The Self as Public Property: Made in Israel

This article examines the connection between state order and self‐understandings in everyday life through a case study of the “Boarding School for Gifted Disadvantaged” in Israel. It includes content analysis of governmental protocols that documented the establishment of the boarding school (governmental constitution of a new self‐concept) and interviews with sixty of its graduates (self‐understandings in everyday life). The findings reveal how the new cultural order invented a new selfhood, “gifted disadvantaged,” previously unknown in Israel. This category is based on structural distinctions between being “naturally” gifted versus the governmental constitution of gifted status. Interviews with graduates indicate that they experience selfhood as a philanthropic gift bestowed on them by the state of Israel and voice their gratitude toward the state. The concluding discussion suggests that the graduates experience their selfhood as “public property.” The self, perceived as having been constructed from outside, is in a continuous dialectic between the presence and the absence of certain personal qualities.     

Relational Troubles and Semiofficial Suspicion: Educators and the Medicalization of “Unruly” Children

Using an interview‐based analysis of the accounts of interactions between educators, parents, and clinicians, this study explores educators' roles in interpreting childhood troubles as the medical phenomenon of attention deficit‐hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The analysis of interviews shows how children's “personal” troubles become understood as “relational” ones, prompting increasingly sophisticated social responses. I argue that the institution of education, operating in a clinical capacity but lacking the legitimate authority to assign ADHD diagnoses, plays a hybridized, semiofficial role in the medicalization process. This assertion informs a critique of the “informal/official” dichotomy found in the sociology of deviance lexicon, and furthers previous positions in the sociology of mental health that have implicated school representatives in the social construction of behavior disorders.     

Toward a Critical Phenomenology of "Illegality": State Power, Criminalization, and Abjectivity among Undocumented Migrant Workers in Tel Aviv, Israel

Given the vast scope and magnitude of the phenomenon of so‐called “illegal” migration in the present historical moment, this article contends that phenomenologically engaged ethnography has a crucial role to play in sensitizing not only anthropologists, but also policymakers, politicians, and broader publics to the complicated, often anxiety‐ridden and frightening realities associated with “the condition of migrant illegality,” both of specific host society settings and comparatively across the globe. In theoretical terms, the article constitutes a preliminary attempt to link pressing questions in the fields of legal anthropology and anthropology of transnational migration, on one hand, with recent work by phenomenologically oriented scholars interested in the anthropology of experience, on the other. The article calls upon ethnographers of undocumented transnational migration to bridge these areas of scholarship by applying what can helpfully be characterized as a “critical phenomenological” approach to the study of migrant “illegality” (Willen, 2006; see also Desjarlais, 2003). This critical phenomenological approach involves a three‐dimensional model of illegality: first, as a form of juridical status; second, as a sociopolitical condition; and third, as a mode of being‐in‐the‐world. In developing this model, the article draws upon 26 non‐consecutive months of ethnographic field research conducted within the communities of undocumented West African (Nigerian and Ghanaian) and Filipino migrants in Tel Aviv, Israel, between 2000 and 2004. During the first part of this period, “illegal” migrants in Israel were generally treated as benign, excluded “Others.” Beginning in mid‐2002, however, a resource‐intensive, government‐sponsored campaign of mass arrest and deportation reconfigured the condition of migrant “illegality” in Israel and, in effect, transformed these benign “Others” into wanted criminals. By analyzing this transformation the article highlights the profound significance of examining not only the judicial and sociopolitical dimensions of what it means to be “illegal” but also its impact on migrants' modes of being‐in‐the‐world.     

