation in Israel is comparatively negligible, several factors making for this result. On the other hand, however, there are some factors which exercise quite an opposite influence. Israel, in so far as it is composed of Jewish people, is a community about seventy years old. The inhabitants have come from various countries and brought with them a diversity of languages. Now, a distinguishing feature of various languages is their way of addressing people. Immigration to Israel has not been a continuous process at a uniform pace, but rather followed the pattern of sudden outbursts which lasted for a shorter or longer period and then subsided.

This article describes and analyzes the emergence of social differentiation in one type of Moshav-Ovdim or cooperative settlement in Israel. The Moshav is a cooperative organization of partly independent family units, each village comprising from 40 to 120 families. Most of the settlers are engaged in mixed intensive and mechanized farming. The Moshavim are organized into a country-wide movement, the organization of which is neither centralized nor highly coordinated. Though the constitution provides an outline of the structure of each village and sets down the main organizational principles, much scope is left for interpretation and variation. The communities differ, thus, both as to the degree of adherence to the constitutional principles and as to modes of interpreting them. The analysis of social differentiation in these cooperative communities seems to be relevant to further clarification of a few other basic theoretical problems. The basis of the established Moshav community is a partly independent family working on its family farm. The principles underlying the cooperation of these semi-independent limits as formulated in the constitution and as put into practice in the communities described here are: basic economic equality, public ownership of land, ban on hired labor, mutual aid, cooperative buying and selling.

This paper analyzes the unmarked forms of discipline and punishment employed against Palestinian researchers in Israeli academia, attempting to decolonize it through critical knowledge production. Based on interviews with 15 researchers from a cross-section of academic institutions in Israel, the paper identifies subtle mechanisms of discipline and punishment, directed toward normalizing the epistemology of the colonized. The findings suggest that the gatekeepers of Israeli academia not only seek to maintain the existing racial hierarchy between Israeli and Palestinian researchers but also seek to "eliminate" the indigenous epistemology of the latter through mechanisms of hidden surveillance, used to control them as colonized subjects unable to challenge the Zionist ideology that is an essential aspect of Israeli academia. The current paper aims to unpack these invisible mechanisms of surveillance, which are part of a broader colonial apparatus aiming to maintain not only territorial sovereignty but also epistemologic sovereignty., (© 2022 London School of Economics and Political Science.)

The paper ethnographically explores the cultural embedding of atomistic indifference in online, global financial markets: arenas that have been digitally designed according to economic ideals and that demand an extreme form of relational and social dissociation from the partners to exchange and from those affected by the transactions. Its case-study is lay financial-trading in Israel, a country undergoing extensive neoliberalization. The study shows that dissociation is embedded in an economic culture marked by constant, multi-sited declarations that economic-Others are cold, uncaring and manipulative. It takes shape as traders convert the distrust towards Others into distrust towards portions of the Self that represent links to these Others, namely their own social-psychology and social concern. Acting atomistically and selfishly in the market thus entails considerable reflexive work. The paper contributes to an ongoing debate on the moral and cultural embeddedness of markets in general and of the expanding financial markets in particular., (© London School of Economics and Political Science 2018.)

Israeli counterinsurgency doctrine holds that the persistent use of credible threat and disproportionate military force results in repeated victories that eventually teach the enemy the futility of aggression. The doctrine thus endorses classical rational choice theory's claim that narrow cost-benefit calculations shape fixed action rationales. This paper assesses whether Israel's strategic practice reflects its counterinsurgency doctrine by exploring the historical record and the association between Israeli and Palestinian deaths due to low-intensity warfare. In contrast to the expectations of classical rational choice theory, the evidence suggests that institutional, cultural and historical forces routinely override simple cost-benefit calculations. Changing domestic and international circumstances periodically cause revisions in counterinsurgency strategy. Credible threat and disproportionate military force lack the predicted long-term effect., (© London School of Economics and Political Science 2011.)