Two Patterns of Modernization: An Analysis of the Ethnic Issue in Israel

Fischer, Shlomo

doi:10.3167/isr.2016.310105

Cited by 10 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…But in the end what guides us is ‘the poor of your city take precedence,’ what to do?” 48 And on another occasion: “The universal rights of migrant workers are important, but no less important are the rights of South Tel Aviv residents, of loyal citizens who do military service and pay taxes.” 49 Again, the contrast of this ethic with the universalist rights discourse was stark, the latter stressing the increased duty of concern to those whose otherness marginalized them and rendered them politically powerless and defenseless. While in the other two cases, as described above, opposition to the legal challenge came from within the liberal camp as well and was couched in rights terms, oppositional discourse in this case was expressed in non-liberal, traditional-communitarian terms that stressed the moral value attached to boundaries of identity and concern (Fischer 2016; Mizrachi 2016; Mizrachi and Weiss 2020).…”

Section: Case Studies: Who Opposed Judicial Intervention For Human Ri...mentioning

confidence: 91%

Rights Constitutionalism and the Challenge of Belonging: An Empirical Inquiry into the Israeli Case

Alexander

2022

Law Soc. Inq.

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Rights constitutionalism faces a global crisis of legitimacy, and recent years have seen a surge in scholarship on the crisis. The vast majority of analyses focus on broad structural factors and processes. This article takes a different approach: sociological and bottom up. I use qualitative discourse analysis to examine how social actors in Israel justified their antagonism toward rights constitutionalism in three cases where judicial intervention for human rights encountered exceptional public opposition and political backlash. The analysis reveals that social actors used discourses of belonging—both liberal and non-liberal—to challenge rights constitutionalism as a constraint on democratic politics, when they perceived rights protection as conflicting with or undervaluing boundaries of collective identity. Based on these findings, I introduce a new concept—the challenge of belonging—that expresses the normative tension between individual rights and collective belonging. By highlighting the ethical dimension of social opposition to rights constitutionalism, the sociological approach allows a nuanced understanding of such opposition. The challenge of belonging can account for mixed attitudes in the same polity and even in the same social group on rights-oriented judicial intervention, and it points to a common normative thread linking attacks on liberal constitutionalism in vastly different sociopolitical settings.

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Section: Case Studies: Who Opposed Judicial Intervention For Human Ri...mentioning

confidence: 91%