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Book part
Publication date: 12 December 2015

Yossef Arie and Gustavo S. Mesch

This study investigated the association between structural conditions and social incentives and their effect on the ethnic composition of mobile social networks. Regarding…

Abstract

Purpose

This study investigated the association between structural conditions and social incentives and their effect on the ethnic composition of mobile social networks. Regarding structural conditions, we examined the role of the ethnic group’s size, socioeconomic status, and heterogeneity of the city in which the business was located. Regarding social incentives, we investigated the social diversification hypothesis, which expects that residentially and socially segregated minority groups will take advantage of mobile communications to diversify their mobile communication ties with outgroup members.

Methodology/approach

Two data sets were used. The first was the aggregation of the mobile communication patterns of business customers as measured by one of Israel’s mobile phone operators in April 2010. The database included 9,099 call data records. The second was a data set of the social characteristics of 103 Israeli cities from the Israeli Bureau of Statistics. Both data sets were merged according to the place of residence of each customer.

Findings

Israeli Arab businesses in homogeneous Jewish and mixed cities operate in an environment with more structural opportunities to create outgroup ethnic ties than Arab businesses in homogeneous Arab cities. Jewish businesses in ethnically mixed cities have more outgroup mobile ties than comparable businesses in homogenous Jewish cities.

Implications

We expand previous models and suggest a structural diversification approach in which ethnic mobile social networks vary across homogeneous and ethnically mixed cities. These variations result in different social incentives as the diversification approach assumed, as well as different structural conditions, as the structural approach indicates.

Details

Communication and Information Technologies Annual
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78560-381-5

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Book part
Publication date: 18 April 2015

Tiziana Foresti

In his 1919 article ‘The Intellectual Pre-eminence of Jews in Modern Europe’, Thorstein Veblen addressed the subject of Jewish intellectual creativity. Specifically, Veblen traced…

Abstract

In his 1919 article ‘The Intellectual Pre-eminence of Jews in Modern Europe’, Thorstein Veblen addressed the subject of Jewish intellectual creativity. Specifically, Veblen traced Jewish overrepresentation in the ranks of leading scientists and scholars back to their hyphenate status between their own community and gentile society. This essay has generally been neglected by Veblen scholars as puzzling or pointless in comparison with his preceding works, in which he developed his institutional-evolutionary economics. Moreover, the allegoric reading of Veblen’s image of the ‘renegade Jew’ as a representation of his own social and academic marginalization has overshadowed the scientific relevance of his analysis of Jewish intellectual creativity. The present article attempts both to take this 1919 essay seriously and to place it firmly within the context of his preceding literary productions. Specifically, this essay shows how Veblen’s view of Jewish intellectual creativity as the product of an enduring dynamic of Jewish–gentile relations is consistent with his ideas on the mechanism of development and reinforcement of institutions developed in his writings published between 1898 and 1914. The present chapter also suggests that Veblen reversed anti-Semitic arguments about the so-called ‘Jewish type’ in a pro-Semitic direction. In this respect, Edward Alsworth Ross’s explanation of the supposed characteristics of the Jewish people is taken as one hallmark of the racial thought of the American Progressive Era.

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A Research Annual
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78441-154-1

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Book part
Publication date: 2 July 2010

Marianne Cutler

Purpose – This chapter analyzes the ways that gender expectations shape the process of ethnic Jewish identity construction.Methodology – I spent approximately 18 months conducting…

Abstract

Purpose – This chapter analyzes the ways that gender expectations shape the process of ethnic Jewish identity construction.

Methodology – I spent approximately 18 months conducting participant-observation with Shalom, an independent social group comprised of young adult (primarily secular) Jews, whose mission was to facilitate a “cohesive Jewish community.” I then conducted 25 in-depth interviews with group members.

