Self, Otherness and the Israeli Sociology

The paper concerns the question of identity construction in Israel and offers to regard the early Israeli sociology as a source that articulates and reflects its transformation. By focusing on the late Prof. S. N. Eisnestadt’s sociological language, its use of myths and prevalent national narratives, the paper examines 1. how self and otherness are formulated 2. how the academic study of society had become an advocator of a specific discourse in which Zionism – the main ideological framework of the time – had enjoyed a hegemonic position. The paper therefore conceders how sociological knowledge, built from this ideological ground, projected the ideal image of society and propagated the notion of a collective “we”. To illustrate the centrality of this identity politics in the Israeli sociology, the paper discusses the relation of the early Eisenstadtian sociology to the question of the Arab-Jews as its study case. It argues that the sociological view of Arab-Jews of the early 1950's was crucial in shaping the ideal border of identity. Given that the Arab-Jews (Mizrachi) were not seen, from the hegemonic view, precisely as “Israelis” (a coherent part of the in-group) and not exactly as Arabs (the ultimate “other” in the Zionist discourse), a new barrier-category had been created - that of the "Other within”. Seen from an orientalist perspective, the sociological description of the Arab-Jews had engendered a negative reflection of these communities. At the same time it paved the way for a contrasting and a more “legitimate” model upon which the ideal Israeli archetype could be defined. The main endeavor of this paper is to show how an Israeli "legitimate" identity has been constructed in the course of the sociological analysis in a way that strengthened the political legitimacy and bolster its national inner logic.