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William R. Tonso has chosen an issue that he knows something about to examine how sociology textbooks address controversy. Appealing for gun control is fashionable, but it is at odds with a fondness that ordinary Americans have for their firearms--one that is supported by a growing body of research on deterrence to crime. There are two sides to the issue, but Tonso shows that in a large sample of texts, the sociology establishment predictably shades, omits, and distorts the politically incorrect position that citizens should not be compelled to relinquish responsibility for the security of their families and property. (Contains 54 notes.)

Copyright of Sociologia Ruralis is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Despite growing interest in fundraising as part of the social worker's role, there has been no comprehensive research on this subject. The purpose of the present research is to begin to bridge that gap. Five dimensions of fundraising are defined and a theoretical framework, comprised of factors that may be related to social workers' involvement in this activity, is developed. Data were collected by means of a structured questionnaire, administered to social workers in welfare departments in Israel. Statistical analysis of the findings indicates low to moderate mean levels of social worker involvement in fundraising. The variable that contributes most to involvement in fundraising is the social worker's sense of efficacy for this activity. The paper offers several theoretical and practical conclusions and suggests directions for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1948 and 1959, perceptions of Israeli water resources changed dramatically from a strong belief in water abundance in the prestate period to an equally strong and unequivocal belief in water scarcity after 1959. This paper tells the story of how the water resources of Israel came to be constructed as scarce. On the substantive level, the paper tells the story of the dismantling of a network of water abundance and the emergence, instead, of a network of water scarcity and centralization, which helped to construct all of the following: water resource scarcity as 'fact'; centralized policy-making institutions as most 'efficient'; centralized technologies as 'appropriate'; the national space as the only source of identity; the national scale of water management as 'necessary'; a strong and centralized state as 'legitimate'; legal precedents for the use of state apparatus for surveillance, discipline, and control over water resources; and, consequently, a form of citizenship that is seen as at once heroic and disciplined. On the theoretical level, in this paper I argue that the ontological distinction often assumed between scientific (eg water scarcity) and political (eg centralized nation-state) fields of practice is exaggerated, especially in literature on water politics in Israel. I further demonstrate that technoscientific debates about water availability, efficient technologies for its utilization, and appropriate institutions for its management are constitutive of relations of power and government and are themselves implicated in the construction of an Israeli style of government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Sociologia Ruralis is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

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 study investigates the effects of community characteristics on police performance in a deeply divided society. Conflict theories argue that crime control rises as minority size increases. In communities in which minorities became visible, the clearance rate will be higher. However, when minorities an highly segregated, segregation becomes an instrument of social control and the clearance rate will be lower. Functionalist theories argue that the police are reactive to the seriousness of offenses. Therefore, when community characteristics are controlled, clearance rates will be related to the community rate of property and violent crime. In this paper both theories are tested in the context of a highly segregated residential society. Using a sample of 118 Israeli Arab and Jewish communities, differences in clearance rates between the turn types of communities were studied. It was found that those community characteristics affecting police performance are similar in Jewish and Arab communities. However, comparison reveals that the level of clearance rates for Arab communities is much higher than for Jewish communities. Implications of these results for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Utilizing several theories of sociocultural mobilization, this paper examines the contours of secular-religious conflict in contemporary Israel. According to a survey of adult Israelis, resistance to "religious coercion" among the secular population is driven primarily by symbolic, social, and cognitive forces rather than perceived discrimination or the threat posed by spatial proximity to the religious. As such, it is rooted in cultural identity. The theocratic disposition among religious Israelis is almost entirely a matter of social identification. These findings both confirm existing theories of intergroup conflict and suggest a framework for analyzing religion and state controversies in other polities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Very little sociological research has been carried out on political assassinations and the methodological experience in sociology regarding this issue is consequently very limited. This paper presents an analytical summary of the methodological problems and experiences which were encountered during three years of research on the sociological and criminological patterns of political assassinations by Jews in Palestine and Israel between 1882-1988. Similar methods could be used to study other phenomena where the information can be characterized as secret, dirty and hidden. [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]

