Yehouda Shenhav
Encyclopedia
Yehouda Shenhav is an Israel
i sociologist and critical theorist. He is known for his contributions in the fields of bureaucracy
, management
and capitalism
, as well as for his research on ethnicity in Israeli society and its relationship with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
.
and again, at the age of ten, to Petah Tikva
.
In 1977 he received his BA in sociology and labor studies from the Tel Aviv University
and four years later he received his Master's degree
in Industrial management from the Technion. He then traveled to Stanford University
, where he received another MA in 1983 and a PhD in 1985, both in sociology.
Most of his academic work is done in the Sociology and Anthropology School in the Tel Aviv University, where he is a full professor. He has also taught in several universities in the United States
, such as the University of Wisconsin–Madison
, Stanford University, Princeton University
and Columbia University
.
He is head of advanced studies in the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute
, and as the editor of Theory & Criticism and Theory and Criticism in Context, and as Senior Editor for the European journal Organization Studies.
He has won several awards, including the Dorothy Harlow Award of the American Academy of Management; and the Association for Israeli Studies award for The Arab Jews: A Postcolonial Reading of Nationalism, Religion, and Ethnicity.
, a social movement founded in 1996 by descendants of Olim from Arab countries, which defines itself as an extra-parliamentary movement seeking to challenge the ethnic structure in the Israeli society.
One of the Rainbow Coalition's chief struggles was for lands, in which Shenhav and others petitioned to the Supreme Court of Israel
against what he described as an unjust distribution of state owned lands, made worse by decisions of the Israel Land Administration
, and won.
In late 1996 Shenhav published in Haaretz
an article titled "The Bond of Silence", which generated a great deal of reaction. He pointed to an "inter-generational bond of silence between the ideological commissars of the formative years of Zionism ("the salt of the earth") and the contemporary intellectuals of the Israeli Left (also "salt of the earth"). These two generations of Ashkenazi hegemony concur in their silence toward the "Mizrahi problem". He also argued that "denouncing the injustice done to the Palestinians does not endanger the status of our contemporary Ashkenazi intellectuals. It does not endanger their position as a hegemonic cultural group in Israeli society or as an economic class" and that "Dealing with the injustices inflicted on the Palestinians earns them laurels of humanism, the esteemed roles of slaughterers of sacred cows and seekers of peace, the badge of the rebel, and a catharsis in light of the crime of their parents' generation" yet the Palestinian is marked as the "Other", which can be kept on the other side of the fence. The Mizrahi Jews
, on the other hand, "cannot be turned into an "other," nor can they be cast beyond the fence; at most, one can construct detours to bypass development towns and poverty neighborhoods". Recognition of the injustices done to the Mizrahim will force the Israeli left to reform itself as well and to relinquish its hegemonic position. To avoid that, they created a taboo
.
The article had great resonance in and outside of Israel. It was followed by 25 response article in Haaretz and the multiplicity of references in the media was considered to have marked the beginning of a new public discussion.
Linking the political and intercommunal schism in Identity politics
was criticized by conservative intellectuals. It was argued that Mizrahi identity is an anachronism which endangers the Israeli melting pot
.
That argument has also been associated with his activities against the Israeli occupation and for a democratic Israel and Palestine. Shenhav said that while the Jews certainly had the right for a collective self-determination
in Israel, the state must also reach an agreement with its Palestinian citizens regarding their collective representation as a national minority within it.
by referring to it as an Ideology
within a cultural discourse.
In his monograph Managerial Ideologies in the Age of Rationality, Shenhav argued that Max Weber
's concept of bureaucracy
which gathered momentum in the 19th century and was elaborated in the 20th century, is not rational in the ontological sense, but in fact the opposite. Shenhav argued that despite its claim for precision, non-arbitrary and universal, that system's foundations are not necessarily more efficient than others and are certainly not universal, but rather of a particular social, economic and historic context.
In his book The Organization Machine: A Critical Inquiry into the Foundations of Management Theory, Shenhav sought to show how rationality was turned into an ideology by management experts (such as Alexander Hamilton Church
and Frederick Winslow Taylor
) in the 19th century, following the industrial revolution
. During that time, large factories were incorporated, and were hard for capitalists to control. Managers assumed a more prominent role in the organized environment, and since the profession was not yet sufficiently institutionalized, managers used an ideology of rationality and efficiency to establish their power
, control and capital.
