In Memory of Leon Sheleff:
Articles:
Concepts of Motherhood, Fatherhood and Family in Israeli Courts: A Case Study
Daphna Hacker and Ronen Shamir
This article deals with the decision of three courts regarding the right of a divorced mother to immigrate to London with her son despite the father's opposition. The article analyzes the various decisions in socio-legal tools. It focuses on two key aspects of child custody decisions. One is the way in which these decisions are influenced by deep cultural perceptions concerning parenting in general and motherhood in particular. The second is the extent and form in which decisions regarding child custody, which focus on the concept of 'the best interests of the child', are based on the perceptions of various therapeutic experts, who work alongside the courts. The analysis of the judgments shows that despite the differences between them, the three judgments are based on a conservative view regarding the role of women in the family and society. The article highlights the gap between the deep cultural presence of gender constructions of parental roles and understandings regarding the best interests of the child, and the almost complete lack of reference to both sociological knowledge concerning the family in the contemporary age and the feminist discourse dealing with dilemmas arising from having to decide who and where children live.
Class, Ethnicity and Party in Israel
The main purpose of this essay is to examine how, if at all, the connection between the social rifts (committee status) and the political behavior (party) in Israeli society has changed. The second purpose of this essay is to examine the effects of Israeli political reform on the link between social divisions and the political behavior of the Israeli electorate. The statistical processing in this essay is based on data collected in Israel in 1993, 1994, 1996, 1999 and 2000, as part of the International Program for Social Research (IISP), with the study population including Jewish men and women aged 18 and over in Israel (N = 4674). It was found that with our entry into the third millennium, the class is gaining a central place in the Israeli stratification system, and the ethnic origin of the individual loses much of its relative importance in this process. It was also found that the change in the electoral system in Israel contributed to the reorganization, according to an ethnic key, of the balance of power between the small parties that make up the right and left blocs.
Social Stratification and Development Towns in Israel
Irit Adler, Noah Lewin-Epstein and Yossi Shavit
The aim of the present study is to examine whether and to what extent the type of locality of residence affects educational and occupational achievement. In the 1950s, several dozen development cities were built in the periphery, inhabited mainly by immigrants from North Africa and the Near East. Studies show that the average education, employment status and income in development cities are significantly lower compared to other urban localities. These findings have led to the conclusion that developing cities have a depressing effect on the achievements of their residents. But these conclusions are a little hasty. Most studies lack information on leadership processes, and they do not take into account the intergenerational effects. We examine the hypothesis that living in development cities harms the educational and occupational achievements of their residents. We find that living in development cities has a negative impact on the likelihood of obtaining a matriculation certificate, but not on the likelihood of higher education or occupational achievement.
Death Procession: Rituals of Self-Death in Old Age Home
This paper discusses the characteristics of elders ’coping with near-death from the aspect of rites of passage. The argument is that the subjects belong to a "culture of death," which is characterized by patterns of "disconnection," "transition," and "merging," in accordance with Van Genf's model. The comparison between funeral and burial rites and the daily practices of elders offers an interpretation from the symbolic realm of the ceremony, and allows for a re-examination of gerontological approaches and concepts. At the center of the study is the concept of "honoring the dead", which sheds light on the gradual disengagement of the interrogees from reality. The article argues that the ceremonial perspective provides a more empathetic framework for understanding the plight of the elderly at the end of their lives.
The Israeli Welfare Regime: Changing Trends and their Societal Effects
The article describes and analyzes various types of welfare regimes operating in the countries of the Western world and in Israel. Researcher Esping-Andersen distinguishes three main types of welfare regimes: a liberal welfare regime, a conservative welfare regime and a social-democratic welfare regime. A complementary subtype of this typology is the Southern European welfare state. Developments in Israel in recent years bring us closer to this model of welfare regime, with all its implications. The welfare regime that developed in Israel was originally of a social-democratic nature. Since the late 1970s there has been a gradual transition to a liberal welfare state, although the social-democratic and universalist foundations have not been completely erased from it. Recently, clientelist elements involving political patronage have been added to the Israeli welfare regime, similar to those found in southern European countries. The intrusion of clientelist elements into the Israeli welfare regime entails a danger of harming the uniform and universalist form of functioning that characterizes the welfare states in the countries of Central and Northern Europe. The continued development of these trends may harm the strength and cohesion of Israeli society in the coming years.
Essay:
Social Capital: A Critical View from the Sociology of Rent
Ilan Talmud and Victoria Bratt
This article reviews the diverse use made of the term “social capital” and examines the different perspectives that arise from the use of this term. We describe in it the variety of uses made so far of the concept of "social capital" in sociology and related fields, incidentally an analytical division into individual and collective level and distinct dependency patterns. Moreover, we propose an analytical framework, derived from the sociology of rent and from developments in the narrative study of relationships, which will dispel a little the great confusion that exists in the sociological use of the term.
Book Reviews:
On: The Influences of the Bible on Our Lives \ Leon Shelef
On: Mizrahim in Israel A Critical Observation into Israel's Ethnicity \ Hannan Hever, Yehouda Shenhav and Pnina Motzafi-Haller (Eds.)
On: The Upright Generation \ Khula Abu-Becker and Danny Rabinowitz
On: Being Israeli: The Dynamics of Multiple Citizenship \ Gershon Shafir and Yoav Peled
On: Women and the Politics of Military Confrontation; Palestinian and Israeli Gendered Narratives of Dislocation \ Nahla Abdo and Ronit Lentin (Eds.)
On: "I miss the laughter of children" - Kibbutz 2000 in the eyes of his friends \ Eli Avrahami
On: Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics \ Bell Hooks
On: Consuming the Romantic Utopia: Love and the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism \ Eva Illouz
On: The Story of Coping with Unemployment, 1995—1920 \ Johnny Gal
On: A social time Bomb: Economics and Politics of Welfare in Israel \ Moria Avnimelech and Yossi Tamir
On: Neighborhood Rehabilitation, Politics of Change \ Daniel Shimshoni
On: India's Jewish Heritage: Ritual, Art, and Life-Cycle \ Shalva Weil (Ed.)