Reconstructing the Civic
224 pages
English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris
Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus
224 pages
English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

Description

Reconstructing the Civic examines the civic activism of the homeland Palestinian minority in Israel. Employing a multi-methodological and empirically rich approach, Amal Jamal blends historical description with interviews of Palestinian elites drawn from a diverse range of civil society groups such as NGOs, youth movements, and religious organizations. He also critiques the failure of Western/liberal scholarship to account for the experience of minority civil society organizations in illiberal social and political contexts, largely because this literature assumes there is an inherent relationship between civil society and democracy. Jamal places an important spotlight on the complex interplay between liberal and illiberal trends in the emergence, organization, and transformation of Palestinian civil society in Israel as well as the need to introduce an alternative ethical model that aims to reconstruct ethnic states in universal civic terms.
Graphs and Tables
Prologue

1. Introduction

2. The Theoretical Framing of Civic Activism: A Critical Appraisal

3. Civic Activism, Minority Politics, and National Conflicts

4. Political Culture and Civil Society: Relevant Lessons from the Arab World

5. Neoliberal Nationalism and Civil Society in Israel

6. Transformations in the PCI, the Emerging New Elite, and Civic Activism

7. Palestinian CSOization, Active Citizenship, and the Politics of Contention

8. Public Trust and Social Capital in Palestinian Civic Activism in Israel

9. Civil Engagement, Social Responsibility, and Political Empowerment

10. Civic Engagement and the Democratic Argument

11. CSOization, Democratization, Empowerment, and Development

Epilogue and Future Prospects
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