Japanese Education in an Era of Internationalization: A Case Study of an Emerging Multicultural Coexistence Model

Abstract: Responding to the pressure of internal internationalization, some local communities and schools in Japan started to generate and practice a new philosophy known as “multicultural coexistence” (tabunka kyousei). Based on a long‐term ethnographic research in one of the most progressive multicultural communities and elementary schools in Japan, this paper elucidates the shape of an emerging “multicultural coexistence” education model in Japan and provides some implications for its further development. By focusing on returnee and newcomer students enrolled, the paper argues the transformation of school culture, which will be delineated as an interaction among different agencies at the school: “the margin”, “the top”, “the outside” and “the inner core”. From these ethnographic findings, the paper draws five main features of the emerging model—three that are positive and two that are potentially problematic:

• 1 community‐based school reform movement,
• 2 teachers as decision makers, learners, and cooperators,
• 3 students’ knowledge and experience as a shared resource,
• 4 country‐oriented approach in difference/similarity framework,
• 5 treating all differences equally same.

Referring to the critiques of multicultural education in the United States of America, the discussion suggests that the issue of social justice should be addressed more in the model by highlighting the issue of ethnicity in Japanese society. Changing teachers’ attitudes toward such direction is vital and the paper proposes that coherent set of institutional changes, which centre around social justice, are necessary to raise teachers motivation.     

“We are a people,one people”: How 1967 Transformed Holocaust Memory and Jewish Identity in Israel and the US

This paper examines how the “narrative‐identities” of Jewish communities in Israel and the US were unified through the events surrounding Israel's 1967 war with Egypt, Jordan and Syria. Using a range of historical materials, I show how key elements of the two communities' identities were rearranged and untied through a new, shared narrative that linked the Holocaust, Jewish victimhood and Israel. I argue that the old Zionist narrative enabled the new one, which in turn helped bind the two communities discursively, materially and politically. Finally, I discuss the implications for our understanding of identity change and the conflict over Israel/Palestine.     

Silence,Death, and D/discourse: Critical Literary Practices With Lesbian Seniors

This article reports on a federally funded research project in which old lesbians were invited to separate out and examine the complicated strands of lives lived through times of great social change—times in which notions of “woman,” “sexuality,” and “subjectivity” have been both over- and under-determined by dominant discourse (Stein, 1997). We argue, with Haug (1992), that close attention to the personal is central to critical feminist perspectives and that writers can become more aware of normalizing cultural influences when they pay close attention to language. In this article, we support our position with a case study of one participant in our “language school” (Haug, 1992). As we analyzed her written life narratives and oral testimony, we conclude that she was able to reconsider comfortable “coming out” narratives in order to construct new meaning and to challenge her understandings of the past.     

To work or not to work: Variables affecting non‐financial employment commitment over time

The most common indicator of non‐financial employment commitment (NFEC) is the “lottery question” – whether a person would continue working if they won a lottery. This cross‐sectional research seeks to identify the demographic variables and the “meaning of work” dimensions that could predict individual NFEC, presenting the main international findings over time, with particular reference to data collected in Israel in 1981, 1994 and 2006. The authors' findings point to a marked decrease in NFEC in the new millennium and a change in its predictors over time. The findings and their implications for work and employment are examined in the light of social and economic changes in Israel.     

Poverty,Welfare, and the Livelihood Strategies of Nonmetropolitan Single Mothers*

Abstract Using the National Survey of Family Growth, we document nonmetropolitan and metropolitan single mothers' economic livelihood strategies. We have three objectives: (1) examine differences in employment, cohabitation, co‐residence with other adults, and welfare receipt; (2) evaluate how these livelihood strategies are associated with economic well‐being; and (3) identify key metro‐nonmetro differences in the effectiveness of these livelihood strategies in improving the economic well‐being of single mothers. We find surprisingly similar livelihood strategies in nonmetropolitan and metropolitan areas. Employment, cohabitation, and co‐residence are strongly associated with economic well‐being. However, nonmetro single mothers are less likely than metropolitan mothers to benefit economically from full‐time employment. Given our results, “work‐first” policies are likely to be less efficacious in nonmetropolitan areas. Indeed, nonmetropolitan single mothers are often “triply disadvantaged” compared to their metro counterparts; they experience higher rates of poverty, higher barriers to welfare receipt, and lower economic returns from other livelihood strategies.     

