Articles

This  essay  explores  the  intersectionality  between  diaspora  and  nationalism, heterosexuality and queerness in recent Israeli cinema. I would like to argue that the films Three Mothers and Late Wedding offer a radical critique of both Israeli national and diasporic narratives relying on a patrilineal family tree structured by heterosexual marriage and reproduction and therefore excluding non-heteronormative sexualities and desires. The films expose and challenge the politics of oedipal organization and normative kinship systems by deploying modes of melancholia to reimagine and reassemble new forms of identification and belonging to spaces such as home and nation that have traditionally denied queer existence.

Over the last decades, a rich and interdisciplinary body of knowledge about siblingship  has  emerged.  In  addition,  sociological  and  feminist  writings have  dealt  with  the  institution  of  the  family,  marriage,  and  the  politics  of reproduction. However, the routinization of the birth of brothers and sisters has remained relatively marginal in deconstructive sociological research, and very little has been said about the intensity of the discourse that purports to explain the very existence of what I call "the institution of siblingship". This article seeks to enrich the knowledge about the routinization of the institution of siblingship in Israeli society. It is argued that this institution is  constructed  inter  alia  by  three  cultural  logics:  (1)  a  discourse  of  "moral parenthood"; (2) ideas concerning the "good virtue" of the "correct size“ for a family; and (3) cultural attitudes regarding temporality within the family and "family time".

This research deals in young and old Ethiopian religious priests (kessoch), who are spiritual leaders of immigrants from Ethiopia in Israel. These two "invisible" groups cope differently with their social and cultural marginality and lack of legitimacy from the religious establishment and society in Israel.
Among the old kessoch, some found new meaning for their life in Israel, and attempt to preserve significant identity rifts. Others are disengaged from life materials in the present, and find meager meaning . In contradistinction, the young kessoch express a behavior pattern of "daily resistance" towards the absorbing society. They selectively choose "parts of reality" with meaning appropriate for them. Wise use of "identity rifts " serves them in their social inclusion processes.

Based on a participant observation study conducted in 1993 in "Little Home", a semi-commune in Tel Aviv, this article examines Grathoff's Symbolic Type Theory (1970) and Habermas's Deliberative Democracy Theory of "systematically distorted communication" in regards to symbolic type in which men are trapped. It further examines behavior with a unique pattern I call "waves" that occurs among women as a protest against the symbolic types.
Habermas's thesis relates to the power emanating from the lifeworld in the form of strategy disguised as communication. This pathology derives from asymmetrical family relations that create emotional disorders in the individual.
The symbolic types witnessed within the family /commune of "Little Home", enabled an in-depth study of a unique structure of systematically distorted communication. 

The article addresses the relationship between professional knowledge, politics and morality. It analyzes the modes of representation and mediation of the Disengagement  experience  in  the  interpretations of mental health practitioners and seeks to detect the expressions of their political positions in the therapeutic  narratives  subjected to  the principles of professional discourse.  Two expressions of the presence of the political in therapeutic narration are discussed: 1)  the conception of causality in constructing the narratives of the evacuation  experience  and  2)  the  modes of mediation  of this experience directed to mobilize empathy. It was found that the criticism
against the settlement ideological project was reflected in the construction of the causality in a way that challenges the evacuee's moral and psychological purity. On the other hand, one can point at the strategies and conditions of the mediation of the "Disengagement trauma" that transform it into suffering worthy of therapeutic empathy. This case study raises the need to expand the theoretization of complex intertwining of therapy and politics, enactment of therapeutic practitioner's moral criticism and her/his commitment to empathic recognition of suffering as such.

This  paper  examines  the  relationship  between  two  sociological  terms : professionalism and hegemony, focusing on a time of crisis - the crisis of a hegemony that has been shaken and an elite whose power has declined, as well as the crisis of a profession whose authority and autonomy have suffered. This relationship is examined by means of analyzing the professional architectural discourse  in Israel in  the  1980s,  during  the  first  stages  of  the  privatization process. The findings suggest that in times of crisis , the profession abandons the professional discourse and takes part in social power struggles. Using the professional monopoly and ostensibly professional terms, professionals attack the social powers threatening their class, in an attempt to preserve the old hegemonic order.

Taking leave of their research community can be a prolonged and complex process for anthropologists. It generally occurs in stages and in some cases never actually comes to an end. In this article I present such a case. Years after  completing and publishing  my  anthropological study of a women ‘s prison in Israel I unexpectedly came across former inmates. These indirect encounters provided a trickle of information on events that had taken place in the intervening period. The fresh data painted the distant past in different shades and raised questions about my interpretation of events at the time. This process generates deliberations about the act of taking leave of the field, and about the temporal and spatial boundaries of anthropological research. 

This  article  seeks  to  answer  the  question :  Why  has  Baruch  Kimmerling not described Israel as a colonial society in spite of the obvious similarities his  analysis of Israeli  society bears  to  colonial theory.  First,  five  central "Kimmerling theses" on Israel are offered , then it is shown that criticism aimed at the school of thought  that Israel is a colonial society are simultaneously equally critical of the "Kimmerling theses." It is then argued that Kimmerling refrained from using the colonial label since he preferred
to coin is own scholarly nomenclature. Finally, the broader question of the use of politically loaded terms in the social sciences is considered.  

יובל יונאי על:
הבירוקרטיה של הכיבוש: משטר היתרי התנועה בגדה המערבית, 2006-2000

יעל ברדה

רינה נאמן על:
של מי העיר הזאת? תכנון, ידע וחיי היומיום

טובי פנסטר

רות פרסר על:
 Figurations of Violence and Belonging: Queerness, Migranthood and Nationalism in Cyberspace and Beyond
Adi Kuntsman

אורנה ששון–לוי על:
פנטזיה של מדינה: תצלומי חיילות צה"ל וארוטיזציה של המיליטריזם האזרחי בישראל
חוה ברונפלד–שטיין

קרן פרידמן–פלג על:
Birthing a Mother: The Surrogate Body and the Pregnant Self  
Elly Teman

חן משגב על:
Arab-Jewish Activism in Israel-Palestine
Marcelo Svirsky

גיא בן פורת על:
ארץ מאובטחת: משטרה, שיטור והפוליטיקה של הביטחון האישי
אראלה שדמי

ליאורה גביעון על:
Food For Thought: Transnational Contested Identities and Food
Practices of Russian-Speaking Jewish Migrants in Israel and Germany
Julia Bernstein

ניצן ליבוביץ על:
מרטין בובר: הדיאלוג הנסתר
דן אבנון

שתי נקודות מבט על ספרו של גיאורג זימל
כיצד תיתכן חברה
יניב רון–אל
עידו יואב

דניאל ליס על:
From the Promised Land: Modern Discourse on African Jewry
Jonas Zianga

טליה שיף על:
Mongrels or Marvels: The Levantine Writings of Jacqueline Shohet
(Deborah A. Starr & Sasson Somekh (Editors

יאלי השש על:
בקופסאות הבטון: נשים מזרחיות בפריפריה הישראלית
פנינה מוצפי–האלר

אסתר הרצוג
דברי תגובה לבקורת של לורן ארדריך על הספר :Patrons of Women
Literacy Projects and Gender Development in Rural Nepal