Arab sounds in a contested space: life quality, cultural hierarchies and national silencing

Abstract

Sounds and sonic norms and regimes characterize both spaces/territories and individual bodies. This article explores the meanings of and reactions to Arab sounds in Israel – political struggles over muezzins, stereotypical representations of Israeli Palestinians as loud, and so on – in order to offer general insights into the role of the sonic (both actual sounds and their discursive representations) in the new ‘cultural’ racism, in the everyday ethnicized experience of one's body, and in shaping relations between ethnic and national groups.

Keywords:

• cultural racism
• habitus
• Israel
• mosques
• national space
• sound

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Yehouda Shenhav for his helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article.

Notes

1. 1.6 million Arabs constitute 20.5 per cent of Israel's residents, not including most Palestinians living in the 1967-occupied territories (where Jew–Palestinian relations are shaped by different legal and social realities, which lie beyond this article's scope).

2. The other groups included affluent retirees, subscribers of a classical orchestra, middleclass married urbanites who moved to the countryside, and librarians.

3. Ashkenzai Jews are Israelis of European descent, commonly perceived as moreWestern and culturally remote from Arabs than Mizrahim, Jews of Middle-Eastern/North African descent.

4. In many Israeli Jewish villages, new families must be approved by admission committees that often justify their discriminatory policies in terms of ‘cultural compatibility’.

5. This self-silencing reaction was actually reported by a Jewish interviewee, daughter to a working-class Mizrahi family raised in a mainly Ashkenazi middle-class town, where her family's loudness was notorious: only after engaging in over-correction did she find the middle way.

6. Ethnic animosity among Israeli Jews is considered much less legitimate (as it threatens national unity and cannot be excused as a reaction to warfare), hence ‘cultural’ difference plays a much stronger role in everyday racism against Mizrahi Jews.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ori Schwarz

ORI SCHWARZ is a Research Fellow in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Tel-Aviv University.