A slightly slummier area? Negotiations of place‐bound identities through social spatializations and unofficial toponyms

In the article, spatializations (discourses of ideal or stereotyped spaces) are conceptualized as powerful discourses of the surrounding society, providing resources for place‐bound identity construction in interaction. We combine a sociolinguistic analysis with Bakhtinian dialogism to understand how such “third” voices in dialogue empower and pluralize self‐ and other‐positionings embedded in the evocations of unofficial place names. Empirically, the focus is on toponyms that divide the socially mixed Vuosaari suburb in Helsinki into “older” and “newer” territories. The results show that when the stereotypes of “good” and “bad” neighbourhoods or other spatializations interpenetrate the uses of “Old” and “New Vuosaari,” they open room for the (re‐)voicing of the meanings of these toponyms for highly differentiated social ends. With the Bakhtinian framework bridging between socio‐spatial theory and sociolinguistics, the article develops a spatially sensitized approach to analyse the entanglements of the micro‐level contexts of interaction with the macro‐level discourses of meaning‐giving.     

Trust,scepticism, and social order: A contribution from the sociology of scientific knowledge

The sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK), which studies the organisation and content of science, has made two original contributions to the understanding of social order at large. First, SSK scholars regard social order as a problem of establishing “cognitive order” and knowledge. A wealth of case studies has demonstrated that interpersonal trust is necessary to achieve agreement and shared perception among particular collectives of specialists. Second, SSK scholars insist that all types of cognitive order and knowledge, whether “scientific” or “lay,” are the result of socially organised scepticism being parasitic upon existing trust and background expectations (an argument that I call “the Parasitic View of Scepticism”). Sociologists with an interest in today's so‐called “knowledge” and “information” societies, and more specifically, in the social distribution and political uses of doubt and unknowns (including “post‐truth”), would benefit from adopting the Parasitic View of Scepticism and investigating the corrosive and generative consequences of scepticism on the trust relations and the cognitive/social order upon which it is based, in line with insights from the emerging fields of agnotology and the sociology of ignorance.     

Juggling Models of Masculinity: Russian-Jewish Immigrants in the Israeli Army

The present study addresses the question “What is masculinity?” by exploring how male immigrants interpret local masculinity and the models of masculinity they portray while situating themselves in the male hierarchy of the new society. The study is based on “immigration stories” elicited by in‐depth interviews conducted with 43 university students who immigrated to Israel at the beginning of the 1990s from the former Soviet Union. The analysis of the stories reveals that the immigrants employ four major practices (avoidance, mockery, maneuvering, and provocation) that unfasten the takenfor‐granted link between masculinity and army service in the Israeli society, thereby resisting the hegemonic, military model of masculinity in Israel. The immigrants render meaning to their resistance of the indigenous model (“The Warrior”) via the harnessing of cultural models that they carry with them from their native home—“The Russian Soldier” and “The Jewish Man”—without seeking to alter gender power relations as such. They discursively juggle between the three contesting and competing models of masculinity that together constitute a fluid and elusive “interpretative field” of masculinity. Via their interpretative work, the Russian male immigrants reconstitute their masculine identity, seeking to assert their distinctiveness and to receive social legitimation for their different conception of masculinity.     

“Moroccan youngsters”: category politics in the Netherlands

The article analyses the categorization of “Moroccan youngsters” as a problem group in the Netherlands. Since the 1990s Dutch‐Moroccan boys and young men are set apart as a problematic group that presents a social and security threat and an emblem of the failure of multicultural society. We analyse the intersectional “category politics” of Dutch politicians to situate Moroccan‐Dutch youngsters as problematic outsiders. Our analysis makes clear how national origin, culture, class and gender intersect in the categorization of “Moroccan youngsters” constituting a national‐cultural category, which is also defined in terms of a disadvantaged socio‐economic position. This categorization has important implications for policy arrangements and proposed measures. Existing schooling and training measures are seen as inadequate to end incessant intergenerational patterns of dependence and poverty. Intervention in the sphere of the family and parenting are deemed necessary to transform “Moroccan youngsters” into “good citizens.”     

