Mapping of the Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender Research in Israel
This literature review constitutes the first attempt at mapping the lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender research in Israel. The corpus includes the entire population of original works (N=338) published in between 1942 and 2012. Several aspects were analyzed: historical trajectories, discipline, topic, genre, and author distributions. The main conclusion focuses on how changes in the social sphere had paved the way for the sudden growth (during the late 1990s) in this academic field. It was also found that Israeli researchers are particularly interested in delving into issues of individual identities and are less keen on subject matters such as AIDS and bisexuality. The paper concludes with a call for establishing an institutionalized forum for studying LGBT issues.
Private Education: Anti-Consumerism and Class in the Age of Capitalism
This article, which is based on ethnographic fieldwork in a kindergarten for upper-middle class families, examines the educational messages, primarily the high value placed on 'parental investment', and their implications for social-class differentiation. Analysis reveals an inherent tension between an anti-materialistic educational ideology and the immersion of the kindergarten as a prestigious private business, in a culture of hyper-consumerism. We argue that while the explicit educational discourse celebrates anti-consumerism, simplicity, and unmediated emotional provision, the kindergarten in effect comprises an arena of intense elite consumerism. It therefore plays a direct role in class differentiation, despite the fact that 'social class' is not part of the conscious pedagogical agenda.
Israel's Political Economy and Rising Income Inequality, 1970-2010
In this article, I underline a less commonly acknowledged outcome of the neoliberal revolution. Following the shift from coordinated capitalism to liberal capitalism during the 1980s, workers' compensation as a share of Israeli national income has declined and the share of capitalists' profits has increased. A detailed account of two stages in the Israeli political economy characterized by distinct inequality outcomes and time-series equations estimating the changes in labor's share reveal that market-oriented state policies, workers' disorganization, and the growing fragmentation within organized labor led to a decline in labor's share during the current stage of liberal capitalism.
How Cashiers, Cleaning Workers and Cashiers Turned into Entrepreneurs: Workfare Programs and the Construction of the Entrepreneurial Self | Sarah Helman
This article analyses the discourse of instructors teaching occupational empowerment courses in the workfare program in Israel (Meh'alev), to understand how women targeted to work in the secondary labor market were constituted as entrepreneurs. Three central mechanisms emerged from the analysis: 1. The transformation of workers into portfolios of human capital; 2. Work as a third order simulacrum and the work organization as an amusement park; and 3. Emphasis on positive thinking. These discursive mechanisms converged to individualize the subject so as to symbolically blur the contradictions between labor and capital and to lend legitimacy to neo-liberalism as a regime of insecurity.
The Right to Adequate Housing – Palestinian-Single Mothers in Israel
In this paper I will focus on the issue of housing in relation to Israeli-Palestinian single-mothers, and will conduct a gender analysis of their available housing options and their realization of the right to adequate housing. A critical analysis of the right to adequate housing, as manifested in the case of these women, creates a prism for examining additional spheres of life that relate to them and their children. This paper is based on a qualitative study I conducted between 2007 and 2011 among Israeli-Palestinian single-mothers and on gender analysis of proposed housing policy for these women. A link to the international human-rights discourse presented in this paper -since the policy practiced in Israel over the years has led to discrimination against minority groups- may be used as an effective tool of political action against such discrimination. Findings show a lack of governmental solutions, while the women are forced into oppressive familial arrangements while struggling to obtain autonomous space for themselves and their children. Their transparency and the deep hardship which they face in all matters pertaining to housing, may – in extreme cases – be manifested in a threat to their lives.
Peripheriality and Higher Educational Choices among Undergraduate Students
Lilach Lev-ari and Shlomo Getz
The expansion of higher education in Israel in recent decades has enabled greater accessibility to populations whose inclusion in this system was previously limited, including residents of the periphery who typically achieve lower scores )in matriculation and psychometric exams( and who have a lower socioeconomic status than core residents. In this paper we examine the combined influence of residing in the periphery as opposed to residing in the core, previous academic achievement and socioeconomic status on academic choices among students going for their undergraduate degree.