Shenhav's basic argument is that the economic crisis at the time actually helped managers become part of the organizational landscape, since it helped justify their function. Managers adopted a rhetoric which associated management with the resolution of an economic crisis. As the crisis became widespread, statistics showed a growth in the number of managers in the West, especially the United States.
In 1999's Manufacturing Rationality: The Engineering Foundations of the Managerial Revolution, Shenhav set the concept of "Managerial Revolution" up to a critical analysis. He aimed to show how managerial language and activism developed through the creation of a language and practice that hid the aggressive and violent context of their growth. In addition to his previous studies, which described ways in which the managerial profession fought the workers and exercised symbolic and practical violence against them, he also displayed the growth of management as bound in a struggle against Capitalism, which forced it to invent itself and its language out of nothing, fighting both workers and capitalists.
. He challenges the Israeli structural knowledge which separates, factitiously in his eyes, between them.The book was also published in English in 2006 (Stanford University Press).
Shenhav traced the origins of the conceptualization of the Mizrahi Jews as Arab Jews by challenging the hegemonic discourse, which uses the category of the "Oriental Jews" and later "Mizrahi". Both of those options, according to Shenhav, conceals the Arab identities and culture and provides new cultural cultures from the Mediterranean. The book discussed the way in which two categories where juxtaposed in the Israeli discourse - one which distinguishes Jews from non-Jews, and another, which is perceived as an exclusively Jewish discourse, between Ashkenazi and Mizrahi. Shenhav seeks to undermine those categories, which he believes to be fixated and do not allow a description of Mizrahi history from a comparative perspective.
Shenhav described the operation of a cultural machine which fixated the Jews from Arab countries as Arab Jews, but did so without "purifying" them from their Arabism, and portrayed the wide border zone along which that conversion took place. He presented a critical inquiry of the relations between Zionism and the Arab Jews by displaying Zionism as an ideological practice with three simultaneous and symbiotic categories: "Nationality", "Religion" and "Ethnicity". In order to be included in the national collective, they had to be "de-Arabized". Religion distinguished between Arabs and Arab Jews, thus marking nationality among the Arab Jews. Thus, in order to belong to the Zionist-national discourse, the Arab Jews had to perform and practice Judaism. Religion, in that sense, was a means to the recruitment of the Mizrahi Jews into the Jewish nationality. Yet religion at the same time also marked them as an "Ethnic" group separate from the secular (Ashkenazi) Israeliness. For Shenhav, religion and nationality are not binary categories but are connected in dynamic relations. Zionist nationalism confiscated Judaism and did contain religious lineaments, but those were nationalized and re-formed. Shenhav does not suggest that Zionism made the Mizrahi Jews religious, but that Zionism orientalized
them through religion. Thus, They could only exist within the national Zionist discourse by being classified as religious Jews, and that is why the intermediate category of Masorti
was created.
Shenhav argued that this Arab Jewish identity is a hybrid one, and is in part the result of dual consciousness - national and colonial
- of Zionism. Yet he does not argue that contemporary Mizrahi identity is Arab-Jewish, but rather that it was a concept with a certain history that was cut off. So from a critical position, Shenhav accepts the conceptualization of the Mizrahi in the Israeli political and ethnic discussion since, according to him, the common experience of the various "communities" in Israel - in the education system
, the IDF
, the development towns and so forth - has blurred their distinctions and created a great deal of similarity between them.
The book's second central theme revolves around the connection between the Arab-Jews and the Palestinians. Shenhav's claim is that the Iraqi government's nationalization of the Iraqi Jews' property served as a governmental excuse for Israel's keeping of the Palestinian refugees' property following their exodus. Israel could thus argue for an interrelatedness between the two and claim that a population and capital exchange took place.
, Shenhav believes the Israeli society must become multi-ethnic and therefore multi-culturalist. Among his publications on the subject is the anthology Coloniality and the Postcolonial Condition which included translations of founding texts by writers such as Frantz Fanon
, Homi K. Bhabha
and Edward Said
.