Geo-political changes and the drive to higher standards of living induce growing numbers of nomad populations to give-up their special way of life. The Bedouin of the Israeli Negev are no exception. Gradually, they settled down in scattered, unauthorized clusters of tents and shacks in the open lands of the northern Negev. Governments of Israel were unsatisfied with the emerging unplanned spontaneous settlements. Consequently, governmental planning agencies came up with a program to house the Bedouin population in seven new towns. The government's initiative in establishing the towns had two main objectives. First, urban settlements were viewed as conduits for the provision of modern utilities and social services that were very hard to supply and distribute among the many small and scattered spontaneous settlements.Second, Bedouin put forward claims over much of the lands they arguably were using in their former way of life as nomads. Although the claims were not - and could not be - supported by legal documents, the government offered the Bedouin subsidized developed urban land in exchange of their claims over the undeveloped dry desert lands. Currently, more than 60 per cent of the Negev Bedouin population reside in the seven planned urban settlements. Nevertheless, only a small proportion of the land claims has been settled. This paper argues that the attempt to achieve both goals via the urban settlement program was tooambitious. While the goal of providing better services in urban areas has been partially accomplished, the goal of removing the claims over the lands is far from being resolved. The paper argues that the link between the two goals should be reconsidered. [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]

There has been a continuing search among Israeli social scientists for the processes and factors that affect the integrity of Israeli society. This paper identifies five "banks" in socio-cultural-geographic terms that compose its national divisions and suggest Some observations about the forces that keep these conflicting Banks together. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a pioneering article of 1980, Stanislav Andreski maintained that sociology can contribute to the study of international relations by showing how military situations are explained by some aspects of society. He added that the more intensively armed forces are involved in war, the less they become tools of internal repression. Since then, however, sociology has devoted little attention to the connection between two phenomena that bear enormous political significance. This article explores a type of praetorian thrust that is inversely linked not to civilianism but to militarism. The theoretical scheme presented in this paper, of a unique type of praetorian tendency, is based mainly on a comparison between the case of contemporary Israel and historical France, but also utilizing other historical cases, in order to answer the question, is a military coup possible in Israel? The common denominator of the two cases, French Algeria and Israel, which lends this article its sociological importance, is that under certain circumstances, armed forces may develop an actual or potential praetorian orientation even though the country in question is not backward and has a democratic regime.

The major objective of the research reported here is to investigate the significance and meaning of the contextual effects of communities on individuals' opportunities for socioeconomic attainment. A model which incorporates both individuals and their communities is proposed and tested. The empirical test was done by using samples of the Israeli labor force population. The findings demonstrate that community has significant effects on individuals' attainment. Community seems to be an additional factor that affects social mobility and as such an important dimension of the stratification system. Characteristics defining the social context of the community as an opportunity structure are identified and their significance discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses how the national process of status attainment is in Israel mediated by inter-urban differences in opportunity structure. It is shown that while sociological literature is on the whole ambiguous in this respect, and presents no consistent picture, here the impact of community residence is clear and considerable. This impact is both additive and nonadditive, and affects status attainment in general as well as impinging differentially on different social groups - so that "ethno-ecological" patterns of attainment crystallize. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

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]

This paper analyzes the role of legitimization processes in the struggle over farmland protection policies in Israel. In the early sixties a centralized farmland protection program was institutionalized, curtailing private land owners` and leaseholders' property rights on farmlands. The legitimacy accorded to such measures is explained as a function of the congruence between social norms, power structure and dominant ideology at the time. Then, the paper follows the changes in power, ideology, social norms, sanctioned discourse and the role of agriculture in the economy. These changes undermined the basis of the farmland protection rationales, and led to a crisis of legitimacy in the early nineties. As a result of several institutional and policy shifts in the early nineties, a time of rapid growth, concern shifted to the implications of growth for the future of open spaces. This concern over the loss of positive externalities was shared by environmentalists, urban and exurban consumption interests, planners and several elements within the rural establishment. As a result a new set of plans was introduced. Focusing on the central district, where the mostsevere development pressures are felt, the paper compares the sanctioned discourse and use of rationales in the new plans and documents to those of previous plans. These plans focus on averting the loss of positive externalities, rather than productive capacity, and are couched in economic terms, rather than ideological terms, reflecting the shift in language of the sanctioned discourse. It shows that the choice of rationales for legitimizing countryside conservation reflects the struggle over rural landscapes, as the rationales are used to cobble a coalition of planners, environmentalists, farmers, urbanites andexurbanites, against a powerful development coalition. [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]