Imagined Masculinity: Body,Sexuality, and Family among Israeli Military Reserves

This article explores how middle‐class Jewish men on reserve duty in the Israel Defense Forces form a “proper” masculinity through humor and jokes. Reserve service creates a fruitful territory for researching four issues that have not been extensively studied in the literature on masculinities: the relation between gender and age, the periodic reaffirmation of masculinity along the life course, how women are perceived as sexual objects and how informal social pressure is placed on singles to marry and begin families, and how men not only are motivated by homophobia but use images of women and homosexuals to map and interpret power relations and competition between men.     

Toward A Renewed Sociological Jurisprudence: From Roscoe Pound to Herbert Blumer and Beyond

This article, based on the Distinguished Lecture presented on August 21, 2001, at the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction in Anaheim, California, proposes a synthesis of Herbert Blumer's macrosociological perspective on the race question with Roscoe Pound's philosophy and science of law (i.e., his so‐called sociological jurisprudence), Joseph Tussman's and Jacobus tenBroek's juridical methodology, and Philip Selznick's sociology of responsive law. The compound so produced will help to establish a foundation for a praxiological sociology of American constitutional law. The article focuses on the problem of legislative‐made “classifications” and their relations to the legitimate public purposes entailed in the enactment of statutes, laws, and decrees. Such classifications become problematic when they are said to be “underinclusive,” “over‐inclusive,” or both in seeking to effect their aims. Strategic research sites for this issue are racial and ethnic classifications that single out one or a limited cluster of racial or ethnic groups for special benefits (“affirmative action”) or restitution (“reparations”). Calling for a reinvigoration of Pound's pragmatic approach to sociological jurisprudence, I show how Blumer's analysis of the “color line”—when seen in relation to the original intent of the makers of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth post‐Civil War Amendments to the U.S. Constitution and, using Tussman's and tenBroek's showing of how such categorizations might be both methodically evaluated and applied to the challenged classifications—provides grounds for reconsidering whether the latter are instances of “reverse discrimination” and, hence, violations of the constitutional requirement of “equal protection of the law.” The science of law is a science of social engineering having to do with that part of the whole field which may be achieved by the ordering of human relations through the action of politically organized society. —Roscoe Pound, Justice According to Law We did not hold it necessary to wait for nature to put a canal across the Isthmus of Panama, and we shall not much longer hold it necessary to wait for nature to dig the legal canals that will give security to neglected human interests which clamor for recognition and protection. —Roscoe Pound, “Juristic Problems of National Progress”     

Empowered Women,Failed Patriarchs: Neoliberalism and Global Gender Anxieties

Notions of “empowered women,” promoted by NGOs, economists, and feminists beginning in the 1970s, do not necessitate a countervailing notion of “failed patriarchs.” However, our review of the feminist literatures on globalization, development, and migration in the United States, the former Soviet Union, and South Asia suggests that discourses of empowered women and failed patriarchs are fused in the specter of the “reverse gender order.” A presumption of this new order is that global capitalism has liberated women to such an extent that they have surpassed men who are now the truly “disadvantaged.” Drawing on these literatures as evidence, we argue that the large‐scale incorporation of poor and working‐class women into global capitalism relies upon an ideology of the family that keeps women's labor “cheap” and draws support from the feminist idea that work is empowering for women. Diverse nationalisms uphold the ideology of the family as central to capitalist expansion, providing culturally resonant justifications for women's unpaid reproductive work, while men are breadwinners. Thus, poor and working‐class men experience a painful dissonance between breadwinning expectations and economic opportunities. We show that these tensions between ideologies and material conditions make women's responsibility for reproductive work a structural feature of neoliberalism.     

