The profession’s response to overt and covert threats to the ruling hegemony

ABSTRACT

This study examines the relationship between three sociological concepts in an architectural context: profession, hegemony, and government, focusing on times of crisis. The crisis is caused by two types of perceived threat to the hegemonic social order: one is overt and recognized by the government, and the other is covert and not officially acknowledged. In both cases, the threat has the potential to overturn the power hierarchy and thus damage the status of the profession. This relationship is observed through architectural analysis because the products of architecture represent identities, values, and power relations, thus enabling an examination of the profession’s role in the broader social context. The findings of the study indicate that in a time of crisis, which is perceived – even by the authorities – as a threat to society at large, the profession makes itself entirely available to assist the governmental authority so as to preserve the existing hegemony. By contrast, when the ruling authorities do not consider the crisis to constitute a threat to the hegemonic social order, the profession ‘chooses its battles’ based on its interest in preserving the hegemony, to retain its own power and status.

KEYWORDS:

• Professions
• hegemony
• government
• architecture
• Arabism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The Prime Minister whose term brought the third decade of the State of Israel to a close (1974–1977) was Itzhak Rabin. In his memoirs, he barely commented on Israeli internal politics; hence, it is impossible to conjecture about the threat of Arabism as perceived at that time (Rabin & Goldstein, 1979).

2 The Israeli architects were not operating in a void; rather, the surge of admiration for vernacular architecture (i.e. the architecture that evolves without the participation of professional architects) was at a pinnacle with the exhibition that opened in 1964 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, titled ‘Architecture without Architects’ (Rudofsky, 1965). This trend encouraged the Israeli architects to appreciate the architectural richness found in the Arab villages. Nevertheless, without a basic openness toward Arabism in architecture, the global trend would not have caught on locally.

3 This was the only structure included in the formal publications of the Ministry of Housing at the time. All the other structures that the Ministry built for the Arab sector and were included in its publications were intended to serve as public institutions.

Additional information

Funding

This work was not funded by any grant.

Notes on contributors

Hadas Shadar

Prof. Hadas Shadar is an architect and a researcher of public housing and Brutalist architecture in Israel. She is the head of the M.Ed.Des studies (Master of Design Environment & Education) at the NB Haifa School of Design and a senior lecturer at the Technion. Prof. Shadar is also a conservation adviser of master plans and a curator of exhibitions dealing with her areas of expertise.

Zvika Orr

Dr. Zvika Orr is a senior lecturer at the Jerusalem College of Technology and the co-director of the College’s Flagship Community Engagement Program. In 2023, he has been a visiting scholar at Cornell University Department of Anthropology. He has published on professions, human rights, structural determinants of health, organ trafficking, and university-community partnerships.