I am a sociologist of politics in the wider sense of the term, interested in both the institutional and cultural dynamics of the political foundations of social life, in its historical backgrounds, and consider myself as acting mainly within the Weberian tradition. The original foci of my research and theoretical, as well intellectual, interests were mainly on the impact of the Jewish-Arab (and Israeli-Palestinian) conflict on the Israeli society, and later on the development of the Palestinian collective consciousness and emerging nationalism. Other partially overlapping subjects, which I dealt, were the sociology of war and the sociology of military (which later fused with its cultural dimensions, lead me to sociology of militarism). The study of military institutions and culture were analyzed not only as a direct outcome of the Jewish-Arab conflict, but also a central phenomenon which penetrated most of the Israeli state and society’s institutional spheres, such as the economy, stratification, ethnicity and ideology (including religion and civil religion). These lead me to ask questions about collective identities (including nationalism) in general and identities in Israel (Jewish and Arab) in particular. In this context the Gordian linkage between secular-nationalism and its initial religious foundations in past and present captured my sociological imagination. I have analyzed all these societal phenomena in the context of the Jewish-Arab conflict (without relating to the conflict as a single or deterministic variable), while challenging the conventional wisdom which constructed the "realities" of most of social, cultural and economic spheres as "conflict-free" regions and activities.

In 1974 I concluded my Ph. D. thesis, dealing with the territorial factors of Jewish state and nation building, which introduced me straight into the heart of the problematic of the Jewish-Arab conflict. This "opening" was the base for my book Zionism and Territory (published in 1983), which has by now become generally accepted - even by its critics - as the beginning of new a approach toward the analysis of Israeli society and its social history. Before this "the conflict" was considered by the social scientists mainly as a residual category and appeared and disappeared in their works in a deus ex machina fashion. With this, and some additional following works, not only was "the conflict" conceptualized within a theoretical framework and located as a proper additional characteristic of the Israeli social structure and culture, but the conflict was also included as an inseparable variable in sociological analysis and conceptualization of the Israeli society. Such an analysis in a comparative perspective, located the Israeli collectivity within the context of immigrant-setter societies, both emphasizing its similarities and uniqueness in this framework. The amount of the available "free land" (conceptualized as different degrees of "frontierity") was considered as one of the central variables, which can determinate many ingredients of ideological and value systems, as well as the institutional and economic structures and practics (Zionism and Economy, 1983). These characteristics were found instrumental also as a partial explanation of the building of a highly centralized statist system (called in Hebrew "mamlachtiut"), during the first two decades of Israel’s existence (e.g., the monopoly over the land and its distribution between various societal segments). The Israeli state was also analyzed within the context of two external circles (in addition to "the conflict"), the mobilized Jewish diaspora (see, "Between Alexandria-on-Hudson and Zion", 1989) and the changing world order.

At the same time I was engaged in a series of studies, empirical and theoretical, alone and with some other colleagues (Dan Horowitz, Victor Azarya and Moshe Lissak) on the impact of the military and wars on the Israeli society. The major outcome of these series of studies was a book (The Interrupted System The Israeli Civilians in War and Routine Times, 1985), which provided an analytical and empirical study of direct and indirect impact of wars on Israeli civilian society; and two additional comprehensive papers ("Patterns of Militarism in Israel," 1993 and "Political Subcultures and Civilian Militarism in A Settler-Immigrant Society," forthcoming). The comparison between these three works may well demonstrate the developments and changes in my professional approach. The book, presenting and summarizing a series of quantitative and empirical researches conducted during and after the 1973 War, asked the question how individual as well as the entire collectivity run in two different periods - first during a protracted but highly routinized conflict; and secondly during active warfare. The main conclusion was that the collectivity absorbed both phases within its routine institutional and value systems, minimizing the cost of the conflict.

During the 90s I revisited and revised my own and others research in this field, and I reached toward some additional and different conclusions. Adopting a less institutional, more culture-oriented and critical approach, I reinterpreted the past findings, supported by new evidences, which led me to characterize the Israeli state as a special (but not unique) type of militaristic society. This "civilian militarism" was found as not only a basic cultural code but also an organizational-principle around large segments of the society are "arranged." This type of militarism, compared for example against the "classic" pretoritarian type, is much more subtle and is mainly a consequence of intrusion of "military-mindedness" into the civilian institutions and cultures. This situation leads me to analyze the "peace process" from both sides in terms of the militaristic culture and power-game ("The Power-Oriented Settlement Bargaining between Israelis and Palestinians", 1997).

These series of works, and some others that followed them, led me also to doubts and concerns about the ability of some "producers" of the mainstream Israeli social science and historiography to free themselves from Zionist ideologies, and some extent of Jewish ethnocentrism and "nation-building" approaches, when they come to deal conceptually and theoretically with existence of "the others" and "the conflict" within the social and conceptual boundaries of the so-called "Israeli Society" (see, "Ideology, Sociology and Nation Building", 19921; and "Academic Historians Caught in the Cross-Fire: The Case of Israeli-Jewish Historiography"). These arguments triggered a series of controversies within the academic and intellectual communities, and were interpreted as a part of the so-called debate over the "post-Zionism."

