Israelis in Conflict Hegemonies, Identities and Challenges
Edited by Adriana Kemp, David Newman, Uri Ram and Oren Yiftachel
Adriana Kemp is lecturer and research fellow, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Tel Aviv University.
David Newman, Uri Ram, and Oren Yiftachel are professors and research fellows of, respectively, the Department of Politics and Governance, the Department of Behavioral Sciences, and the Department of Geography, at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva.
“The book provides insight into the make-up and functioning
of present-day Israeli society, and hopefully will provoke others
to investigate similarly.” Israeli Sociology
Globalization and increased cultural heterogeneity have had a major
impact on states whose identity has been defined in terms of a single,
often socially constructed, allegiance to the state and a single
hegemonic ideology. Nowhere are changing notions of identity more
prevalent than in Israel, a country whose dominant (Western-Jewish)
society has been subject to understanding their past and present
in terms of a single ideology of state formation – Zionism.
This book on Citizenship and Identity in Contemporary Israel challenges
some of the traditional analytical paradigms prevalent in Israeli
social science for the past fifty years. Although the State continues
to define itself in terms of a homogeneous political and cultural
entity, as the voices and narratives of marginalized (especially
Palestinian, Eastern-Jewish and women) groups come to the fore, agencies
of state socialization are no longer able to impose an unchallenged
state identity or hegemony. The deconstruction of a state-sponsored
social identity, whose aim is social cohesion, is here investigated
by critical scholars who develop an alternative understanding of
this highly dynamic society.