Shenhav focuses his multiculturalist program mostly on around the postcolonialist discourse, but also includes the postmodernist and feminist ones. For Shenhav, identity is a dynamic, constructivist, random and non-primordial concept, and seeks to deconstruct the social and cultural constructions (which he sees as basically European) in order develop a perspective that would advance identity politics. Shenhav admits the existence of an asymmetry between the way in which he negates a substantive identity and criticizes the formation of a Hegemonic identity, while encouraging the formation of another substantive identity he wants to liberate within his identity politics. In his opinion, this can be morally justified since an analogy cannot be made between the oppressors and the oppressed and between the rulers and the ruled.
Shenhav seeks to look at the postcolonial and postmodern discourse frames not merely as critical and deconstructivist frameworks, but rather as ones proposing a principal basis to change reality. Therefore, he negates one option of liberal multiculturalism which asks for a liberal democracy
promising full equality between its citizens by overcoming the mechanisms of oppression and discrimination; and also a second option of a liberal multiculturalism which asks for asks for a liberal democracy which institutionalizes the various groups of society. He thinks nationality, wisely using the values of liberalism and democracy, is major a mechanism of oppression and discrimination in the Israeli society. Therefore, he believes it is not enough for liberal democracy to grant equality to its minorities, since it also renders the "majority" group transparent
. Appropriate multiculturalist alternatives, according to Shenhav, may include, for instance, a cultural/national autonomy to the Israeli Arabs, or the establishment of a binational state in Israel or the West Bank
. Shenhav suggests the multiculturalist arrangements be in accordance with the degrees of openness of various groups of society, and the degrees of closeness between them. He also stresses the importance of cultural representations and distributive justice
.
Shenhav's analysis of Israel within the postcolonial framework has been argued to be irrelevant, since Zionism is not a colonial movement conquering overseas territories, but rather a people returning to its homeland. and the concept of a two state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been described as unrealistic. In addition, he has been criticized by the right. Steven Plaut
, for example, accused him of being outright anti-zionist, as well as anti-liberal.
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
i sociologist and critical theorist. He is known for his contributions in the fields of bureaucracy
Bureaucracy
A bureaucracy is an organization of non-elected officials of a governmental or organization who implement the rules, laws, and functions of their institution, and are occasionally characterized by officialism and red tape.-Weberian bureaucracy:...
, management
Management
Management in all business and organizational activities is the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively...
and capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
, as well as for his research on ethnicity in Israeli society and its relationship with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Israeli-Palestinian conflict
The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is the ongoing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. The conflict is wide-ranging, and the term is also used in reference to the earlier phases of the same conflict, between Jewish and Zionist yishuv and the Arab population living in Palestine under Ottoman or...
.
Biography
Born Yehouda Shaharabani in Beer Sheva in 1952 to a family of Iraqi Jews. At the age of three he moved with his family to Tel AvivTel Aviv
Tel Aviv , officially Tel Aviv-Yafo , is the second most populous city in Israel, with a population of 404,400 on a land area of . The city is located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline in west-central Israel. It is the largest and most populous city in the metropolitan area of Gush Dan, with...
and again, at the age of ten, to Petah Tikva
Petah Tikva
Petah Tikva known as Em HaMoshavot , is a city in the Center District of Israel, east of Tel Aviv.According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, at the end of 2009, the city's population stood at 209,600. The population density is approximately...
.
In 1977 he received his BA in sociology and labor studies from the Tel Aviv University
Tel Aviv University
Tel Aviv University is a public university located in Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv, Israel. With nearly 30,000 students, TAU is Israel's largest university.-History:...
and four years later he received his Master's degree
Master's degree
A master's is an academic degree granted to individuals who have undergone study demonstrating a mastery or high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice...
in Industrial management from the Technion. He then traveled to Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
, where he received another MA in 1983 and a PhD in 1985, both in sociology.
Most of his academic work is done in the Sociology and Anthropology School in the Tel Aviv University, where he is a full professor. He has also taught in several universities in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, such as the University of Wisconsin–Madison
University of Wisconsin–Madison
The University of Wisconsin–Madison is a public research university located in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. Founded in 1848, UW–Madison is the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin System. It became a land-grant institution in 1866...
