Introduction to Ethnic Relations
The course focuses on ethnic, national and racial cleavages. It presents a conceptual, theoretical and comparative framework for analyzing divided societies in Israel, United States, Switzerland, South Africa and Northern Ireland.
Comparative Ethnic Relations
The seminar discusses theory and research on relations between ethnic, national and racial groups worldwide. A comparative approach is applied for analyzing questions of conflicts, accommodation and stability in ethnically divided societies. Issues include perspectives on ethnicity and nationalism, types of conflict and modes of conflict-management, how different types of democracy (liberal, consociational, ethnic) cope with ethnic and national conflicts, assimilation and multiculturalism, immigration and transnationalism, Diaspora and transnational communities, national identities, and ethnic autonomy. Various case studies are examined. Ethno-national divisions and conflicts will be analyzed in Israel, the United States, Switzerland, Estonia, Macedonia, Northern Ireland and South Africa.
Israeli Society
The course presents a macro-sociological, historical, comparative and critical approach to selected areas of life in Israeli society. It aims to problematize the stock answers to and stimulate discussion on the questions whether Israel is small, unique, deeply divided, multicultural, militaristic, colonial, secular, democratic, and Western. The course consists of three parts: overview of Israel’s societal characteristics, central institutions, and internal divisions and conflicts. Topics include a conceptual framework (population, boundaries, cross-country comparisons, controversial issues, and theoretical perspectives), distinct features and exceptionalism, formative period, culture, identity, military and militarism, politics, the ethnic democracy debate, political economy and class division, ethnic divide, religion and the religious split, national rift (between Arab and Jewish citizens), and the Israeli-Palestinian question and binationalism in two or one state.
Divisions and Conflicts in Israel
The course will focus on selected cleavages in Israel in its pre-1967 borders and on the implications of the state's Jewish and democratic character for conflict-management and political stability. An analysis of the controversy over the meanings of democracy and the secular and religious interpretation of Jewishness will be made. A theoretical, historical and comparative framework for the study of internal social conflicts will be presented and be applied to the divisions between the political right and left, poor and rich, women and men, religious and secular, immigrants and old-timers, Mizrahi and Ashkenazic Jews, Arabs and Jews, and aliens and citizens.
Jewish Identities
The course will discuss the questions: who and what is a Jew, how one can be an ethnic or self-identifying Jew and a Jew without religion or religiosity, how secular Jewishness is conceived and practiced in both Israel and the Diaspora, and how secular Jews pass their Jewish heritage to the next generation. Special attention will be given to several sets of historical forces that have shaped Jewish identity: secularism and modernism-postmodernism, antisemitism and the Holocaust, and Zionism and the State of Israel. The relative centrality of ethnic descent, religion, religiosity, language, culture, nation (peoplehood) and citizenship in Jewish identity will be linked to the differences in the characteristics of the Jewish community. Currents in Jewish public thought will be surveyed. The focus will be on secular expressions of Jewishness in Europe, the United States and Israel in the modern and post-modern era. The approach will be sociological, historical and comparative.
Independent Study of Non-Dominant Groups in Israel
Personal supervision in writing a term paper on one of the non-dominant groups in Israel, including women, low-status strata, the old, ultra-Orthodox Jews, Arabs, Mizrahim (non-European Jews), Russian immigrants, Ethiopian immigrants, and foreign workers.