Israeli Sociology

Text in Context

Uri Ram

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9783319593265
• eBook ISBN: 9783319593272
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: Social Sciences

This book presents a comprehensive historical account of sociology in Israel the first history of sociology in Israel, from its beginnings in late 19th-century to the early 21st-century. It locates the ruptures and reorientations of the sociological text within its shifting historical context. Israeli sociology is shown to have evolved in tandem with the development of the Israeli-Jewish nation in Palestine, and later of the state of Israel. Offering a critical overview of the origins and the development of the discipline, it argues that this can be divided into the following phases: Predecessors (1882-1948), Founders (1948-1977), Disciples (1967-1977), Critics and More Critics (1977-1987), Intermediators (1977-2018), Post-Modernists (1993-2018) and Post-Colonialists (1993-2018).
This book contributes a fascinating national case study to the history of sociology and will appeal further to students and scholars of social theory and Israel Studies.

© The Author(s) 2018

Uri RamIsraeli SociologySociology Transformedhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59327-2_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: Sociology and the Nation (1882–2018)

Uri Ram¹

(1)

Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel

Uri Ram

Email: [email protected]

Abstract

This book is about Israeli sociology since its beginnings, from the late nineteenth century to the early twenty-first century. Israeli sociology evolved in tandem with the development of the Israeli-Jewish nation in Palestine , and later, of the state of Israel, and in compliance with this collectivity. The changing nature of relations between the nation-state and the discipline of sociology throughout this era is a major pivot of our narration. The narration is organized in the following historical phases: Predecessors (1882–1948), Founders (1948–1967), Disciples (1967–1996), Critics (1977–1987/1993), Intermediators (who analyze social cleavages) (1987–2018), and Postmodernists and Postcolonialists (1993–2018). The introductory chapter outlines briefly the development of the Israeli sociological text within the shifting context of Israeli history.

Keywords

Israeli sociologyHistory of sociologyNationalismSociological predecessorsSociological foundersSociological criticsPostmodernismPost-colonialismSocial cleavagesZionism

End Abstract

1.1 What Is This Book About?

Sociology is an academic discipline the subject-matter of which is society. It is embedded in changing social and intellectual environments. In terms of the history of science of Thomas Kuhn (1962), it is shaped by paradigms, which alternate over time; in terms of the sociology of science of Pierre Bourdieu , it is one of the bounded fields of power of which society consists (1991). The present book discusses the text of Israeli sociology as it has emerged and transformed in the changing context of Israeli society. The type of link we strive to identify between text and context is that of interpretative affinity rather than that of a strict scientific causality, and hence our discussion involves broad historical-sociological analysis rather than direct inferences.

The manifold aspects and issues that have to be factored in when trying to analyze the text-context compound of any discipline may be simplified and operationalized by classifying factors as, first, either intellectual (text) or social (context); and second, as either internal (to the discipline analyzed) or external. Intersecting the two axes, of intellectual versus social factors and internal versus external factors, yields the following matrix:

Square 1 represents the core text. It consists of the intellectual core which defines the discipline and includes the paradigm that shapes the content of the discipline (concepts, models, methods, theory etc.). Square 2 represents the disciplinary field of power, its internal social structure and dynamics (institutions, practitioners, positions, status, networks, authority, finance, etc.). Square 3 represents the intellectual environment, or even the Zeitgeist. It may include major scientific and academic beliefs, influences of other disciplines, or broad philosophies and ideologies, national, regional, or international. Finally, Square 4 represents all sorts of social structures, institutions, and organizations that have an impact on the academic practices of the disciplines, be they social, political, economic, cultural or otherwise. With this framework in mind, this account scrutinizes the inception, formation, institutionalization , and eventual radicalization of Israeli sociology since its equivocal beginnings in 1882 to its unequivocal presence in 2018. It is an account of the sociological text written about Israeli society by Israeli sociologists within the Israeli historical context.

Had we wished to launch our discussion with a formal definition of Israeli society or of Israeli sociology, we would have anteceded our deliberation by our conclusion. Historically, Israel has existed as a state only since 1948, yet we choose to start our account in 1882, the year of the beginning of Zionist immigration to Palestine . Geographically, the boundaries of Palestine and of Israel have been altered several times: During the Ottoman rule, which lasted until 1917, Palestine had been part of the Great Syria province. British Mandatory Palestine (1917–1948) was bordered on its east by the Jordan River and on its north by the Lebanese and Syrian borders as fixed by the Sykes-Picot Agreement, and it included Arab and Jewish communities within it. The State of Israel (1948–1967) lay within the Green Line ceasefire borders. The Greater Israel of 1967 onward includes the Occupied Territories . Now which is the Israel of Israeli Sociology?

