Masculinity in crisis: The case of palestinians in Israel

British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies

Volumn 35, Issue 3, 2008, Pages 305-323

  Sa'ar, Amalia ^a   Yahia Younis, Taghreed ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CITIZENSHIP; CRISIS MANAGEMENT; CULTURAL IDENTITY; GENDER ROLE; HEGEMONY; RACISM; SOCIOECONOMIC CONDITIONS; VIOLENCE; WOMENS STATUS;

ASIA; EURASIA; ISRAEL; MIDDLE EAST;

EID: 57649238623     PISSN: 13530194     EISSN: 14693542     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13530190802525056     Document Type: Article

References (67)

1. A note on terminology: As critical scholars writing on issues pertaining to identity, we acknowledge the impossibility of a neutral term for this national group, whose location is fraught with contradictions. In order not to reify any specific title and to draw attention to the shifting and contextual character of identity, we have chosen to alternate between several local and external titles (Palestinian-Arabs, Israeli-Palestinians, the Arabs Inside, the Arabs of '48, and Arabs).
2. A quantitative study conducted in fall 2005 by the Center for the Study of Crime, Law and Society at the University of Haifa found that the Arab citizens of Israel are concerned about violent crimes in their residential communities, including car accidents, drug-related offenses, and the use of arms, at much higher rates than Jewish citizens. The majority of the violent cases, this survey revealed, occurred among neighbors, family members, or residents of the same community (Personal communication from Dr. Badi Hassissi who conducted this survey, 4.1.2006). For more on violence inside Arab communities, see www.arabs48.com
3. Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff. 2006. 'Criminal ac/counting: Quantifacts and the production of the unreal', Talk presented at the University of Haifa, May 2006.
4. The terms 'etic' and 'emic' are widely employed in a variety of social science disciplines to denote a distinction between an outsider and insider perspective on knowledge, respectively. They were originally coined by Kenneth Lee Pike, Language in Relation to a Unified Theory of Structure of Human Behavior (The Hague: Mouton Rawl, 1967).
5. Robert W. Connell 'Arms and the Man', in Ingeborg Breines, Robert Connell and Ingrid Eid (eds.) Male Roles, Masculinities and Violence: A Culture of Peace Perspective (UNESCO, 2000).
6. See also Andrea Cornwall and Nancy Lindisfarne (eds.), Dislocating Masculinity: Comparative Ethnographies (London: Routledge, 1994)
7. Maurice Berger, Brian Wallis and Simon Watson (eds.) Constructing Masculinity (New York and London: Routledge, 1995).
8. Edna Lomsky-Feder and Tamar Rapoport, 'Juggling Models of Masculinity: Russian-Jewish Immigrants in the Israeli Army', Sociological Inquiry 73(1) (2003), 114-137.
9. See Michael Taussig, 'Schopenhauer's beard' in Berger, Wallis and Watson (eds.), Constructing Masculinity (1995), pp. 107-114 on the role of secret knowledge in masculinities.
10. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York and London: Routledge, 1990).
11. Invited talk, MADA center, Haifa, November 2005.
12. Carol B. Stack and Linda M. Burton, 'Kinscripts', Journal of Comparative Family Studies 24(2) (1993), pp. 157-170.
13. Connell, 'Arms and the Man'.
14. Taghreed Yahya-Younis has been carrying out participant observation in her own native village at the center of the country. Amalia Sa'ar did anthropological fieldwork in two urban Palestinian communities inside Israel, in 1992-93 and in 1997-99.
15. William A. Gamson, and Hanna Herzog, 'Living with Contradictions: The Taken-for-Granted in Israeli Political Discourse', Political Psychology 20(2) (1999), pp. 247-266.
16. Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, 2002.
17. As'ad Ghanem, 'State and Minority in Israel: The Case of Ethnic State and the Predicament of its Minority', Ethnic and Racial Studies, 21 (1998), pp. 428-448
18. Sammy Smooha 'The Model of Ethnic Democracy: Israel as a Jewish and Democratic State', Nations and Nationalism 8(4) (2002), pp. 475-503
19. Gershon Shafir, and Yoav Peled, Being Israeli: The Dynamics of Multiple Citizenship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
20. Fifty-four percent of Palestinian children in Israel are poor (www.arabs48.com)
21. see also Alisa Lewin, Haya Stier and Dafna Caspi-Dror, 'The Place of Opportunity: Community and Individual Determinants of Poverty among Jews and Arabs in Israel', Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 24 (2006), pp. 177-191.
22. Ahmad Sa'di and Noah Lewin-Epstein, 'Minority Labour Force Participation in the Post-Fordist era: The Case of the Arabs in Israel?', Work, Employment and Society 15(4) (2001), pp. 781-802.
23. Rasem Khamaisi, 'Urbanization and Urbanism in the Arab Settlements in Israel', Ofakim Be-Geographia, 64-65 (2005), pp. 293-310 (in Hebrew).
24. Majid Al-Haj, 'Social research on family lifestyles among Arabs in Israel', Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 20 (1989), pp. 175-195
25. Majid Al-Haj and Henry Rosenfeld Arab Local Government in Israel (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990)
26. Taghreed Yahia-Younis and Hanna Herzog, 'Gender and kinship-based discourse during primary elections held by hamael to select candidates for local authorities in Palestinian-Arab localities', State and Society 5(1) (2005), pp. 1077-1104 (in Hebrew).
