Social Club Sociability

Kaplan, Danny

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-78402-1_3

Cited by 3 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 59 publications

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“…This lack is not necessarily coincidental, but rather characterizes ambiguous loss (Boss, 1999, 2002). The dead–alive figure of the missing soldier in Israel reveals how the state strives to control the boundary zone between life and death, and even to use it to its own purpose (Kaplan, 2008, 2018). The unrecognized phenomenon of missing civilians can be seen as another example of the modern effort to reduce the subversive potential of this boundary zone.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This study focuses on the Israeli context, which illustrates how the state uses the ambiguous zone between life and death to its own benefit, by using the missing soldier figure. Missing soldiers serve as a bridge between the collective life and the collective loss, operating “as a literary solution to the acute paradox experienced by a society that sacrifices the lives of its sons in the name of collective ideals and at the same time assigns a central value to the sanctity of life” (Kaplan, 2018, p. 194). The missing soldier becomes a totem for the national community, and is thus constructed as a collective dead-alive figure.…”

Section: Ambiguity At the Margins Of Life And Deathmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The missing soldier becomes a totem for the national community, and is thus constructed as a collective dead-alive figure. In this sense, missing soldiers do not threaten the life-death distinction; on the contrary, they strengthen it, by creating a mythical bridge personifying collective solidarity (Kaplan, 2018).…”

Section: Ambiguity At the Margins Of Life And Deathmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Everything Seems So Illogical: Constructing Missingness Between Life and Death in Israel

Katz

2021

Omega (Westport)

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This paper discusses the case of missing persons in Israel, to show how the category of “missingness” is constructed by the people who have been left behind, and how this may threaten the life-death dichotomy assumption. The field of missing persons in Israel is characterized not only by high uncertainty, but also by the absence of relevant cultural scripts. Based on a narrative ethnography of missingness in Israel, I claim that a new and subversive social category of “missingness” can be constructed following the absence of cultural scripts. The left-behinds fluctuate not only between different assumptions about the missing person’s fate; they also fluctuate between acceptance of the life-death dichotomy, thus yearning for a solution to a temporary in-between state, and blurring this dichotomy, and thus constructing “missingness” as a new stable and subversive ontological category. Under this category, new rites of passage are also negotiated and constructed.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Ambiguity At the Margins Of Life And Deathmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Ambiguity At the Margins Of Life And Deathmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Everything Seems So Illogical: Constructing Missingness Between Life and Death in Israel

Katz

2021

Omega (Westport)

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“…He thus called for consideration of collective framings of friendship, as informed by national ideology. Kaplan (2018) further argued that friendship is ‘the social glue of state and nation’ (p. 7), as citizens are expected to cooperate and become friends with the strangers whom they encounter in the different social institutions they belong to, such as school. In turn, these experiences engender the imagination of society as a nation community bound by solidarity.…”

Section: Theorising Friendship: Chosen Constrained and Collectivementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Relatedly, critical sociological perspectives of friendship, exploring the gaps between the ideals and the experiences of friendship, have shown that supposedly voluntary friendship bonds can also be perceived as binding and difficult (Eramian & Mallory, 2020; Heaphy & Davies, 2012; Smart et al, 2012). Furthermore, Danny Kaplan (2006, 2018) has argued that contemporary Western ideologies of friendship are shaped by national and collective processes, and that friendship-making is integral to nation formation. This article advances sociological challenges posed to the dominant conceptualisation of friendship as highly positive, individualistic and chosen, by ethnographically exploring what I term collective friendship – an ideal that demands that all the ascribed members of a specific group be friends with each other – and how it was cultivated, enacted and negotiated alongside a voluntary ideal of friendship.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Chosen and collective friendship: Negotiating contradictory social ideals and demands at an Israeli elementary school classroom

Assan

2023

The Sociological Review

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Friendship has been predominantly conceptualised as a highly positive and voluntary relationship. This article contributes to recent sociological challenges to these notions by ethnographically examining how conflicting friendship ideals are negotiated in everyday life. It is based on a year-long study of friendship socialisation and friendship between girls in an Israeli elementary school classroom, from the perspectives of both the girls and their teachers. I argue that the teachers promoted two contradictory friendship ideals: one of ‘chosen’ friendship between specific students, which recognised the children’s agency and preferences; and the other, of ‘collective’ friendship between all the class group members, directed at engendering social cohesion and preventing loneliness. The article delineates how the girls and teachers negotiated relationships between the students under the framework of both friendship ideals – and in doing so, exposed the tensions and entanglements between the two. Moreover, the girls and teachers’ friendship discourses and practices shed light on the hefty social demands placed on children’s friendship ties in school, and how friendship can incorporate both collective and individual meanings.

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Securitized volunteerism and neo-nationalism in Israel’s rural periphery

Gazit

Grassiani

2022

Current Sociology

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Contemporary volunteering is often considered a neoliberal phenomenon that has become prevalent in an era of post-national sentiments and individualism. Although it is frequently depicted as non-political, it may serve the promotion of political agendas, such as neo-nationalism, outside the traditional frame of the state and its institutions. This becomes particularly salient when non-governmental organizations practice volunteering in ways that undermine the state’s monopoly in the realms of security and public order. We conceptualize this tendency as securitized volunteering – instances of volunteering work that is promoted by, in this case non-state, organizations who are involved in voluntary security activities that are violent (or potentially violent). Drawing on an ethnographic study of the Israeli organization HaShomer HaChadash (The New Guard), this article demonstrates how agricultural and security volunteering is used to advance a neo-nationalist agenda that circumvents the state, and at the same time maintains an apolitical stance. This is achieved through the implementation of two corresponding forms of securitized volunteering – civilianization of security volunteerism and securitization of civilian volunteerism. Blurring the distinction between both forms enables the organization to attract supporters and volunteers that come from various social sectors and to reinforce its seemingly apolitical position and nationalist agenda.

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Social Club Sociability

Cited by 3 publications

References 59 publications

Everything Seems So Illogical: Constructing Missingness Between Life and Death in Israel

Everything Seems So Illogical: Constructing Missingness Between Life and Death in Israel

Chosen and collective friendship: Negotiating contradictory social ideals and demands at an Israeli elementary school classroom

Securitized volunteerism and neo-nationalism in Israel’s rural periphery

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