We find that place of residence impacts on academic choices, though differently, on higher or lower academic achievers and on people of different socioeconomic status. When considerations for choosing an academic institution or field of study are similar, the choices of peripheral residents are different from those of core residents. Furthermore, the findings show that residents of the periphery focus on fields of study that enable relatively quick entry into the job market, whereas residents of the core are more inclined to choose fields which require a longer qualification period. These findings lead us to identify a concept which we call peripherality, meaning some "sense of place" according to which significance is attributed to a place of residence which is geographically far from the core and it is a significant factor in academic choices among students going for an undergraduate degree.
This article is about the illness experience of women with chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia in Israel. The medical definition of these illnesses is vague; they do not stand as the vanguard of contemporary medical research, and so far have not gained full public acknowledgement. These illnesses are not life–threatening, but they do damage patients' quality of life. Women negotiate their legitimacy to be ill with the medical establishment and political entities, but also in the private sphere, with close family members and friends. They describe how social norms and cultural perceptions regarding illness and health alongside political and bureaucratic agreements, lead to them being forced to hide their physical condition and continue to function as though they are not ill at all. The purpose of this article is to expose this phenomenon in Israel for the first time, and to encourage the continuation of research into the experience of chronic patients in Israel, in both cultural and social aspects.
This study seeks to revitalize and expand the perspectives on learning disabilities (LD) prevalent in contemporary academic literature in Israel. Highlighting and analyzing the socio-historical context of the phenomenon, this article will first set out to outline the theoretical, conceptual and motivational background behind the sociological and discursive debate on LD. By means of a short historical survey of the genesis of LD discourse, and of the various criticisms that evolved around this discourse, the article will emphasize the vagueness and problematic nature of the term "LD," and will further problematize the conception of LD, by investigating definitions currently in use in local Israeli academic discourse. Investigating LD discourse on a global scale and context, reveals that local Israeli definitions in this field, which presume to be 'objective' and 'universal', are in fact over simplistic at best. Moreover, this investigation reveals the nature of this purportedly 'monolithic' and 'universal' discourse to be heterogeneous. The article then sets to demonstrate how fruitful a socio-historical analysis of the local LD discourse could be, by analyzing two of its fundamental idioms: The statistical idiom and the etiological idiom. This analysis exposes the processes in which unfounded discursive assumptions developed and consolidated into their current status of 'scientific facts'. Moreover, the historical development of these assumptions is revealed and examined by thorough analyses of influential texts, and of interviews, written by and conducted with experts in the field of LD. By uncovering the local LD discourse's shaky theoretical and empirical foundations, the article seeks to contribute to the development of a finer and more contextually-sensitive LD discourse in Israel.
Book Reviews:
On: From Survival to Consolidation: Changes in Israeli Haredi Society and Its Scholarly Study \ Kimmy Caplan and Nurit Stadler (eds.)
On: Pop-Rock Music: Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism in Late Modernity \ Motti Regev
On: Organizations in a Postmodern World \ Israel Katz
On: The Political Lexicon of the Social Protest \ Ariel Handel, Udi Edelman, Michal Givoni, Noam Yuran and Yoav Kenny (eds.)
On: Sexual Thoughts: Queer Theory, Pornography, and the Politics of Sexuality \ Amalia Ziv
On: Kookism: The Roots of ‘Gush Emunim’, Settler Culture, Zionist Theology, Modern day Messianism \ Gideon Aran
On: Young Men in Israeli Haredi Yeshiva Education: The Scholars Enclave in Unrest \ Yohai Hakak
On: Israel's New Wars: An Historical-Sociological Explanation \ Uri Ben Eliezer
On: A meeting of Cultures in the World of Adolescents: A Reading of Israeli Literature in the 21st Century \ Ofra Matzov-Cohen
On: Alternative and Bio-Medicine in Israel: Boundaries and Bridges\ Judith T. Shuval and Emma Averbuch
On: Social Leaders in Israel \ Amalya Oliver-Lumerman, Tammar B. Zilber and Avner De-Shalit (eds.)
On: The Holocaust, the Resurrection and the Nakba \ Ya'ir Oron