ABSTRACT
Sociological thought, besides historical thought, is one of the main intellectual arenas wherein Israeli nationalism is defined and cultivated, as well as one of the main arenas where Israeli nationalism is scrutinized critically and being transcended-at least theoretically. In Chapters 3 and 4 we discuss three basic patterns of Israeli sociology: its analysis of Israeli society and its perspective on Israeli nationality. While mainstream sociologists depicted a homogeneous image of Israeli
society, the critical schools would depict an heterogeneous picture of it. The first pattern is the mainstream sociological paradigm (also known as the “establishmentarian paradigm” and sometimes by the appellation “the Jerusalem School” [in sociology]). It was formed in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the early era of the state since 1948 and was dominant until the 1970s. This pattern gave expression to the Zionist etatist perspective, as it was designed and disseminated by the Labor movement in the time when it was at the peak of both its domination and its hegemony in Israeli society and state. The second perspective to be discussed in this part of the book is critical
sociology. This perspective, or more accurately, perspectives, gave expression to the emergence from the 1970s of an anti-establishment protestation of a variety of kinds, and to the rise in the public space of new demands and new groups, a process that resulted, in 1977 in the eventual “Turnover” of the Labor domination and hegemony. In the elections that took place in that year Labor was deposed from power for the first time since the 1930s (Labor was the axis of Israeli politics even before the establishment of the state of Israel) and was replaced by the Likud party. The Likud expressed then the interests of two main electoral groups-the private sector petit-bourgeoisie and the low-classmizrachim-both marginal groups under the Labor regime. Though the “Turnover” handed the government to the political right wing, the thaw of the Labor regime opened the public sphere to various voices, among them also voices to the left of Labor. Within this frame, critical sociology emerged mainly in the two universities, of Tel Aviv and of Haifa, and took a variety of forms, as we shall see below. Finally, the third pattern to be discussed here is the one associated with the prefix
“post,” and it includes the postmodern, the postcolonial and the post-Marxist approaches. These approaches reached Israel in the 1990s, in parallel with the
overall process of the Americanization and globalization of Israel, and its rapid transformation from a state-centered society to a market-oriented society. This was accompanied also by the development of individualist and consumerist culture, on the one hand, and of traditional communities and multicultural sensitivities, on the other hand. Salient among the places of the growth of the “post” approaches during the 1990s were the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute and the Ben-Gurion University in Beer Sheva. While mainstream sociology represented the homogeneous-harmonious
“modern social system” that Israeli society was considered as becoming, critical sociology focused on relationships of hierarchy and inequality. In the era of the “posts,” attention was removed altogether from the system-equal or hierarchicto the excluded “others” and their identity claims (with the exception of the postMarxist school that tied these issues to class issues). Ever since it was established as a distinct discipline Israeli sociology was closely
tied to the ruling establishment, and it provided the latter’s policies with an intellectual legitimization and a “scientific” gloss. This state of affairs, which had started already in the pre-state era, endured for more than five decades. In this period sociologists saw themselves as active partners in the process of nationbuilding and of state-formation, as this was perceived and presented by the leaders of society. Consequently, sociology did not form an autonomous and independent perspective, or a perspective which is informed by non-ruling groups or by nonhegemonic ideas. This linkage between academic sociology and the governing establishment started to dissolve only from the 1970s, and only after this establishment itself started to lose power. During the 1970s several processes intertwined and led eventually to the down-
fall of the Labor movement after half a century of domination and hegemony, and to a wider change in Israeli society and culture. In this social climate, characterized by crises and transformations, the nature of the sociological discourse in Israel changed as well, and it became more open, plural, and multifaceted, compared to the previous era. During the 1970s the pioneers of critical sociology still struggled for the right to be heard; by the 1990s their impact on Israeli sociology was already indelible. During the 1990s another qualitative leap in the influence of critical sociology took place, and we dwell on this in the last part of this chapter and the next one. Critical sociology started to appear on the margins of academic sociology in the late 1970s, but its voice has been amplified since then, so much that some even think that the “critics” have become the “new establishment” in the field. We examine here the leading programs in the sociological discourse in Israel, or
the changing agenda of this discourse, since the establishment of the state in 1948 and until the first decade of 2000.