Findings – My data suggest that Shalom's negotiation of Jewish identity was actually a negotiation of Jewish male identity and Jewish female identity, with the assumption of heterosexuality in both constructs. Often using language reflecting gender-coded anti-Semitic stereotypes, members of Shalom constructed Jewish identity in ways intimately intertwined with their perceptions of “typical” Jewish men and “typical” Jewish women.

Research limitations/implications – Further empirical studies of the gendered construction of ethnic identity in the United States (particularly among more recent “white” immigrant groups like Greeks, Eastern Europeans, and Middle Easterners) could help illuminate the ways gender concerns influence efforts to move to the cultural center by those situated at the cultural margins.

Originality/value of chapter – Published accounts of the intersectionality of identities have been either largely theoretical in nature or comprised of personal identity narratives. However, there has been little systematic, empirical study of the interactional processes that shape the identities produced through the simultaneous doing of both gender and race/ethnicity.

Details

Interactions and Intersections of Gendered Bodies at Work, at Home, and at Play
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84950-944-2

Book part
Publication date: 15 October 2013

Channa Zaccai

Through life stories and the unique lens of military combat service, this study analyzes how Israeli Jewish women construct their relationship to the Jewish nation-state.

Abstract

Purpose

Through life stories and the unique lens of military combat service, this study analyzes how Israeli Jewish women construct their relationship to the Jewish nation-state.

Design/methodology/approach

This qualitative study establishes a theoretical relationship between gender and the nation, including concepts such as the nation-state, the public/private divide, Jewish womanhood, and militarization in Israel. It utilizes in-depth semi-structured life story interviews with 17 Israeli Jewish women, who served in combat roles in the Israeli military.

Findings

These women demonstrate ambivalent and gendered narratives of sacrifice and success and of loyalty and resistance as they transgress and comply with the idea of the national Jewish home. They reveal a strong desire for national belonging that can be seen as an attempt to challenge the gendered public/private divide and secure their status as qualified citizens.

Social implications

Women’s integration in the military is a political issue in Israel where liberal and radical feminists, religious, bureaucratic, and other civil groups are pushing for contrasting demands. I engage in this debate by emphasizing the voices of women soldiers.

Originality/value

Instead of focusing on subjugation and marginalization owing to the unsolvable conundrum of partial military inclusion leading to (partial) political and societal exclusion, I offer an analysis of military combat service as a meaning-making practice providing a new understanding of Israeli women’s relationship to the Jewish nation-state.

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Gendered Perspectives on Conflict and Violence: Part A
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78350-110-6

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Book part
Publication date: 28 January 2022

Michael Cohen

Prejudice against Jews was part of the landscape in the Union of South Africa long before Nazism made inroads into the country during the 1930s, at which stage Jews constituted…

Abstract

Prejudice against Jews was part of the landscape in the Union of South Africa long before Nazism made inroads into the country during the 1930s, at which stage Jews constituted approximately 4.6% of the country’s white (or European) population. Aggressive Afrikaner nationalism was marked by fervent attempts to proscribe Jewish immigration. By 1939, Jewish immigration was included as an official plank in the political platform of the opposition Purified National Party led by Dr D.F. Malan, along with a ban on party membership for Jews residents in the Transvaal province. Racial discrimination, in a country with diversified ethnic elements and intense political complexities, was synonymous with life in the Union long before the Apartheid system, with its official policy of enforced legal, political and economic segregation, became law in May 1948 under Dr Malan’s prime ministership. Although the Jews, while maintaining their own subcultural identity, were classified within South Africa’s racial hierarchy as part of the privileged white minority, the emergence of recurrent anti-Jewish stereotypes and themes became manifest in a country permeated by the ideology of race and white superiority. This was exacerbated by the growth of a powerful Afrikaner nationalist movement, underpinned by conservative Calvinist theology. This chapter focusses on measures taken in South Africa by organisational structures within the political sphere to restrict Jewish immigration between 1930 and 1939 and to do so on ethnic grounds. These measures were underscored by radical Afrikaner nationalism, which flew in the face of the principles of ethics and moral judgement.

