Youth, Culture and Social Structure in Israel.

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.