27. See also Suad Joseph, and Susan Slymovics (eds.), Women and Power in the Middle East (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001).
28. Amalia Sa'ar, 'Contradictory location: Assessing the position of Palestinian women citizens of Israel', Journal of Middle East Women's Studies, 3(3) (2007), pp. 45-74.
29. Taghreed Yahia-Younis and Hanna Herzog, 'Gender and kinship-based discourse'.
30. Nabila Espanioly, 'Violence against women: A Palestinian woman's Perspective; Personal is political', Women's Studies International Forum 20 (1997), pp. 587-592
31. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, 'Law, Politics, and Violence against Women: A Case Study of Palestinians in Israel', Law & Society 21(2) (1999), pp. 189-221
32. Ilza Glazer and Wahiba Abu-Ras, 'On Aggression, Human Rights, and Hegemonic Discourse: The Case of a Murder for Family Honor in Israel', Sex Roles 30 (1994), pp. 269-282
33. Muhammad M. Haj-Yahia, 'Beliefs about Wife Beating among Arab Men from Israel: The Influence of Their Patriarchal Ideology', Journal of Family Violence 18(4, August) (2003), pp. 193-206.
34. Manar Hasan, 'The Politics of Honor: Patriarchy, the State, and the Murder of Women in the Name of Family Honor', The Journal of Israeli History 21 (2002), pp. 1-37.
35. Julie M. Peteet, 'Male Gender and Rituals of Resistance in the Palestinian Intifada: A Cultural Politics of Violence', American Ethnologist 21 (1994), pp. 31-49
36. Esmail Nashif, 'Attempts at Liberation: Body Materialization and Community Building among Palestinian Political Captives', Arab Studies Journal XII(2)/XIII(1) (2004/2005), pp. 46-79.
37. Joseph Massad, 'Conceiving the Masculine: Gender and Palestinian Nationalism', Middle East Journal 49(3) (1995), p. 477.
38. Ibid., 478 emphases original.
39. Penny Johnson and Eileen Kuttab, 'Where Have all the Women (and Men) Gone?', Feminist Review 69 (2001) p. 35.
40. Ibid., pp. 35-6.
41. Daniel Monterescu, 'A city of Strangers': The Socio-Cultural Construction of Manhood in Jaffa', Journal of Mediterranean Studies 1(1) (2001), p. 163.
42. Rhoda Ann Kanaaneh 'Boys or Men? Duped or 'Made'? Palestinian Soldiers in the Israeli Military' American Ethnologist, 32 (2005, 2), p. 263.
43. Ibid., 270.
44. Joseph Massad, 'Conceiving the Masculine'.
45. Jehuda Sofer, 'Testimonies from the Holy Land: Israeli and Palestinian Men Talk about Their Sexual Encounters', in Arno Schmitt and Jehuda Sofer (eds.), Sexuality and Eroticism among Males in Moslem Societies Binghamton, NY: Harrington Park Press, 1992), pp. 105-112.
46. Kul al-'Arab, 5.1.1990.
47. Fasl al-Maqäl, 16.12.1996.
48. Al-Sinnärah, 21.10.2005.
49. Al-Sinnärah, 7.10.2005.
50. Al-Sinnärah, 7.10.2005.
51. Al-Sinnärah, 7.10.2005.
52. Sayed Kashua, Let it be Morning (Tel Aviv: Keter 2004), p. 31 (in Hebrew).
53. Al-Sinnärah, 2.9.2005.
54. Sheila H. Katz, 'Adam and Adama, 'Ird and Ard: En-gendering Political Conflict and Identity in Early Jewish and Palestinian Nationalisms', in Deniz Kandiyoti (ed.), Gendering the Middle East; Alternative Perspectives (London: I.B. Tauris, 1996), pp. 85-105
55. Rosemary Sayigh, 'Palestinian Women and Politics in Lebanon', in Juditt Tucker (ed.), Arab Women: Old Boundaries, New Frontiers (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1993), pp. 175-194
56. Joseph Massad,'Conceiving the Masculine'
57. Julie M. Peteet, 'Male Gender Rituals of Resistance'.
58. This detail, which we learned from personal communication with the victim's relatives, was not included in the newspaper article.
59. Fasl-al-Maqäl, 2.9.2005.
60. Paul Farmer, 'An anthropology of structural violence', Current Anthropology 45(3, June) (2004), pp. 305-325.
61. Ian Lustick, Arabs in the Jewish State: Israel's Control of a National Minority (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1980).
62. http://www.mossawacenter.org/en/reports/2004/06/040601.html
63. In a study of the impact of the armed conflict on women in Israel, 15% of the Palestinian respondents reported having been exposed to either verbal or physical offenses related to their national affiliation, Dalia Sachs, Amalia Sa'ar and Sarai Aharoni, 'How can I feel for others when I myself am beaten? The impact of the armed conflict on women in Israel', Sex Roles 57(7) (2007), p. 593.
64. http://www.mossawacenter.org/en/reports/2004/06/040601.html. On increased racism against Palestinians among the Jewish citizens of Israel during the years of the second Intifada
65. see also M. Elran, Israel's National Resilience: The Influence of the Second Intifada on Israeli Society (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, Tel Aviv University, 2005).
66. Arthur Kleinman, 'The Violence of Everyday Life: The Multiple Forms and Dynamics of Social Violence', in Maurice Berger, Brian Wallis and Simon Watson (eds.), Constructing Masculinity (New York and London: Routledge, 2000), p. 238.
67. For the ability to notice the dialectic, if charged, relations between victimization and subjectivity we are indebted to the illuminating work of Veena Das and partners in Veena Das, Arthur Kleinman, Mamphela Ramphele and Pamela Reynolds (eds.), Violence and Subjectivity (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000).