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Transcendent Development: The Ethics of Universal Dignity
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80262-260-7

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Book part
Publication date: 4 September 2019

Barry M. Mitnick and Martin Lewison

Despite the existence of a variety of approaches to the understanding of behavioral and managerial ethics in organizations and business relationships generally, knowledge of…

Abstract

Despite the existence of a variety of approaches to the understanding of behavioral and managerial ethics in organizations and business relationships generally, knowledge of organizing systems for fidelity remains in its infancy. We use halakha, or Jewish law, as a model, together with the literature in sociology, economic anthropology, and economics on what it termed “middleman minorities,” and on what we have termed the Landa Problem, the problem of identifying a trustworthy economic exchange partner, to explore this issue.

The article contrasts the differing explanations for trustworthy behavior in these literatures, focusing on the widely referenced work of Avner Greif on the Jewish Maghribi merchants of the eleventh century. We challenge Greif’s argument that cheating among the Magribi was managed chiefly via a rational, self-interested reputational sanctioning system in the closed group of traders. Greif largely ignores a more compelling if potentially complementary argument, which we believe also finds support among the documentary evidence of the Cairo Geniza as reported by Goitein: that the behavior of the Maghribi reflected their deep beliefs and commitment to Jewish law, halakha.

Applying insights from this analysis, we present an explicit theory of heroic marginality, the production of extreme precautionary behaviors to ensure service to the principal.

Generalizing from the case of halakha, the article proposes the construct of a deep code, identifying five defining characteristics of such a code, and suggests that deep codes may act as facilitators of compliance. We also offer speculation on design features employing deep codes that may increase the likelihood of production of behaviors consistent with terminal values of the community.

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The Next Phase of Business Ethics: Celebrating 20 Years of REIO
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83867-005-4

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Book part
Publication date: 10 June 2019

Mareike Riedel

The religious tradition of male circumcision has come increasingly under attack across a number of European states. While critics of the practice argue that the problem is about…

Abstract

The religious tradition of male circumcision has come increasingly under attack across a number of European states. While critics of the practice argue that the problem is about children’s rights and the proper relationship between secular and religious traditions, Jews tend to see these attacks within the longer history of attempts to assimilate and remake them according to the norms of the majority. Using the 2012 German legal controversy concerning the issue as my vantage point, I explore how contemporary criticism of male circumcision remains entangled with ambivalence toward Judaism and the Jews as the “other.” Through a close reading of the arguments, I show how opponents use the seemingly neutral language of universal human rights to (re)make Jewish difference according to the norms of the majority. I conclude by arguing that such an approach to this issue runs the risk of turning Jews once again into strangers at a time when cultural anxieties are troubling European societies.

Details

Studies in Law, Politics, and Society
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78973-727-1

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 9 January 2020

Shai Rudin

This study aims to examine the responses and perceptions of Israeli Arab teachers toward multicultural and educational issues concerning Jewish–Arab relations.

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to examine the responses and perceptions of Israeli Arab teachers toward multicultural and educational issues concerning Jewish–Arab relations.

Design/methodology/approach

This study is a qualitative research. The study included 44 novice Arab teachers, who teach Hebrew in the Arab sector and are currently studying toward their masters’ degree at a teacher education college in northern Israel. The teachers were asked to read the novel Nadia by Galila Ron Feder–Amit. Published in 1985, the novel describes the complex integration of Nadia, an Arab village girl, into a Jewish boarding school, and it is narrated in first person. After having read the novel, the teachers were requested to answer the writing task, which addressed the character of the protagonist, the issue of teaching the novel in the Jewish and Arabic educational systems and the anticipated responses of Jewish and Arab students to the novel.

Findings

Phenomenological analysis of the teachers’ responses found that the reading experience was complex and resulted in a variety of responses toward the protagonist. Some were based on identification and appreciation, while others on criticism and judgment of the heroine’s restraint vis-a-vis the racism that she was experiencing. However, most of the teachers demonstrated moral courage and thought that the novel should be taught, as they viewed it as a bridge leading to understanding between the two nations. The teachers anticipated conflicting responses of Jewish and Arab students to the novel, according to the students’ political views and values.