, Stanford University, Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
and Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
.
He is head of advanced studies in the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute
Van Leer Jerusalem Institute
The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute is an academic institute in Jerusalem established in 1959 by the Van Leer family of the Netherlands.The Van Leer Institute is a center for the interdisciplinary study and discussion of issues related to philosophy, society, culture and education...
, and as the editor of Theory & Criticism and Theory and Criticism in Context, and as Senior Editor for the European journal Organization Studies.
He has won several awards, including the Dorothy Harlow Award of the American Academy of Management; and the Association for Israeli Studies award for The Arab Jews: A Postcolonial Reading of Nationalism, Religion, and Ethnicity.
Social activism
Shenhav is a well known figure in Israel as a public intellectual and as one of the founders of the Mizrahi Democratic Rainbow CoalitionMizrahi Democratic Rainbow Coalition
The Mizrahi Democratic Rainbow Coalition is a social justice organization among Mizrahi Jews in Israel....
, a social movement founded in 1996 by descendants of Olim from Arab countries, which defines itself as an extra-parliamentary movement seeking to challenge the ethnic structure in the Israeli society.
One of the Rainbow Coalition's chief struggles was for lands, in which Shenhav and others petitioned to the Supreme Court of Israel
Supreme Court of Israel
The Supreme Court is at the head of the court system and highest judicial instance in Israel. The Supreme Court sits in Jerusalem.The area of its jurisdiction is all of Israel and the Israeli-occupied territories. A ruling of the Supreme Court is binding upon every court, other than the Supreme...
against what he described as an unjust distribution of state owned lands, made worse by decisions of the Israel Land Administration
Israel Land Administration
The Israel Land Administration is part of the government of Israel and is responsible for managing the 93% of the land in Israel which is in the public domain. These lands are either property of the state, belong to the Jewish National Fund which controls 13% of the land, or belong to the Israel...
, and won.
In late 1996 Shenhav published in Haaretz
Haaretz
Haaretz is Israel's oldest daily newspaper. It was founded in 1918 and is now published in both Hebrew and English in Berliner format. The English edition is published and sold together with the International Herald Tribune. Both Hebrew and English editions can be read on the Internet...
an article titled "The Bond of Silence", which generated a great deal of reaction. He pointed to an "inter-generational bond of silence between the ideological commissars of the formative years of Zionism ("the salt of the earth") and the contemporary intellectuals of the Israeli Left (also "salt of the earth"). These two generations of Ashkenazi hegemony concur in their silence toward the "Mizrahi problem". He also argued that "denouncing the injustice done to the Palestinians does not endanger the status of our contemporary Ashkenazi intellectuals. It does not endanger their position as a hegemonic cultural group in Israeli society or as an economic class" and that "Dealing with the injustices inflicted on the Palestinians earns them laurels of humanism, the esteemed roles of slaughterers of sacred cows and seekers of peace, the badge of the rebel, and a catharsis in light of the crime of their parents' generation" yet the Palestinian is marked as the "Other", which can be kept on the other side of the fence. The Mizrahi Jews
Mizrahi Jews
Mizrahi Jews or Mizrahiyim, , also referred to as Adot HaMizrach are Jews descended from the Jewish communities of the Middle East, North Africa and the Caucasus...
, on the other hand, "cannot be turned into an "other," nor can they be cast beyond the fence; at most, one can construct detours to bypass development towns and poverty neighborhoods". Recognition of the injustices done to the Mizrahim will force the Israeli left to reform itself as well and to relinquish its hegemonic position. To avoid that, they created a taboo
Taboo
A taboo is a strong social prohibition relating to any area of human activity or social custom that is sacred and or forbidden based on moral judgment, religious beliefs and or scientific consensus. Breaking the taboo is usually considered objectionable or abhorrent by society...
.
The article had great resonance in and outside of Israel. It was followed by 25 response article in Haaretz and the multiplicity of references in the media was considered to have marked the beginning of a new public discussion.
