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Lone-mother–headed families are key targets of poverty research and financial coaching training programs worldwide. Yet, despite the centrality of this population in poverty studies, there is little research on how this population construes the meaning of money in developed economies. This article focuses on the social construction of money among low-income lone mothers in Israel—a highly market-oriented, neoliberal economy. Based on a qualitative analysis, the study found five main representations of money: survival money, motherhood money, earned money, coping money, and resistance to dominant views of money. Our findings confirm the notion that money exists outside the sphere of the market and has contextualized meanings reflecting gender as well as cultural and social structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article articulates a sociological conception of settler colonial remembering as a tool of legitimation. Theories of memory in the context of settler colonialism generally center counter-memories by the subaltern or colonized, or official hegemonizing representations at the level of state institutions. Underexamined is the dialectical nature of memory and discursive representations that help reproduce settler colonial processes of accumulation and displacement at the micro-level. The article draws on archival data from avowedly socialist-leftist Zionist colonies to explicate patterned representations of Palestinian villages that Zionist forces gradually displaced prior to and during the 1948 War/Nakba. I demonstrate how the colonial settlers attributed political meaning through five representational modes: contrasting the indigenous as backward and primitive and settlers as progressive and developed; denying an indigenous connection to the land; emphasizing amiable relations through the promotion of cultural progress and settler superiority; asymmetrically assessing settler and indigenous belongings to national collectives; and legitimizing land purchases that dispossessed indigenous cultivators, despite the settlers' socialist ideology, while reducing conflict to the issue of economic compensation. I theorize a form of settler colonial memory based not merely on erasure, but on recognition and disavowal. Finally, I argue that local memory is a significant site of production in which the conceptual tools to both trace the historical processes of supremacy and subvert asymmetrical sociality lie. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of the Levant looks to meanings in geography and sociology, bringing these to bear on images of society in the Mediterranean Basin. The term involves a pre-conceived outsider's perspective on the Levant and the different ways in which its social makeup can be represented. A large number of early twentieth-century works of Hebrew literature include story arcs based in the Land of Israel and neighboring countries. The Levant often provides the setting in the writing of Asher Barash (1889-1952), where the ploy seems to serve two main purposes: one is to provide a realistic background in keeping with the historical period. The second aim, which comes to the fore in Barash's Eretz Israel novellas, is to take advantage of the pied human landscapes of the Levant as a counterpart to the complexity of the inner world of his characters. The present study sets out to examine the literary devices and techniques used in portraying the Levant and the Land of Israel in Asher Barash's A Man and His House Perished (Ish u-veto nimḥu) (1933). My aim is to examine the manner in which Barash resorts to attributes of the Levant as an expression of the multi-faceted character of the protagonist, Boris Keldam, and his relationship with those around him. The hypothesis will be tested by focusing on this and "As a City Besieged" (Ke-'Ir netsurah) (1935), another work by Barash in which Keldam plays a prominent part. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Residential segregation can foster health inequality mechanisms by increasing stress related to neighborhood violence and disorder. Aims: We studied the association between neighborhood violence and disorder and inequalities in anxiety between two groups of perinatal Israeli women (Jewish, Palestinian-Arab) living in ethno-nationally segregated neighborhoods, and explored the influence of neighborhood characteristics; social support and chronic stress to this inequality. Methods: We linked survey data on neighborhood violence and disorder, neighborhood social characteristics (collective efficacy, social capital and social support) and aggregate discrimination to neighborhood SES census data. The survey data was obtained from the "Family Relations, Violence and Health" study (2014–2015) and included a stratified national sample of women (Palestinian-Arab = 436, Jewish = 965) residing in 63 segregated neighborhoods. We conducted multi-variable logistic regression analysis for anxiety (measured based on State-trait Anxiety Inventory) using generalized estimating equation (GEE) to estimate odds ratios of the association with neighborhood violence and disorder (total score for 10 problems) while considering neighborhood characteristics (SES; social characteristics; aggregate discrimination), social support and chronic stress in different models for the total sample, and separately for Palestinian-Arab and Jewish women. Results: Palestinian-Arab women had higher anxiety (60.5% vs. 42.1%, respectively) and higher severity of neighborhood violence and disorder (49.5% vs. 16.2%, respectively) compared to Jewish women. After considering individual and neighborhood variables, adjusted odds ratio (AOR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) = 1.63, 1.04–2.56. The association between neighborhood violence and disorder and anxiety was significant for low vs. no problems in the final model for the total sample (AOR, 95%CI = 1.28, 1.00–1.64). Similarly, significant association was found only for low severity vs. no problems for Jewish women (1.40, 1.07–1.86). While among Palestinian-Arab women the association between neighborhood violence and disorder and anxiety rendered insignificant in the final model. Neighborhood social cohesion and social support were protective factors from anxiety in both groups, high neighborhood SES was protective factor only among Jewish women, and neighborhood aggregate discrimination was a risk factor only in Palestinian-Arab women. Conclusions: Inequalities in anxiety related to neighborhood violence and disorder in ethno-national perinatal groups of women likely reflect residential segregation. Policies entrenching segregation might have affected neighborhood mechanisms (SES inequalities, aggregate discrimination and low social cohesion) that lead to higher