Practical implications

These findings indicate that the educational system should include political texts relating to the Jewish–Arab schism, especially texts that voice the Palestinian narrative. This view differs from the current situation in both sectors, whereby the tendency is to avoid political texts while ignoring the Palestinian narrative.

Originality/value

The study shows that the reading experience of a political novel affords various and often contrasting responses with the teachers facing the didactic challenges. The teachers who participated in the study anticipated complexity of the reading and teaching process, yet were not deterred by it, particularly in view of the novel’s messages – striving to understand the “other” and to bridge a discourse between the nations.

Details

Journal for Multicultural Education, vol. 14 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2053-535X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 14 September 2015

Sonia Douek

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role that faith and spirituality play for Jewish people as they age and examine how this is expressed and supported by a health and…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role that faith and spirituality play for Jewish people as they age and examine how this is expressed and supported by a health and social care environment.

Design/methodology/approach

This is a case study based on work at Jewish Care and supported by other Jewish networks. It also builds on qualitative research on Ageing Well carried out in 2012.

Findings

As people age they have a need to connect with their community. Faith-based communities are ready made and often the first point of call for Jewish people. The way in which people express their faith or spirituality may not manifest itself in practice but be more about inclusion and connection. Life circumstances will determine people’s faith, identity and approach to spirituality – e.g. Holocaust survivors. There is a feeling that religious affiliation and the way it is expressed has polarised in the community which means that older people often do not connect with current ways of expressing or connecting to their faith.

Research limitations/implications

This is not a systematic research but examines through practice different approaches to supporting people as they age via a faith-based provision.

Practical implications

The approach could be replicated by other faith-based providers but also the approach and lessons should be considered by more generalist providers so that they ensure they meet the needs of the individual receiving their services. The inclusion principle reminds the author that care in a vacuum will not support the emotional and psychological needs of people.

Social implications

Divisions within a faith group opportunities for younger people to learn from their older peers reminder of more established values around faith.

Originality/value

Identifying the way in which faith is often an expression and connection to community and can reduce social isolation. The role that faith-based communities play in connecting and valuing people as they age. The reminder that ritual can be not only reassuring to people as they age but provide structure and purpose to a person’s life.

Details

Working with Older People, vol. 19 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1366-3666

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Article
Publication date: 26 June 2009

Jeffrey Podoshen

Understanding the role of ethnicity is key for marketers in multicultural nations such as the USA. Many ethnic groups retain a great deal of collective memories and experiences…

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Abstract

Purpose

Understanding the role of ethnicity is key for marketers in multicultural nations such as the USA. Many ethnic groups retain a great deal of collective memories and experiences based on events in the past. Some of these experiences were stress‐inducing, if not horrific. This paper aims to look at the buying process of US Jewish consumers in relation to the purchase of German products, more specifically automobiles. Going beyond animosity, this research seeks to look at the variables of acculturation and closeness to the Holocaust as possible factors in the purchase decision.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper utilizes survey data obtained from over 400 respondents with analysis performed using regression, chi‐squared analysis, ANOVA and MANOVA.

Findings

The study shows that non‐Jewish Americans are more likely to purchase German automobiles than Jewish Americans. Acculturation and familial closeness to the Holocaust play a role in the purchase decision among Jewish Americans, while income does not.

Practical implications

The paper helps firms plan marketing strategy where they may have a history involved in war or similar actions.

Originality/value

Even though they have significant spending power, very little research has been done on American Jewish consumers. Additionally, as ethnically oriented violence still plagues the world, understanding the role distressing events play in the purchases of future generations is of paramount importance for global firms.

Details

Journal of Consumer Marketing, vol. 26 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0736-3761

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1 – 10 of over 4000