Demographically, depending on our geopolitical territorial demarcation, the social composition of Israel changes as well: Is Israeli society tantamount to Israeli citizenship and hence inclusive of both Jews and Arabs, or are these two societies merely cohabiting the same state? And since 1967, does Israeli society include the Palestinian s in the territories (Gaza , before, and especially after, the withdrawal, and the West Bank under Israeli military rule and the Palestinian Authority)? Such a decision would be crucial to the analysis of the regime in Israel: is it democratic or oppressive? Furthermore, should one refer to Israeli society as a solid subject, or should one refer to a society in Israel, without assuming such an essential identity ? And subsequently, is this book about Israeli sociology, a coherent national body of knowledge, or is it about sociology in Israel, a less binding concept? Had we chosen to answer such questions at the outset of this book, we would have pulled out the rug from under our feet. What defines our subject matter— Israeli sociology—is exactly the inquiry, research, and controversy surrounding these questions, and hence, the variety of answers proposed over time form the backbone of the present study.

Israeli sociology evolved in tandem with the development of the Israeli-Jewish nation in Palestine , and later of the state of Israel, and in compliance with this collectivity. This is especially true with regard to its formative trend: the Jerusalem school, of the period from the 1950s to the 1970s. Before the state was established, sociology was nationalist as well but in a different key, and it is only since the late 1970s, with the emergence of critical sociology , and later since the 19 90s, with postmodern and postcolonial turns, that the nation-state and sociology parted ways somewhat. This changing nature of relations between the nation-state and the discipline of sociology is a major pivot of our narration.

The history of sociology in Israel may be parsed to four main distinct phases, which are overviewed below: Predecessors (Chap. 2 in this book); Founders and Disciples (Chaps. 3, 4); Critics and Intermediators (Chaps. 5, 6 and 7); and Postmoderns and Postcolonialists (Chaps. 8, 9).

1.2 Predecessors, Founders, and Disciples

Social thought about the modern Jewish community in Palestine started at its beginning in 1882, and social research of it started at the beginning of the twentieth century, a short while after the establishment of the Zionist movement in 1897. Social thought was influenced by intellectual trends in Eastern Europe, from nationalism to Marxism , and the sociological research was influenced by Central European expertise, especially German, and later, also British and American . Scholarship was mobilized from the beginning to the Zionist national movement and to the project of Jewish settlement in Palestine .

1882 marks the beginning of modern Zionist immigration to Palestine- Eretz Yisrael (the Hebrew name of Palestine) and settlement in it. At its beginning this venture was quite tiny and fragile and there was no telling of its future. By the outbreak of World War I, in 1914, there lived in Palestine some 85,000 Jews and 600,000 Palestinian Arabs . The war ended with the British seizure of the country and the termination of four centuries of Ottoman rule over it. The British Mandate provided an umbrella for the further construction of an autonomous Jewish community there. Antisemitism and since the 1930s the rise of Nazism drove Jews to escape Europe, and small part of them immigrated to Palestine. Since the 1920s the Jewish community (the Yishuv in Hebrew) has been very well organized and coordinated by its large and vital Labor movement, headed by David Ben Gurion (1886–1973). By 1948, the year of the establishment of the state of Israel, there were, west of the Jordan River, some 600,000 Jews and 1...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• 1. Introduction: Sociology and the Nation (1882–2018)
• 2. Predecessors: Sociology Before Sociology (1882–1948)
• 3. Founders: Nation Building Modernized (1948–1967)
• 4. Disciples: Nation Building Modified (1967–1996)
• 5. Critics: Political Elites and Ethnoclasses (1977–1987)
• 6. More Critics: Pluralism, Feminism, and Colonialism (1977–1993)
• 7. Intermediators: The Sociology of Cleavages (1987–2018)
• 8. Postmodernists: Confronting Neoliberalism (1993–2018)
• 9. Postcolonials: Confronting Neocolonialism (1993–2018)
• 10. The State of Sociology: Some Contemporary Concerns
• Backmatter