Volume 10 Issue 2

February 2009

Decade Issue

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Introduction:

With or Without Quotes: On the Place and Locality of Israeli Sociology | Haim Hazan

Generations Apart: Generational Perspective on the Sociological Discourse
Hanna Herzog

This article develops a theoretical and methodological discussion of generational units as a method for analyzing society and social change, and suggests the concept of generational unit as a tool for socio-analysis of academic discourse. Generational unit analysis reveals the complexity and multiplicity, as well as the simultaneity, present in society. It facilitates the telling of the dominant narrative, but over and above this, it compels us to utilize socio-historical analysis to extricate the voices and actions of groups whose generational semantics and/or achievements have been confined to the margins, silenced, and/or concealed. Generational perspective explains the emotional intensity of inter-generational and intra-generational struggle in the academic discourse. The paper illustrates two dimensions for sociological discourse analysis: the analytical unit and the periodization selected by researchers as basis for their study.

Palestinians and Jews at Work: On the Sociology of Work Practice and its Contribution to Understanding the Conflict | Asaf Darr

Working life in Israel routinely brings Jews and Palestinians into contact in work organizations. These social encounters constitute an important component in the dynamic infrastructure of the ethnic/national/religious conflict yet this domain remains almost unknown to researchers. This article suggests a systematic research program on relations of Jews and Palestinians in work organizations in Israel. The project is set in the tradition of sociology of work practices, which has developed theoretical and methodological tools especially fit for this purpose. A review of the literature from proximate sub-disciplines such as historical and political sociology reveals the important potential of implementing the proposed research program, both for understanding the complexity of the conflict and for reformulating its social components.

The Relationship between Paid Work and Family Structure: Changes over Time among Jewish Women in Israel
Barbara S. Okun and Amalya L. Oliver

Drawing on four Israeli population censuses conducted between 1961 and 1995, we consider whether there has been significant convergence over time in patterns of paid and full-time work among Jewish women who differ by marital status and number of children. We find that (1) there has been strong convergence in patterns among married, divorced and single women; (2) among the married, only moderate convergence across women by number of children; and (3) among the divorced, divergence across women by number of children. We conclude that while Jewish women’s role as “wives” no longer conflicts with paid employment, their role as “mothers” still conflicts with paid work and there has been little weakening of this conflict over time.

Immigration in Israel: A Map of Trends and Empirical Research: 1990-2007
Rebeca Raijman

A general portrayal of new migration trends to Israel and the general characteristics of the migrants themselves are presented, arrayed along two major axes that have characterized migration flows to Israel since the end of the 1980s: migration under the auspices of the Law of Return (mostly Jewish) and non-Jewish labor migration. Four main challenges have emerged within the Israeli context of immigration during the last decades: (1) migration from the Former Soviet Union; (2) migration from Ethiopia; (3) non-Jewish migration under the auspices of the law of return; and (4) labor migrants and refugees. These challenges are likely to leave their imprint on Israel’s regime of incorporation and society.

Exploring Alternative Biographies in Israeli Cinema
Avi Shoshana

To better comprehend how the cinema serves as an important arena for the construction and maintenance of the self in the daily lives of viewers, this article introduces the concepts “alternative biographies” and the “biographical gaze”. These emerge from a textual analysis of the identity work of the protagonists of the Israeli film Sh’chur. I suggest that by linking the structure of the identity work of the film’s protagonists to the gaze offered to the viewers, we will better appreciate qualities inherent in the cinema that make it a medium for control and maintenance of daily order in contemporary societies.

Old Conflict, New War: A Changing Institutional Context for Exerting Power in Israel’s Wars
Uri Ben-Eliezer

In recent decades Israel has been involved in “new wars.” The academic literature regards these wars as the result of states’ weakness and the collapse of national armies in the Third World under a new global situation. The article presents a different hypothesis, namely that global processes can elicit new cultural perspectives and new institutional arrangements that encourage belligerent solutions to political problems. These processes do not necessarily characterize a weak state but one flexible enough to adjust itself to the new global situation and make the most of it with the help of some sectors within society itself. This thesis is illustrated by an analysis of the causes of the second Intifada between Israel and the Palestinians.