The paper attempts to examine making of adolescent girls from ‘stigmatized populations’ performing ethnic identity as a display of power in a workshop process that aims to provide access to strengthens support. The display of power is reflected in the dialog they conduct with the leader and contents of a workshop that aims to reinforce the adolescent girls’ occupational aspirations by expanding their critical consciousness. The dialog revealed two dominant negotiation modes that employ doing ethnic identity in order to enable the adolescent girls to position themselves as having power in the workshop social space. The comparison between the two modes reveals the extent of their willingness to trust the ‘Other’. The study shows that, when deciphered within the theoretical discourse of resistance, their position as willing or unwilling to trust the ‘Other’ may suggest two different ethnic ‘identity doing’ modes, while revealing a social process based on the distinction between separation oriented and participation oriented modes.
Between Shaking the Tree and Rocking the Boat: The Not-Nice, Protest and Radical Democracy in Israel
Has the 2011 Tents Protest left its mark on Israeli society and politics? This article seeks to answer this question by discussing the post-protest protest. Following a review of the emergence of the protest, I identify two post-protest political players – the hegemonic and the subaltern. Particularly, I focus on the Not Nice activists group and seek to explain its unique ways of participation and position within the broader social and political contexts. My analysis suggests that the subalterns' perspective yields an opportunity to expand the debate on Israeli citizenship and democracy beyond its liberal limits, and to adopt the Radical Democracy theory as a more adequate framework to our understanding of contemporary politics.
Violence in Football: The Leper Carries the Tidings
This Paper deals with the social and political context of violence in football, in its instrumentality and justification. It is argued that one should observe football violence by means of a formula that relates means, goal and justification. Academics and politicians tend to condemn violence in football. The formers search for its roots and reasons, the latter wish to annihilate it even if this inflicts on the game and the crowd. It is argued here that violence in football carries some social functions such as catharsis. Sometimes it carries certain political issues. This paper focuses on the specific group of Beitar F.C Jerusalem that harasses Arabs’ clubs and their supporters, voicing their wish to deport the entire Israeli Arab population from the Jewish-Zionist state. It is assumed that this group of anti-Arabs expresses the feeling of many Israelis who consider the Israeli Arabs as ‘conditional foreigners’.
British, Zionists and Football: On Enforced Voluntarism and the Construction of Sovereignty
This article examines the building of sovereignty through the compilation of data about a population. The case study considers attempts to enforce the recruitment of football players in Mandatory Palestine during the Second World War. The study looks at the role of civil so-ciety organizations in securing the standing of the Zionist Jewish Agency as a quasi-sovereign able to deploy a system of de-facto mandatory army conscription, looking at the supporting role of the FIFA-affiliated Palestine Football Association and Football Clubs. The study also traces attempts to evade military service and shows how circulating data and players’ cards served as means of surveillance that contributed to the assembly of sover-eignty. The study is based on original archival materials.
Citizenship-Consumerism? Organic Food and Global Culture in Israel
Organic food Consumption is associated with “citizen-consumer” practice, which is an act of promoting different aspects of social and ecological responsibility and the integration of ethical considerations in daily practices. This article raises the point that in the Israeli case, the promise of integrating ethical aspects in organic food consumption patterns is not realized in practice. The study shows how practices attributed to ethical eating culture are used in identity construction, social status manifestation and as a means to demonstrate openness to global cultural trends. Analysis of the socio-cultural aspects related to organic food consumption points to the polysemy embodied in the term citizen-consumer and shows how the actual implementation of this term is based in the essential level on the assimilation of consumer values and cosmopolitan aesthetics, and the adoption of ethical aspects only on a symbolic level.
This study deals with the phenomenon of the Jewish ultra-Orthodox “kosher cell-phone”, a device that can be used only for voice calls. The paper focuses on the lay leaders’ not stopping at blocking Internet use (seen as dangerous) from phones, but also blocking all text applications. Using cross-interviews with the anti-cellular crusaders and content analysis of online discussions held between community members, the study examines the perception of threat that underlies the prohibition against texting, and how this prohibition is accepted in the community. We want to argue that in contrast to the matter of permissive content, which threatens the isolated community’s external boundaries, blocking texting stems from a perception that the technology’s configuration threatens the intra-communal monitorability and of information dissemination in the communal space.
Israeli Driving Culture: Driving Style and Drivers’ Attitudes towards Traffic Laws
Lipaz Shamoa-Nir and Uri Durchin
This study examined Israeli drivers' attitudes (N=106) towards aggressive driving and traffic laws using questionnaires and interviews. The analysis revealed four main findings: (1) drivers recognize the importance of laws even in situations where they violate the law (2) violations of laws are seen as inevitable and are intended primarily to maintain the order on the road (3) drivers use agreed codes against criminal drivers in order to eliminate injustice behaviors (4) the presence of traffic police does not perceived by drivers as needed, on the contrary, most drivers criticize the police for being ineffective. The findings contribute to conceptualizing aggressive driving and traffic violations, from the perspective of the drivers and within the Israeli cultural context. Hence, the practical contribution, since understanding drivers' perceptions can also lead to a better understanding of the causes of aggressive behavior and road rage and thus promotes effective coping with driving deficiency and accidents.
A symposium in honor of the book "Sandals: on Anthropology of Local Style" by Tamar Elor
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Understand the Israeli identity through her sandals \ Mia Wallenstein
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Sandals, Historians and Material Culture \ Oded Heilbrunner
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Contents of the style: Sandal and Ideology \ Shoshana-Rose Marzel
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Thoughts on sandals: Following Tamar Elor \ Ronen Shamir
Book Reviews:
On: The Holocaust and the Nakba: Memory, National Identity and Jewish-Arab Partnership \ Bashir Bashir and Amos Goldberg (eds.)
On: The human condition \ Hannah Arendt
On: Conscientious Objectors in Israel: Citizenship, Sacrifice, Trials of Fealty \ Erica Weiss
On: Captives \ Merav Mack (ed.)
On: Shuttling between two worlds : coming to and defecting from Ultra Orthodox Judaism in Israeli Society \ Shlomi Doron
On: What kind of body? : the affects of the sexing process on intersexed peoples' lives \ Limor Meoded Danon
On: Bedouin of Mount Sinai: An Anthropological Study of Their Political Economy \ Emanuel Marx
On: A Nation on the Couch: The Politics of Trauma in Israel \ Keren Friedman-Peleg
On: Over their dead body : power, knowledge, and the institute of Forensic Medicine in Israel \ Meira Weiss
On: Objects : industrial design in Israel \ Jonathan Ventura