Informations

Publié par
Date de parution 01 août 2020
Nombre de lectures 0
EAN13 9781438478739
Langue English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,1648€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Reconstructing the Civic
Reconstructing the Civic
Palestinian Civil Activism in Israel
AMAL JAMAL
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2020 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Name: Amal Jamal.
Title: Reconstructing the Civic: Palestinian Civil Activism in Israel / Amal Jamal.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: ISBN 9781438478715 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438478739 (ebook)
Further information is available at the Library of Congress.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020940102
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Randa and for all those free spirits that aspire to make our life better
Contents
Graphs and Tables
Prologue
Chapter 1 Introduction
Chapter 2 The Theoretical Framing of Civic Activism: A Critical Appraisal
Chapter 3 Civic Activism, Minority Politics, and National Conflicts
Chapter 4 Political Culture and Civil Society: Relevant Lessons from the Arab World
Chapter 5 Neoliberal Nationalism and Civil Society in Israel
Chapter 6 Transformations in the PCI, the Emerging New Elite, and Civic Activism
Chapter 7 Palestinian CSOization, Active Citizenship, and the Politics of Contention
Chapter 8 Public Trust and Social Capital in Palestinian Civic Activism in Israel
Chapter 9 Civil Engagement, Social Responsibility, and Political Empowerment
Chapter 10 Civic Engagement and the Democratic Argument
Chapter 11 CSOization, Democratization, Empowerment, and Development
Epilogue and Future Prospects
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Graphs and Tables
Graph 1 CSOs by Type and Year of Establishment
Graph 2 CSOs by Year of Establishment
Graph 3 Classification of Activity
Graph 4 CSOs by Activity and Year of Establishment
Graph 5 Online Participation
Graph 6 Political Participation
Graph 7 Online Participation by Age Group
Graph 8 Political Protest by Age Group
Graph 9 Trust in State and Community Institutions
Table 1 Participation in Elections by Palestinian Citizens of Israel, 1996–2020
Table 2 External and Internal Factors of CSOization
Prologue
T his study took a number of years to complete for many reasons—some related to its nature and some not. One reason I delayed publication relates to the sensitivity of the issue at hand. Much of this study was based on a public opinion survey regarding civil society organizations (CSOs). The public’s attitudes toward these associations had to be handled cautiously, as I did not want them to be misused for other purposes. This fear was born out of my past experiences conducting research on the culture of media consumption, in which I, fully committed to scientific values, published data that were critical, received poorly, and conceived as highly detrimental to these media institutions. While the data were published to serve the scientific community and the public good of society, these institutions summarily ran a campaign against the research and ultimately called into question its value. In this research, I expose the extent of the community’s familiarity, acceptance, support, or rejection of specific CSOs; and its findings again gave me pause. To escape the implications of the “rating culture” that is gradually taking hold of our lives, including in the field of civil society, I hesitated to release this information, despite society’s expectation that this community is more civil and tolerant.
The objective of this study is to explore the general processes and trends of civic engagement and organizational networking in the Palestinian community in Israel (PCI). The PCI’s vibrant community of CSOs serves as an ideal case study for exploring patterns of civic struggle and resistance vis-à-vis policies of compliance and subordination in ethnic states. Therefore, these statistics are not meant to identify the public’s attitudes at a specific moment in time, but rather to reflect the development of its consciousness and its patterns of collective action, which might either reflect or contradict the organizational and institutional processes taking place in the broader social and political environment of civil society.
A second reason is personal and has to do with the positions to which I was appointed immediately after securing the funds to conduct the first phase of this research. First, I was elected as head of the Political Science Department at Tel Aviv University in 2006. I served in this position for three years, during which my days were packed with tasks and plans that left little time for reflection or writing. When my tenure was over in 2009, I was offered a position as the director of I’lam—Arab Center for Media Freedom, Development and Research in Nazareth. I’lam’s importance and its central position in Palestinian civil society led me to accept the position, which was far more demanding than I initially imagined. These two management positions involved heavy responsibilities and were time-consuming. Managing a civic association and simultaneously exploring its role in society is not an easy task. It is a sensitive combination, which entails a careful, ethical balance. Therefore, I decided to wait to regain the distance necessary to sensitively judge this phenomenon. I left my position in I’lam at the end of 2017. This step enabled me not only to devote more time to finish this research, but also to reflect on the findings of the research and reveal new insights based on the combination between my personal experience and professional capacities.
Leading a civic association helped me to understand many issues that were not immediately clear to me in the beginning as a scholar with no practical experience in the field. While I initially feared such a delay would prove a disadvantage, it revealed itself to be the opposite. Many of my personal insights followed a long period of contemplation, analysis, and evaluation. In this time, I managed to develop a deeper, anthropological perspective on the field of civil society. This perspective enabled me to strengthen my capacity to make sense of the tremendous amount of data I had gathered over the last 10 years. While the age of these data risked rendering the research outdated, the passage of time offered many benefits. For example, the process of gathering data never stopped. I was constantly conducting interviews and focus groups. I participated in many meetings of civil society activists and even initiated several new projects that have found a central place in the civil sphere, such as the Freedom Protection Council and the Strategic Thinking Project—two initiates I led and aimed at empowering civil society activism in Israel in general and in the PCI in particular. I also conducted surveys that enabled me to compare data along the 10 years of research and was able to identify many similarities and differences in this span of time. As civil society is an ever evolving field, it cannot be understood through rigid or stable constraints; this time was therefore necessary to provide an accurate depiction of the field and to be understood through open, varied, and dynamic concepts and methodologies.
Before moving ahead, I would like to thank many people who helped me complete this research. First, special thanks to Aaron Back, who was kind enough to support some of this research through the Ford Foundation ten years ago.
Umayma Diab was the first to assist in executing the first survey of the research. She also helped to build the initial questionnaire, collect materials, and partially analyze the statistical data. I would like to thank her for her generous help in every step of this research and for adding many insightful notes, which I found to greatly improve this research. I also wish to thank Liron Lavi, who assisted in analyzing some of the statistical data and whose explanations thereon were very valuable. Her assistance was vital to the study’s completion. I would like also to thank Victoria Koukvin for helping with the statistical data analysis of the second survey and Camellia Darawsheh and Rasha Kinaan for helping to finalize the bibliography and streamline the spelling of the Arabic names.
Kholod Massalha and Widad Helo from I’lam assisted in conducting the second survey and organized the focus groups with leaders of many central Palestinian CSOs. They put great effort into making these challenging tasks possible, and I deeply thank them for their fantastic work. Also at I’lam, Samah Basoul provided many notes on the book, which helped to improve its quality. She also assisted in embedding much of the data into the text.
Also, Ali Haider’s work on an early draft of the manuscript was particularly enlightening and helped to identify some missing parts of my analysis, while also contributing his own vast knowledge in these areas. Ali was the manager of Sikkuy, an Arab-Jewish CSO at the time, and his experience was a very important factor in reflecting on the manuscript.

  • Univers Univers
  • Ebooks Ebooks
  • Livres audio Livres audio
  • Presse Presse
  • Podcasts Podcasts
  • BD BD
  • Documents Documents