Linking the political and intercommunal schism in Identity politics
Identity politics
Identity politics are political arguments that focus upon the self interest and perspectives of self-identified social interest groups and ways in which people's politics may be shaped by aspects of their identity through race, class, religion, sexual orientation or traditional dominance...
was criticized by conservative intellectuals. It was argued that Mizrahi identity is an anachronism which endangers the Israeli melting pot
Melting pot
The melting pot is a metaphor for a heterogeneous society becoming more homogeneous, the different elements "melting together" into a harmonious whole with a common culture...
.
That argument has also been associated with his activities against the Israeli occupation and for a democratic Israel and Palestine. Shenhav said that while the Jews certainly had the right for a collective self-determination
Self-determination
Self-determination is the principle in international law that nations have the right to freely choose their sovereignty and international political status with no external compulsion or external interference...
in Israel, the state must also reach an agreement with its Palestinian citizens regarding their collective representation as a national minority within it.
Bureaucracy and Rationality
Shenhav attempted to broaden the concept of RationalityRationality
In philosophy, rationality is the exercise of reason. It is the manner in which people derive conclusions when considering things deliberately. It also refers to the conformity of one's beliefs with one's reasons for belief, or with one's actions with one's reasons for action...
by referring to it as an Ideology
Ideology
An ideology is a set of ideas that constitutes one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things , as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies , or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to...
within a cultural discourse.
In his monograph Managerial Ideologies in the Age of Rationality, Shenhav argued that Max Weber
Max Weber
Karl Emil Maximilian "Max" Weber was a German sociologist and political economist who profoundly influenced social theory, social research, and the discipline of sociology itself...
's concept of bureaucracy
Bureaucracy
A bureaucracy is an organization of non-elected officials of a governmental or organization who implement the rules, laws, and functions of their institution, and are occasionally characterized by officialism and red tape.-Weberian bureaucracy:...
which gathered momentum in the 19th century and was elaborated in the 20th century, is not rational in the ontological sense, but in fact the opposite. Shenhav argued that despite its claim for precision, non-arbitrary and universal, that system's foundations are not necessarily more efficient than others and are certainly not universal, but rather of a particular social, economic and historic context.
In his book The Organization Machine: A Critical Inquiry into the Foundations of Management Theory, Shenhav sought to show how rationality was turned into an ideology by management experts (such as Alexander Hamilton Church
Alexander Hamilton Church
Alexander Hamilton Church was an English efficiency engineer and author. He became known as one of the pioneers in reducing the commercial organization of factories to the basis of a science, a work in which he was associated with J. Slater Lewis...
and Frederick Winslow Taylor
Frederick Winslow Taylor
Frederick Winslow Taylor was an American mechanical engineer who sought to improve industrial efficiency. He is regarded as the father of scientific management and was one of the first management consultants...
) in the 19th century, following the industrial revolution
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...
. During that time, large factories were incorporated, and were hard for capitalists to control. Managers assumed a more prominent role in the organized environment, and since the profession was not yet sufficiently institutionalized, managers used an ideology of rationality and efficiency to establish their power
Power (sociology)
Power is a measurement of an entity's ability to control its environment, including the behavior of other entities. The term authority is often used for power perceived as legitimate by the social structure. Power can be seen as evil or unjust, but the exercise of power is accepted as endemic to...
, control and capital.
Shenhav's basic argument is that the economic crisis at the time actually helped managers become part of the organizational landscape, since it helped justify their function. Managers adopted a rhetoric which associated management with the resolution of an economic crisis. As the crisis became widespread, statistics showed a growth in the number of managers in the West, especially the United States.
In 1999's Manufacturing Rationality: The Engineering Foundations of the Managerial Revolution, Shenhav set the concept of "Managerial Revolution" up to a critical analysis. He aimed to show how managerial language and activism developed through the creation of a language and practice that hid the aggressive and violent context of their growth. In addition to his previous studies, which described ways in which the managerial profession fought the workers and exercised symbolic and practical violence against them, he also displayed the growth of management as bound in a struggle against Capitalism, which forced it to invent itself and its language out of nothing, fighting both workers and capitalists.