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]

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 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]

This study presents a novel approach to crisis prevention based on data on premonitory political and religious events and the international media coverage of publicly sensitive circumstances. We implement our method to the Israel-Palestine conflict. First we identify two main political scenarios associated with 'good' and 'bad' political times of low or high levels of political unrest using a hierarchical clustering technique. Then we construct a political alert index to predict the probability of occurrence of good and bad times. Bad times are positively and significantly associated with the number of Israeli victims at the checkpoints, the number of homeless or injured Palestinians and with the number of demolitions. The number of Palestinian prisoners and injured Israelis negatively affect the probability of occurrence of a bad time. Media coverage is positively and significantly associated with the transition to bad times. Our results show that our statistical tool can be a reliable method for early warning of social crisis and can be effectively replicated to other social crisis situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – In spite of the fact that the health, mental, and educational benefits of physical activity are well documented, information is still lacking regarding the physical activity patterns in Israeli society. The purpose of the present study is to shed light on the changes of physical activity practices between the years 1992-2008 and to analyze the main reasons for such changes. Design/methodology/approach – A survey was conducted among 501 adults (ages 18-69) representing the Jewish Hebrew-speaking population of Israel. Findings – The percentage of Israelis who engaged in physical activity more than doubled between 1992 and 2008. Almost 56 percent of Israelis took part in some activity on a regular basis in 2008. Originality/value – This investigation of some of these factors uncovers a cultural transformation as well as demographic, global, and cognitive processes, all of which affected and reflected upon physical activity in Israeli society during that period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this research is to examine how a different critical perspectives are being accepted by Israeli students from different groups and minorities (Jewish, Muslim, women, men, Ashkenazi, Mizrahi, middle class, and lower class) who attended sociology classes that took place in four different Israeli academic institutions. The social heterogeneity of the students in these geographically scattered institutions, together with the turbulent political and social times experienced by Israeli society during the process of data collection, enabled different comparisons that shed a new light on the role of the critical knowledge reproduced in the educational systems of conflicted societies. This research found that while the feminist and elite perspectives incurred overall positive reactions from most students, the remaining three perspectives (Post Colonialism, Marxism, and Pluralist Theory) provoked the students and frequently encountered antagonism. These reactions indicated that most students adopted a critical theory only when it promised to provide them with an advantage over competing groups. Accordingly, "critical" perspectives were rejected by students when they were perceived as endangering the interests and position of the groups to which they belonged. Thus, the findings of this research show that studying "critical" theories towards Israeli society does not develop universalistic points of view that perceive equality and freedom as rights to which all human beings are eligible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Arie Shachar played a key role in the introduction of modern urban geography in Israel, in the shift from the study of Israeli cities in light of global trends to the study of global influences on Israeli cities, and in linking urban geography with urban planning. He had a major role in the emergence of a new planning doctrine, less preoccupied with population dispersal and preservation of agricultural land, and more with economic growth, sustainability, metropolitan planning, and compact development policies. In the modernist-post-modernist debate, Shachar was clearly in the camp of modernists, preferring rational forward-looking planning approaches over critical discourses that challenge fundamental aspects of social and political order. These facets have become defining features of mainstream Israeli urban geography since the 1960s. However, immense growth and diversification of urban geography and the dominance of urbanism in modern societies make it increasingly difficult, in the early 2000s, to define the boundaries of urban geography and its core theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents drawings and explanations of marginalized Bedouin women within the welfare system in Israel as a speech act that captures the lacks, pain, struggles, and integrations or solutions that they experience during cultural transition. One focus is the experience of rapid transition to modernity of marginalized women. Another is the theoretical challenge of finding a form of arts-based research in which to capture this. The article shows how the art captures not a dual but a multifaceted reality, conveying the emotional pain of economic and social lacks and a constant wish for and struggle toward physical and emotional spaces. The article presents the outcome of a theoretical model to analyze the art and explanations that relates both to the art as an inherent expression of self (according to humanistic and arts-based paradigms) and to art as a culturally embedded expression of self in context (according to critical theories). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic and technological processes of globalization and the increasing migrations of people in the world undermine dominant national identities. One of the main characteristics of our time is the instability of identities and the continuous invention of new/old identities. Traditions and ethnic identities are deconstructed and reconstructed. Immigrants, first, second and also third generation, participate in the dynamic of identity production. It is as part of this global process of identity production that recently founded multicultural schools in Israel have to be understood. The Kedma, Shevach/Mofet and Bialik multicultural schools provide alternative identities to the prevailing national identity: an emancipatory identity to Mizrahi (Oriental) children, a mixed identity to children of immigrants from the Former Soviet Union and a transnational identity to the children of migrant workers. Rather than facilitating integration into the discriminatory hegemonic national identity, these alternative identities provide new empowering options for young immigrants within Israeli society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do Israeli social scientists treat religion primarily through theoretical frameworks developed in other areas of sociology or the social sciences, but rarely draw on insights from the sociology of religion, and even more rarely make a theoretical contribution to the development of the sub-discipline? And, why are Israeli social scientists who do contribute to the sociology of religion primarily Orthodox and foreign-born Jews, while most sociologists in Israel are secular Jews and born in the country? To answer these questions we focus on the fact that the questions asked and theories developed by sociologists of religion tend to treat religion as a phenomenon that is primarily limited to the private sphere. By private, we mean religion as a voluntary activity that is the result of choices made by individuals in their everyday lives. This contrasts to religious practices in the public sphere that are shaped by state legislation or by involuntary interactions with others. The focus of sociologists of religion on the private, voluntary realm means that the theoretical insights offered by the discipline are deemed irrelevant by secular Jewish Israeli social scientists, who tend to conceptualize religion as a state driven and/or public phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last ten years, a sizeable body of social science research has been devoted to two troubling phenomena--right-wing extremism and religious fundamentalism--both of which have seen a recrudescence in the last two decades. While the first is largely a secular phenomenon, the latter is, by definition, religious in orientation. Although most literature has treated these phenomena separately, in Israel the overlap between the two is so extensive that it could very well serve as the basis for a generating hypothesis. Utilizing features of both European right-wing extremism and characteristics of fundamentalism, Bermanis, Canetti-Nisim and Pedahzur attempt to demonstrate how the extreme right, with its secular underpinnings, has withdrawn from the larger picture, and how a new, complex and more extremist approach, based on fundamentalist ideals, has taken its place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Parent–school ideological fit is studied as the context of parent–child relationships and socialization. It was hypothesized that parents’ choice of school environments that promote values consistent with parents’ values is related to a better parent–child relationship and facilitates socialization. Participants were 589 Israeli families with religious, traditional, and nonreligious parents, whose adolescent children attended either religious or nonreligious schools. Most parents chose high–fit contexts—that is, schools that fit their own values. Parents in high–fit contexts exhibited relatively higher levels of value consistency, but lower levels of value discussion with their children. Value conflict with parents was lower in high–fit contexts, and the relationship with the father, but not with the mother, was warmer and closer. Accuracy of perception and acceptance of parental values, and parent–child value congruence were higher in high fit contexts, an effect partially mediated by relationship characteristics. The relevance of fit for family relationships, socialization, and school adaptation is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Haifa University (HU) is the stage for a prolonged social drama between Arabs (20%) and Jews. 86 students (38 Arabs and 48 Jews) were interviewed on their experiences of injustice. Three major differences emerged. For the Arabs, 92% of injustice took place on campus compared to 40% for the Jews. Arabs attributed injustice to discrimination (60%), Jews to the actors’ personal characteristics (58%); the Arabs transformed injustice events into a political struggle for national recognition, identity, and narratives. The analysis intimates that Arabs’ “social being” is developing through the staging of negative expressive acts, namely, respect/contempt and power/weakness. Thus actors at HU can stage social processes, and change sites of surveillance and injustice into places of reconciliation and coexistence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the Israeli election campaign in 1999 a surprising newspaper advertisement appeared. Under the heading "Gentlemen, It's Impossible Without the Ladies," it showed the candidates of the big parties, Dan Meridor, Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu, dressed in women's clothes. The ad called for more women in the Knesset. Surprising and unusual was the text beneath the photo: "Don't forget that every second voter is a woman. It is true: you all might be born leaders and excellent officers, but only women candidates in safe places on the party lists can represent the whole electorate." The advertisement was especially unusual in mentioning the connection between the political success of male aspirants following a military career and the political failure of women. In this article civil-military relations in Israel are explored from a gender perspective. On the one hand, it is asked whether the drafting of women has changed the masculinity of the defence forces. On the other hand, the impact the centrality of the military as an institution and the military discourse has on gender relations in society is explored.

