The new Israeli sociologies: Designing the new orthodoxy

Abstract

Written from a “critical perspective”, four new sociologies of Israel have recently been published. This article critically reviews the strengths and weaknesses of these new books, as well as the “new orthodoxy” that they propose with regard to Israel's past and present.

Keywords:

• Israel
• critical sociology
• Israel-Palestinian conflict
• ethnic stratification
• Israel and globalization

Notes

1. How and why Israeli sociology developed as it did is discussed in H. Herzog 2000, and G. Yair and Noa Afloig 2005.

2. Key features of the ‘yishuv culture’ are elaborated in the following books and articles: Oz Almog 1997 The Sabra: A Portrait ; Nachman Ben Yehudah, 1995 The Masada Myth: Collective Memory and Mythmaking in Israel ; M. Feige 2004 “Identity, Ritual and Pilgrmage: The Meetings of the Israeli Exploration Society” in: Deborah Dash Moore and Ilan Troen, Editors, Divergent Jewish Cultures, pp. 87-106; Nurith Gertz 1995 Captive of a Dream: National Myths in Israeli Culture ; and Yael Zurubavel 1995 Recovered Roots: Memory and the Making of National Tradition .

3. For more detailed analysis and comparison of the two books, see Grinberg 2003; Selby 2005; and Weingrod 2005.

4. Critical “Post-Zionist” viewpoints are elaborated in Uri Ram 1993 Editor, Israeli Society: Critical Perspectives See also Ram, 1995, and Silberstein 1993.

5. There also is a fifth recent study-- the anthropologist Don Handelman has written a new interpretation of Israeli society. Nationalism and the Israeli State: Bureaucratic Logic in Public Events is an innovative analysis that operates at several levels. Handelman argues that the Russian-Jewish founders of the state brought with them a “top-down” Czarist conception of how the state should order society for the “common good”, and that this produced a continuing emphasis upon bureaucracy. The book's middle chapters concentrate upon a series of “public events”, such as Israeli Remembrance Day and Independence Day, and Israeli memorialization practices (“The Presence of Absence”). Overall, Handelman emphasizes how state bureaucratic logic divides “Israelis” into a series of unequal social categories, and how public events are framed by Israeli nationalism and used to perpetuate social divisions. In certain respects his analysis is reminiscent of Kimmerling's study, and yet it differs substantially from the books reviewed by focusing upon a limited number of events and their cultural-historical structure.

6. The “colonization thesis” is discussed in Uri Ram ” 1993, and in Moshe Lissak 1996.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alex Weingrod

ALEX WEINGROD is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, Ben Gurion University of the Negev