Calvin Goldscheider - Israels Changing Society: Population, Ethnicity, and Development

Population, Ethnicity, and Development

Calvin Goldscheider

First published 1996 by Westview Press

Published 2018 by Routledge
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Copyright 1996 by Taylor & Francis

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Goldscheider, Calvin.
Israel's changing society: population, ethnicity, and development
/ Calvin Goldscheider.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8133-7793-5 0-8133-3391-1 (pbk)
1. IsraelSocial conditions. 2. IsraelPopulation. 3. Israel
Ethnic relations. 4. IsraelEmigration and immigration.
I. Title.
HN660.A8G65 1996
306'. 095694dc20 95-22944
CIP

ISBN 13: 978-0-367-00987-8 (hbk)

In this book I focus on the conjunction of population processes, ethnicity, and nation-building as the basis for understanding the changing society of Israel. These three themes provide important analytic handles in investigating the dynamics of change since the establishment of the state, and they are likely to be at the heart of changes in the future. To some extent, these factors in their actual and ideological guises have been at the foundation of thinking about Israel before it became a state; they are central to the formation of new states around the world. The arguments suggest an interplay between Israeli society as a unique sociopolitical entity emergent from its particular history and as a state that illustrates general social processes that are likely to characterize other states in other places. I have synthesized sociological and demographic materials, focusing on issues central to population studies, comparative development, and ethnic pluralism. In the process, I have identified linkages between the demographic transformations of the society and have delineated the importance of socioeconomic changes for ethnic group formation in Israel.

The volume is divided into several sections. In I focus on issues of family and marriage and review the contexts of ethnic continuities and changes, with particular concern about the importance and meaning of interethnic marriages and the reduction of family size. Finally, I examine Israeli society in the context of relationships to two external communitiesJews in communities outside the state of Israel, and Palestinians, particularly those living in areas administered by Israel.

To clarify these changes and the intersections of these phenomena, I have taken a fresh look at the extensive data available and have reviewed the major social scientific studies of Israeli society. I have readily relied on the rich empirical and analytic frameworks that inform us about Israel, in particular, and societies, in general. The research for the volume began as part of a series of studies that I conducted on the sociology and demography of Israel, beginning in the early 1970s. This particular book grew out of my preparations for courses on Israeli society that I have offered at Brown University and in lectures that I have given at conferences and in universities throughout the United States. My goal was to provide an up-to-date review and synthesis of materials on the connections between the demography and sociology of Israeli society, particularly its ethnic dimensions. As I reexamined the issues, I discovered new and important linkages that had not been systematically investigated in the past and that should form the basis of future systematic research. It soon became clear to me that a reformulation and reanalysis would be required, one that drew on the strengths of previous research and asked new questions.

I offer a note about the substantive and political views that I have highlighted in this book: No one who writes about Israeli society, from whatever perspectivesocial science or humanistic, political, economic, sociological, or demographic, Jewish or Arab, American or Israelican avoid the implications of language for conveying political biases and ideological commitments. I too am biased, as a Jew, as an Israeli, as an American, as a sociologist and demographer, and as a scholar of ethnicity and religion, comparative-historical demography, and contemporary Jews and their communities. I have tried to present an analytic picture, not a balanced one; thus, I have organized and offered a wide range of evidence and considerable empirical detail.

I do not intend to convey a political judgment, however, when I refer to a group as "Moslem-Israelis" rather than as "Palestinians"; I do not necessarily want to convey an ideological position by referring to the territories administered by the state of Israel as the "West Bank" rather than Judea and Samaria. I refer to these territories as administered not occupied; I do not refer to East Jerusalem as "occupied Palestine." I present and argue my viewpoint from, what seems to me, clear evidence about trends and patterns. I have interpreted these trends, as well, utilizing a framework that is biased by the assumptions of social science rather than by the ideologies of Zionism or Arab nationalism, or the biases of theology, psychology, or history. Although I cannot claim that I have succeeded (or that others have succeeded) in being "fair" to all sides, and thereby fair to no one, I have made the effort to be open about my values and clear about my biases. If my prose and categories convey more than that, it is inadvertent. If the analysis presented is challenging, provocative, and interesting, then I am fully rewarded. I claim personal allegiances to various ideologies and professional commitments to particular perspectives within social science that will become clear by an examination of the themes I have selected to study and how I have selected to study them. I hope that I have laid out the biases of my perspectives and the limitations of the evidence so that others can interpret it in new and different ways, bring new types of information, and redirect our thinking. I will have succeeded if others are stimulated to do a better or different analysis based on my efforts.