Front Page | Instructions for Authors | Astracts - English
Front Page | Instructions for Authors | Astracts - Arabic
Articles:
Although the multiculturalist stance strongly supports the inclusion of groups not characterized as Western, secular or liberal, the discussion on the rules by which proper coexistence should be promoted takes place in a moral space devoid of the cultural foundations of the very groups it seeks to promote. Using the method of autoethnography, this essay describes my subjective experience, as a fifty year old critical sociologist holding progressive views, as part of a group of social activists, who represent a broad range of cultures and beliefs in Israeli society: the insights I gained and the questions that remain unanswered. This is not a document offering a well-defined alternative to multiculturalism, but a painstaking introspection of a subjective experience that serves to understand social and cultural contexts.
Trapped Between Class and Ethno-Nationalism: “Intra-Arab Gentrification” in a Contested City
Studies in urban sociology, particularly the study of gentrification, highlight how class displacement intersects with racial or ethnonational displacement. Challenging this narrative, this study presents a new phenomenon – “Intra-Arab gentrification”: gentrification led by Arab entrepreneurs and business owners in Old Acre, revealing a complex relationship between class and ethnonationalism. Based on in-depth interviews and an analysis of policy documents and press articles, the study shows that entrepreneurs and publichousing tenants are caught in conflicts between their ethnonational and class identities and interests. Moreover, the study describes how intra-Arab gentrification, operating in the reality of a geopolitical conflict and a neo-liberal economy, intensifies tensions between classes in the Arab society and places them against each other in competition for assets. These findings contribute to a re-evaluation of class and ethnonational intersection in a way that recognizes the opportunities and costs of gentrification for different classes in the same minority group. They further illustrates the ways in which class identity acts as a dividing force in an ethnonational minority group.
Married and Faceless: Fragmenting Discreet Relationships in the Age of Tinder
Are mobile dating apps such as Tinder changing the nature of extramarital relationships? I examined this question by means of digital ethnography, observing profiles of anonymous married men on Tinder and OkCupid and conducting interviews with them. The participants’ narratives reveal the newold meanings of contemporary extramarital relationships. Married men explain their use of the dating app as motivated by the age-old desire to compensate for a lack of marital sexual passion. However, the affordances of dating apps are translated into new strategies that facilitate men’s ability to better direct, shape, hide, and end their relationships. Specifically, the apps’ technological interface helps construct extramarital relationships and the emotions involved in them as fragmentary, limiting them to the sexual sphere and keeping them temporary and confidential. While new technology thus assists forbidden affairs, it also enables to conduct them without jeopardizing users’ marriages, thus supporting traditional monogamous values.
Role Conflict, Enrichment and Sense of Balance Among Working and Studying Parents
The goal of this study was to test the relationship between role conflict, role enrichment and sense of balance on the one hand, and wellbeing on the other hand, among working and studying parents in three systems: family-work, family-studies and work-studies. The research sample included 256 participants (161 women and 95 men). Relationships were found between role conflict and the experience of enrichment on the one hand, and wellbeing on the other hand, in all three systems. Role conflict intensity was lowest in the family-work and the studies-work interfaces, and highest in the studies-family and work-studies interfaces. The lowest sense of balance was found in the family-studies system. Men experienced a higher general sense of balance than women, whereas the intensity of the general role conflict was higher among women. The findings highlight the family’s contribution to enriching working and studying parents in Israeli society.
Review Articles:
Class-Based Inequalities in Health and Mortality in Israel: A Theoretical and Empirical Review
Israel, like other high-income countries, exhibits substantial and rising class disparities in health and mortality. Individuals with high levels of education and income benefit on average from better physical and cognitive health, as well as lower mortality rates. Yet in spite of the importance of socioeconomic disparities for health inequality, this area of research received little attention in Israeli sociological research. As a result, key sociological insights are absent from public and academic discussions on health inequalities and how to reduce them. In this article we first review the causal mechanisms for explaining class-based disparities in health and mortality, emphasizing three theoretical frameworks: health lifestyle theory, the life course approach to health disparities, and the chronic stress paradigm. Second, we provide an empirical review of class-based inequalities in health and mortality in Israel. Lastly, we propose new directions for research on health inequalities in Israel, pointing to underutilized data sources and highlighting patterns and trends unique to Israeli society.
In this essay I explain the renewed interest in the works of Karl Polanyi, particularly in his book, The Great Transformation, which has been recently published in Hebrew. Polanyi, I argue, offers a critical political economy theory of contemporary capitalism that does not rely on Marxist assumptions, which he also challenges. In The Great Transformation, Polanyi makes three key unconventional claims: First, the primary movers of The Great Transformation in the nineteenth century were not domestic, but rather international: the globalization of money. Second, Polanyi downplays the role of class struggle in the formation of modern capitalism. Instead, he assigns to states and their interactions at the global level a much more central role in shaping modern capitalism. Thirdly, for Polanyi, the most urgent problem associated the capitalist regime is not inequality, but its unsustainability caused by financial instability and the erosion of the social and natural infrastructure of capitalism. Those controversial claims explain the appeal of Polanyi in the era of large crises.
Note on Research:
Sigal Alon, Anat Oren and Karin Blannero
The first probabilistic web-based panel in Israel, developed and built by the B.I. and Lucille Cohen Institute for public opinion research at Tel Aviv University, is described in this article. We detail the panel construction and its uniqueness relative to existing internet panels in Israel. The panel recruitment and maintenance procedures are complex and include the following components: a dedicated random sample of individuals from a sampling frame (the Israeli population registry); mixed-mode recruitment (telephone and postal) to augment the panel’s representativeness; and constant panel refreshment. This transparent procedure yields unique methodological advantages for academic research, such as the ability to calculate the sampling error compared to other existing panels. In conclusion, this is the only panel in Israel that complies with the highest methodological standards that can replace face-to-face or telephone surveys at a lower cost, while maintaining high methodological quality.
Conversations about Books:
State Violence in Nazi Germany: From Kristallnacht to Barbarossa \ Emanuel Marx
Haim Hazan, Esther Herzog and Daniel Baltman
Land, Labor and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 1882–1914 \ Gershon Shafir
Areej Sabbagh-Khoury, Daniel Demalach and Avi-ram Tzoreff
Book Reviews:
On: Ethnicity on the Move: Boundary Work and Life Trajectories of Young Adults \ Yosefa Tabib-Kalif
Andre Levy
On: The Return to Al-Andalus: Disputes Over Sephardic Culture and Identity Between Arabic and Hebrew \ Yuval Evri
Efrat Yerday
On: The Other Journey: Ethiopian Jews and Their Participation in Ethiopia's Revolutionary Struggle 1974-1991 \ David Ratner
On: Children of the Heart: New Aspects of Research in the Yemenite Children Affair \ Tova Gamliel and Nathan Shifris (Eds.)
Sara Helman
On: Gender Gap in Israeli Politics \ Michal Shamir, Hanna Herzog and Naomi Chazan (Eds.)
Tair Karazi-Presler
On: I Hate Men \ Pauline Harmange
Ari Engelberg
On: The Image of God: The Idea that Changed the World and Judaism \ Tomer Persico
Yaniv Ron El
On: Protectors of pluralism: Religious minorities and the rescue of Jews in the low countries during the holocaust \ Robert Braun