stress and ethno-national inequalities in anxiety among perinatal women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Migration studies emphasize the role of economic, social and cultural capital in shaping out-migration decisions. Yet, little attention is paid to the effect of capital endowment on return migration, particularly among the highly educated. This article examines the extent to which different forms of capital determine return decisions of early-career researchers (ECRs). We hypothesized that individuals from more privileged backgrounds would repatriate at higher rates, due to the benefits that their capital stock might offer them upon homeland re-integration at home. Drawing on a sample of 223 early career Israeli scholars in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) disciplines, we used logistic regressions to analyze the effects of material wealth, social ties, and family-oriented cultural capital on their return propensities. No significant differences were found between repatriating and non-repatriating scholars with respect to cultural capital. However, accumulating social and economic capital was positively correlated with the decision to repatriate as was marrying into academic families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through a new perspective that draws on the theoretical insights of Fiscal Sociology, the article explores the role of fiscal imperatives for periods of welfare state expansion. By tracing the process of social insurance (SI) financing decisions in the early 1970s, a critical juncture in the development of the Israeli welfare state, the article challenges the implicit assumption in the literature that SI financing is solely aimed at covering the costs of its programmes. The findings show that SI contributions can be driven by ‘nonsocial’ motives related to the state’s broader fiscal concerns. Furthermore, and in contrast to the tendency to associate fiscal imperatives with retrenchment policies and austerity, the article shows that fiscal relations between the state and its SI system can have also positive effects on the welfare state, leading to new entitlements and increased expenditures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on Kaizer Hill, a quarry site located in the vicinity of the city of Modiin where remains of a single prehistoric cultural entity assigned to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A were discovered. A systematic survey revealed that large-scale quarrying activities have left damage markings on the bedrock of the Hilltop and its slopes. We aim to present here our findings from the Hilltop, which are concerned with the human impact on rock surfaces and the lithic artifacts retrieved during the survey. It is evident that the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A inhabitants of the area changed their landscape forever, “stripping” the caliche surface and penetrating it in search of flint bedded in the bedrock. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using open-ended, semi-structured interviews, this study pulls together insights on social class and geography to explore how parents choose schools differently for their children in a unique Israeli setting. Querying parents’ feelings and perceptions about themselves and others in their immediate and distant locality offers an opportunity to uncover nuances in the ways parents appropriate and reproduce ideas of spatial privilege, social mixing, and social class and ethnic distinctions through their school choice. Within our setting of school-choice policy, working-class parents who we interviewed were far from passive recipients of education services, and in fact were actively engaged in choice, albeit in a way that differs from their middle-class counterparts. Privileged middle-class parents’ emotional considerations of place and choice reflect a sense of superiority and disinterest in social mixing. The emotional narratives expressed by our interviewed parents, I show, are driven by and reflect on parents’ social and cultural identity and group belonging as they claim the city’s space to be more than a spatial geography and emphasize its social and cultural meanings. These school-choice nuances, I argue, can be explained by drawing on the role of otherness and moral boundaries while reflecting on geography. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The political‒cultural paradigm has become a common theoretical framework during recent decades. Scholars use it in diverse disciplines, such as urban sociology and urban politics. This article introduces that framework into the realm of public policy within the context of the university‒community relationship. The well-known university‒community debate follows the question: to what extent should an urban university be involved and engaged in community life? The article examines the case of Ben-Gurion University and the city of Beersheba during 1970‒2012. The findings show that the local university aimed to advance its urban community and to act on behalf of community interests, but the community did not always view this involvement positively, often criticizing it. An analysis using the political‒cultural paradigm finds cultural differences between university and community which result from a long history of conflict and from different collective memories. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The basic challenge of Israeli sociology always has been, and continues to be to present days, the designation of its object of study; i.e. 'Israeli society'. The history of Israeli sociology and its conception of 'Israeli society' may be discerned into the five following modules: 1. Proto-sociology. In the pre-state era, sociological thought thrived within the context of the socialist Zionism. The two prominent 'proto-sociologists' were Arthur Ruppin and Martin Buber, who professed German communal perspectives. 2. Modernization sociology. The formative phase of sociology as a discipline was from 1950 to 1977. It was led by Shmuel Noah Eisenstadt, who effected a transition from the German anti-modernist paradigm to an American modernization theory. 3. Critical sociology. The critical phase took place in the 1970s and 1980s. Critical sociology was manifested in elitism, pluralism, Marxism, feminism and colonization approaches. Simultaneously there emerged a robust branch of 'quantitative sociology'. 4. Post-modem sociology. The turn towards post-modernity started in the 1990s. The three noticeable post-modem perspectives are: post-structuralism, post-colonialism and post-Marxism. 5. Palestinian Arab sociology in Israel. Palestinian Arab sociology is emerging and coming to its own since the 1990s. It reflects integration as well as alienation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]