The subjective experience of power: Its implications for the maintenance of and resistance to power in relations among Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel

Abstract

The current research sheds new light on the power dynamics between a national majority and minority in the context of inter-group conflict, specifically Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel. Drawing on Giddens, it broadens the dualistic approach to power suggested by the literature to demonstrate how the manifestation of power depends on the interpretation actors give to their social positioning in different life contexts. Drawing on 32 in-depth interviews with undergraduate students on their daily experience of power, four themes emerge reflecting the co-creation and alteration of power dynamics through reflexivity and agency: insecure power, ambivalent power, subversive power and internal power. The results provide empirical support for the role of agency and subjectivity in the manifestation of social power. The discussion explores the various ways in which these themes come into play in the socio-political context of Israel.

Justification of Intergroup Violence: An Exploratory Study within the Israeli-Arab Society

“…Furthermore, in this study, Arab women perceived that, in addition to gender discrimination, they also experience discrimination in a patriarchal society where men are considered superior to women (Shalhoub-Kervorkian & Daher-Nashif, 2013;Shalhoub-Kevorkian, 2017). Furthermore, they suffer discrimination from the Israeli Jewish majority, regardless of their gender (Ben David, 2019;Rouhana & Ghanem, 1998). Additionally, the higher score for perceived symbolic threat among women participants compared to lower perceived symbolic threat among male participants might also explain this finding.…”

Ethnic inequality between Arabs and Jews in Israel in global life satisfaction: A social determinants examination among young adults.

“…Nonetheless, this disproportionate exposure cannot fully explain ethnic disparities in SWB or evidence of the differential effects of most social determinants considered here on SWB across young people from the two study groups. This picture—the intersection of socioeconomic and environmental marginality within ethnic identity alongside the distinct effect of ethnicity on SWB—reflects the deep-rooted power relations between the Jewish majority and the Arab minority in the Israeli political context, that is, the ethnonational hierarchy of Israeli society (for discussion, see Ben David, 2019), which generates multiple disparities, including health inequality. This multifaceted inequality should be understood, now more than ever, in the light of the current neonationalistic trend in Israel.…”