Another product of the proposed de-ideologized (or a-Zionist) approach was presented in an additional paper ("State Building, State Autonomy, and the Identity of Society: The Case of the Israeli State"), that depicted the Jewish state-building efforts under the British Colonial state, and the transitional period toward Jewish sovereignty, and location of the state by construction of collective identities, as the center of its hegemonic political culture. Theoretically, this work relies on an improved state/civil-society approach, mixed with a world-system touch. In some way, this article, which analyzes the relationship between structure (state) and political-culture (collective identities and nationalism), continues the theses which were first presented in the 1985 article entitled "Between the Primordial and Civil Definitions of the Collective Identity: The State of Israel or Eretz Israel". Another paper derived from this article, which became one of the basis component of my approach toward the Israeli culture and nationalism, explained the results of the 1996 elections and the electoral campaign that preceded it in terms of a kulturkampf ("Elections as a Battleground over Collective Identity" as well as a more general description of the "culture battle" in the article "Between Hegemony and Dormant Kulturkampf in Israel").

Another direction of my search into the Israeli collective identity and the building and changing social orders by strategies of adoption of different identities within different constellations, produced a large scale research (with Dahlia Moore), based on a representative sample of 1,200-1,500 person of Israel’s Jewish and Arab population. The research also attempted to suggest a new direction in the theory of how the process of structuration operates under the assumption that the "agent" (in A. Gidden’s term) has some degrees of freedom to adopt diverse combinations of social identities in different social context (see, "Collective Identity as Agency, and Structuration of Society: Tested by the Israeli Case" and "Individual Strategies of Adopting Collective Identities"). My intention is to continue this series of search into collective identities, in the context of the Israeli case as well in the general theoretical contextualization.

My next major step in advancing the work, was the formulation of a more coherent and developed socio-historical conceptual framework of "the conflict" (or better to say, the whole spectrum of Jewish-Arab relations). This major step was rooted in my conclusion (mainly following Simmel and Coser) that a conflict (any conflict) is an integral social system, that in order to be fully analyzed and understood, knowledge of all the parties involved must be included. In other words, in order to achieve a more accurate picture of the "Jewish side" of the relations the "Arab (and Palestinian) side" must be analyzed with the same tools (for an almost unique example of this approach see, "The Power-Oriented Settlement: Bargaining between Israelis and Palestinians"). As was mentioned before, the Arabs of Palestine were not previously incorporated conceptually and theoretically in the analysis and research of the Israeli state and society. Moreover, despite the abundance of monographic works on the Palestinian society, there did not exist any comprehensive social and socio-historical research of this collectivity. Thus, I engaged myself (together with Joel Migdal) into an extensive research about the society building process of Palestinians from a sociological-historical perspective, both on institution-formation and identity-formation levels. The initial version of the study (see, Palestinians: The Making of a People, 1993) presented a "case study" of a stateless society divided between different internal segments, and facing many external forces (e.g., Ottomans, Egyptians, Zionist colonization, colonial powers, world-market, Arab and Islamic societies states and cultures). The work is built under the basic assumption of a refined version world system approach. The Hebrew version is extended until the constitution of the Palestinian National Authority.

Another facet of my professional activity was devoted to the study and development of my basic field of expertise - the sociology of politics. I invested several years in developing a (two volume) Hebrew text book for the Israeli Open University (see, Between State and Society: The Sociology of Politics, 1995) as well as acted as guest editor of a special issue of Current Sociology, surveying the state-of-the-art across most of the world, including the writing of a concluding chapter (see, "Changing Meanings and Boundaries of the 'Political'").

I would like to say that apart of my professional activities, I am deeply involved in the Israeli public discourse (intellectually and politically), mainly as a permanent (free lance) writer, at the past 30 years, on the different sections of the Hebrew Ha’aretz daily, from its literary and cultural supplements to the political-editorial "op.eds." Apart of this, I have published dozens of book reviews and review essays in many journals and periodicals.

As for my ongoing projects, I would like to mention just three: First, a comprehensive library-research about the social consequences of the decline of the melting pot social doctrine and the hegemonic Zionist ideology in the Israeli society, including a fundamental reformulation of the Granscians concepts of hegemony. Second a study of two peripheral intellectual groups within the Israeli state - those of Russian speaking new immigrants and the bi-lingual and bi-cultural Israeli Arab intellectuals. The foci of this research will be both on these groups impact on the general Israeli public sphere and discourse, as well on construction of their own "ethinc" sub-cultures and public spheres. Third, the composition of an analysis of the Israeli and Jewish society from my own personal perspective trough an intellectual and professional autobiography, describing my own personal experiences as an immigrant and disabled child from East Europe of the early 40s and my "absorption" process within the periphery of the Israeli intellectual and professional elite groups.

Jerusalem,

August, 1999.

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Interview | Zionism | Religion, Nationalism & Democracy | Legislation | Palestinian Identity