“I'm going to do battle… I'm going to do some good”. Biographical trajectories,moral politics,and public engagement among highly religious young Catholics in Spain and Mexico

Public debates and controversies on moral issues have gained visibility in recent decades in both Spain and Mexico. Conservative Catholic groups and networks are increasingly playing a crucial role in raising and framing highly morally charged themes in the public arena, especially on intimacy-related policies, including sexual and reproductive freedoms. A new generation of young Catholic leaders becoming key political agents has emerged in this scenario. They are fostering new mobilisation repertoires in the public sphere (e.g., digital activism and public performances) and promoting new political narratives merging moral, cultural, and religious elements. These highly religious and conservative young Catholics consider themselves part of a cultural/cognitive minority and feel entitled to become what Howard Becker termed “moral entrepreneurs.” Most have been educated in Catholic schools and belong to Catholic movements. Still, they can also navigate secular politics and strategically use different regimes of justification and action. Within this context, the article aims to examine and compare the intersection of historical trends and the relevance of individual biographies to understand the role of these young Catholics in the public space in both countries.     

“YOU CAN TAKE THE BOY OUT OF DORCHESTER,BUT YOU CAN'T TAKE DORCHESTER OUT OF THE BOY”: TOWARD A SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF MOBILITY

This article seeks to illuminate some of the social psychological correlates of social mobility. It proceeds from the observation that while a great deal is known about aggregate rates of mobility and the factors that inhibit or enhance persons' movement through social structures, far less is known about the way individuals define, interpret, comprehend, and give meaning to their own movement through social space. In-depth interview data from 25 professionals who grew up in working- or lower-class circumstances suggests that such a background deeply influences persons' perceptions and actions throughout their occupational lives. The professionals whose own words we will hear, all between 50 and 60 years of age, have “made it” in the occupational world. And they have done it by traversing great social distances. As the recount their stories of becoming doctors, lawyers, academics, and businesspersons, they also mention over and again how their motives, strategic occupational choices, and self-images are connected to the circumstances of their origins. Class and ethnic background is an important “frame” within which persons understand, experience, and create their careers.     

Rehearsals in Citizenship: BBC Stop‐Motion Animation Programmes For Young Children

This paper examines new managerial discourses and practices in which the dialectic of labour is reconstructed as a series of acts of self‐understanding, self‐examination and “self‐work”, and through which the “self qua self” is constituted as the central object of management technologies. We interrogate concepts such as “excellence”, “total quality”, “performance”, “knowledge”, “play at work” and “wellness” in order to decipher the ways in which managerialism deploys what we term therapeutic habitus, and projects a new horizon of “human resourcefulness” as a store of unlimited potentialities. We invoke management’s wider historical–cultural context to situate managerialism within the framework of modernity as a cultural epoch whose main characteristic is what we term “derecognition of finitude”. It is the modern synthesis — with the “self” at the centre of its system of values — that provides the ground for current elaborations of subjectivity by managerialism. The paper examines how current vocabularies and practices in organizations use “work” to rearticulate discursively the human subject as an endless source of performativity by configuring work as the site of complex and continuous self‐expression. Management thus acquires a new discursive outline: instead of appearing as an authoritarian instance forcing upon workers a series of limitations, it now presents itself as a therapeutic formula mediating self‐expression by empowering individuals to work upon themselves to release their fully realized identity.     

A Different Kind of Discipline: Social Reproduction and the Transmission of Non‐cognitive Skills at an Urban Charter School

A key component of recent school reform policies has been the authorization of public charter schools. A subset of public charter schools, often termed “no excuses” schools, have received national attention for their students’ academic success; however, scholars have recently begun to question the role of the schools’ authoritarian discipline systems in the process of social reproduction. This study examines the extent to which authoritarian discipline systems are necessary for success at “no excuses” schools, drawing upon qualitative research at a strategic site: a school that adopts many of the practices of “no excuses” schools while also pursuing a relational approach to discipline. Qualitative analysis of classroom observation and interview data finds that a relational approach to discipline cultivates non‐cognitive skills more closely aligned with the evaluative standards of middle‐class institutions, such as skills in self‐expression, self‐regulation, problem‐solving, and conflict resolution. A comparison of academic achievement data also suggests that “no excuses” schools may be able to implement relational discipline approaches without sacrificing academic success on a key predictor of future academic performance.