Empowering peripheral communities by using place-identity: Israeli student villages as a platform for a servant creative class

Abstract

This study attempts to examine the conditions under which place-identity creates a sense of ideological commitment towards the community, among young people belonging to the creative class. Using a narrative analysis of the experiences and attitudes of “student village” members in Israel, the study proposes a linear-chronological model, which presents the conditions for creating ideology-rooted place-identity among students. This place-identity is promoted by social associations that provide this class with suitable conditions in order to make living in student villages satisfying and attractive from a material, social, and personal point of view. Ideology-rooted place-identity is accomplished by helping the students develop an ideological commitment towards the population via volunteer-work with and integration into the community. In this way, the study suggests a unique model that encourages the development of a “servant creative class” whose members may be recruited, not just to live in peripheral towns, but also to be committed to the community as a whole. In addition, this model may also develop better relations between young creative class newcomers and disadvantaged local communities.

Keywords:

• university-community relations
• leadership
• citizen participation
• NGOs

Notes

1. This is especially important due to findings related to students' motivation to join the villages in the first place, which focused mainly on seeking a satisfactory social life and cheap living accommodations.

2. The Association’s student villages define themselves as “Zionist” and support Zionist settlement. However, the villages are open and available to all students; there are also several Palestinian students in these villages, who have completed their National Service (mostly in the integrated cities, such as Acre and Lod). The national-ethnic discussion and discourses about citizenship that preoccupy Israeli society also exist in Israeli student villages (see Smooha, 2002). In this study, we avoided dealing with the subject of the civil identities that develop in the villages among Jews and Palestinians, and rather focused on the development of place-identity in regard to social work and empowering weak populations.

3. Four villages are located in the Galilee in Northern Israel, and nine are in the Negev in Southern Israel. Fourteen villages are run by the Ayalim Association. Two villages are independent; one is in the city of Lod in Central Israel, while a second pioneering student village was recently established in Samaria/West Bank.

4. The project is mainly marketed at information stands set up on the various campuses by students who described the project’s goals, acceptance conditions, and way of life in the village to anyone who inquires. Students who are interested in participating in the project are invited for a two-day selection process, including a personal interview, tour of the living environment, and an overnight stay in the village’s sleeping quarters.

5. Due to the fact that the area is under political dispute, we chose to call it in its Israeli and Palestinian name simultaneously.

6. The M Student Village is also unique due to the fact that its proximity to an educational institution was not a major consideration in the students’ choice to move there, perhaps because of the relatively high availability of apartments in the city where the university is located (Ariel), as well as the university’s proximity to the center of Israel.

7. These include more employment and housing and better transportation and services, such as kindergartens, social clubs, and grocery stores, which are all available to students in the remaining two locations.

8. This national or even Zionist ideological commitment may have various interpretations among different students. We may assume that Palestinian students will give different meaning to this commitment than religious Jewish students. These wider ethno-national elements in the ideological sense toward the place are not dealt with in the current study. However, the social and welfare contribution to disadvantaged communities is the major factor and a shared component in the ideological commitment and meaning of graduating students toward the place.

9. This is mainly interesting due to the fact that the Israeli north has a much better public image as a green, pastoral area, as opposed to the barren and desolate Negev desert in the south or the wild, dangerous image of the Samaria\West Bank (Avraham, 2001; Yiftachel & Erez, 2001).

10. Especially if there are limited distances from place to place, such as in the Israeli case.