This article suggests that common segregation indices be complemented by an additional index that emphasizes an agent’s isolation from members of other groups in everyday life. We suggest a “sociospatial isolation” index that is studied for individual agents in respect to the spaces in which they actually conduct their everyday life, leading to the aggregation of individuals who share the same orientation toward segregation. The index refers to both the territorial and the interactive contexts of seven aspects: home vicinity, cluster of neighboring homes, neighborhood and city in the territorial context, and friends, work, and leisure activities in the interactive context of an agent’s everyday life activity spaces. The article calculates some hypothetical examples that demonstrate the qualities of the index and is followed by the case of African migrant workers and their segregation in one neighborhood of the inner city of Tel Aviv. The index may receive values between 0–1, with the value of 0.5 representing population mixture, lower values representing exposure to members of other groups, and higher values representing an agent’s tendency toward isolation from members of alternative groups. The results emphasize the fact that there was no correlation between the territorial and the interactive dimension of sociospatial isolation. African migrant workers maintained extremely high rates of intergroup isolation, regardless of their territorial isolation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article elucidates and elaborates upon the contextualized meaning of strangeness and the experience of being a stranger. Our empirical study of strangeness embarks simultaneously from the three leading theories of the stranger—as cultural reader (Schuetz 1944), as demarcator of social boundaries (Simmel 1950), and as trespasser of social categories (Bauman 1990, 1991)—and at the same time criticizes these theories for artificially divesting strangeness of social context. Our thesis about strangeness-in-context is grounded in in-depth interviews we conducted with Jewish–Russian immigrants (twenty-one university students) who have lived in kibbutzim. Our assumption is that the kibbutz as a “communal home” is a suitable case study to illuminate the manyfold dimensions of strangeness, as it intensifies the tension between insiders and outsiders. In explicating the immigrant's sense of strangeness we claim the local context of the kibbutz interacts with the Israeli national definition of the immigrant as a homecomer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a study of the determinants of self-employment in Israel. We employ data for about 13,000 Israeli men and women who were twenty-seven to thirty-four years old in 1995. For each respondent we merged records from the 1983 and 1995 censuses as well as their parents' records in the 1983 census. We distinguish between three categories of self-employment: professional-managerial, qualified, and unqualified occupations. Our main findings are: (1) There are virtually no ethnic differences in the odds of self-employment of any one of the three categories. (2) The effect of education on self-employment in the qualified and unqualified classes is curvilinear: those with very low and very high levels of education are less likely to be self-employed than are those with intermediate levels of education. Evidently, the least educated are unlikely to succeed in business, and those with a university qualification have attractive alternatives as employees. By contrast, in the professional and managerial class, the effect of education is negative. (3) As expected, having a self-employed father enhances one's odds of self-employment. (4) More important, the effect of father's self-employment transfers across categories of self-employment. The sons and daughters of the self-employed in the unqualified class can climb to the class of qualified workers via self-employment. (5) Self-employment is enhanced by the economic circumstance of one's family of origin, suggesting that wealthier families can provide the resources for initial investment in the business and for keeping it afloat during periods of hardship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the foundations for a conceptual framework to explain the military's role in reproducing social inequality, the military's active contribution to its construction and legitimization. Although relations between military organizations and civilian social structures often become matters of public debate, a compelling general account of the military's role in reproducing or transforming civilian social structures has yet to be articulated. Following an outline of the analytical gap, the main argument is propounded, which revolves around the five social implications of military service as these relate to the conjunction between two variables: the extent to which the military reflects civilian inequalities in its ranks and the extent to which power acquired in the military can be converted into social position in return to social life. The argument is illustrated by means of two relatively dichotomous military organizations, the people of the U.S. and the Israelis.