Keep a Stiff Upper Lip or Wear Your Heart on Your Sleeve? Ethnic Identity and Emotion Management among Arab/Palestinians in Israel

Abstract

This study examines how emotion management is linked to subjective identity among members of ethnic minority groups in ethnically mixed workplaces. Data were drawn from interviews with Arab/Palestinian citizen residents of Israel. The results reveal three distinct strategies of emotion management: (1) Arab/Palestinians, regardless of their subjective identity, tend to conceal emotions during interactions with majority group members; (2) individuals who identify as ‘Arab’ also tend to regulate social interactions to avoid the emotional risks that accompany interactions with majority group members; (3) those who choose a ‘Palestinian’ label are more likely to actively express their ethnic identities despite the emotional risks associated with this type of identification. The findings suggest that emotion management is influenced not only by a person’s assignment to a social minority category (the emphasis of previous research), but also by a person’s subjectively defined identity.

Gloomy at the Top: How the Wealthiest 0.1% Feel about the Rest

“…Following from this, work on emotional reflexivity maintains that emotions are present in reflexive practices and particularly relevant as sensitive indicators of social change. Social groups come to sustain typical emotional styles and practices that support their identities and relationships (Ahmed, 2004; Burkitt, 2014: 159; Feinstein and Shehade Switat, 2018). As a result, emotions also help to shape and maintain social classes and the relations, such as differences and inequalities, between them (Burkitt, 2014: 20, 159).…”

“…While the executives’ emphasis on emotional management undoubtedly stems from recent management trends which have popularised the idea of emotional intelligence for contemporary executives, the notion of emotional self-control is not new to upper-class groups. Adherence to specific patterns of affectual control (Elias, 1994: xxiii) involving controlling and concealing unwanted emotions has historically been the price they must pay for membership in the group and is thus typical of the upper classes (Elias, 2000: 389–396; Feinstein and Shehade Switat, 2018), who desire to preserve a high, socially expected standard of living and prestige.…”

“…Theoretically, I draw from work on emotional reflexivity, which recent contributions to Sociology have developed (Burkitt, 2012; Holmes, 2010), and use Hochschild’s (2016) notion of deep story , which captures the felt experience of a particular social group. Individuals’ feelings about themselves and others are linked to their social environment and help to sustain social relations, classes, groups and factions (Ahmed, 2004; Burkitt, 2014: 15, 28, 159; Feinstein and Shehade Switat, 2018; Holmes, 2010: 140), and I suggest that the wealthy are no exception: they also express emotions in ways which fuel and prop up their identities and ideologies.…”

Ethnic perspective in e-government use and trust in government: A test of social inequality approaches

“…Israel is a multiethnic society marked by several social cleavages. The ethnic cleavage is the deepest of these (Feinstein and Shehade Switat, 2019). About 78% of the Israeli population are Jews, about 18% are Arabs, and the rest are mostly non-Arab Christians and members of other religious or ethnic groups (Saabneh, 2015).…”

“…Jews and Arabs tend to reside in separate localities (Mesch, 2012), and less than 10 localities have a mixed Jewish-Arab population (Lewin-Epstein and Semyonov, 1992). Thus, only 9% of the Arab population in Israel resides in mixed localities (Feinstein and Shehade Switat, 2019).…”