Stratification and Ethnicity
Throughout his career, Shenhav published several articles on the subject of the ethnicity, race and on postcolonial regimes. In 2003 he published (in Hebrew) The Arab Jews, in which he attempted to place the discussion of the Arab Jews within the context of the discussion of the Palestinian refugees and the Palestinian narrativeNarrative
A narrative is a constructive format that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus, "knowing" or "skilled"...
. He challenges the Israeli structural knowledge which separates, factitiously in his eyes, between them.The book was also published in English in 2006 (Stanford University Press).
Shenhav traced the origins of the conceptualization of the Mizrahi Jews as Arab Jews by challenging the hegemonic discourse, which uses the category of the "Oriental Jews" and later "Mizrahi". Both of those options, according to Shenhav, conceals the Arab identities and culture and provides new cultural cultures from the Mediterranean. The book discussed the way in which two categories where juxtaposed in the Israeli discourse - one which distinguishes Jews from non-Jews, and another, which is perceived as an exclusively Jewish discourse, between Ashkenazi and Mizrahi. Shenhav seeks to undermine those categories, which he believes to be fixated and do not allow a description of Mizrahi history from a comparative perspective.
Shenhav described the operation of a cultural machine which fixated the Jews from Arab countries as Arab Jews, but did so without "purifying" them from their Arabism, and portrayed the wide border zone along which that conversion took place. He presented a critical inquiry of the relations between Zionism and the Arab Jews by displaying Zionism as an ideological practice with three simultaneous and symbiotic categories: "Nationality", "Religion" and "Ethnicity". In order to be included in the national collective, they had to be "de-Arabized". Religion distinguished between Arabs and Arab Jews, thus marking nationality among the Arab Jews. Thus, in order to belong to the Zionist-national discourse, the Arab Jews had to perform and practice Judaism. Religion, in that sense, was a means to the recruitment of the Mizrahi Jews into the Jewish nationality. Yet religion at the same time also marked them as an "Ethnic" group separate from the secular (Ashkenazi) Israeliness. For Shenhav, religion and nationality are not binary categories but are connected in dynamic relations. Zionist nationalism confiscated Judaism and did contain religious lineaments, but those were nationalized and re-formed. Shenhav does not suggest that Zionism made the Mizrahi Jews religious, but that Zionism orientalized
Orientalism
Orientalism is a term used for the imitation or depiction of aspects of Eastern cultures in the West by writers, designers and artists, as well as having other meanings...
them through religion. Thus, They could only exist within the national Zionist discourse by being classified as religious Jews, and that is why the intermediate category of Masorti
Masorti
The Masorti Movement is the name given to Conservative Judaism in Israel and other countries outside Canada and U.S. Masorti means "traditional" in Hebrew...
was created.
Shenhav argued that this Arab Jewish identity is a hybrid one, and is in part the result of dual consciousness - national and colonial
Colonialism
Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by...
- of Zionism. Yet he does not argue that contemporary Mizrahi identity is Arab-Jewish, but rather that it was a concept with a certain history that was cut off. So from a critical position, Shenhav accepts the conceptualization of the Mizrahi in the Israeli political and ethnic discussion since, according to him, the common experience of the various "communities" in Israel - in the education system
Education in Israel
Education in Israel refers to the comprehensive education system of Israel. Expenditure on education accounts for approximately 10% of GDP, and most schools are subsidized by the state.-Educational tracks:...
, the IDF
Israel Defense Forces
The Israel Defense Forces , commonly known in Israel by the Hebrew acronym Tzahal , are the military forces of the State of Israel. They consist of the ground forces, air force and navy. It is the sole military wing of the Israeli security forces, and has no civilian jurisdiction within Israel...
, the development towns and so forth - has blurred their distinctions and created a great deal of similarity between them.
The book's second central theme revolves around the connection between the Arab-Jews and the Palestinians. Shenhav's claim is that the Iraqi government's nationalization of the Iraqi Jews' property served as a governmental excuse for Israel's keeping of the Palestinian refugees' property following their exodus. Israel could thus argue for an interrelatedness between the two and claim that a population and capital exchange took place.
Postcolonialism and Multiculturalism
From a postcolonial and epistemological perspective obligating identity politicsIdentity politics
Identity politics are political arguments that focus upon the self interest and perspectives of self-identified social interest groups and ways in which people's politics may be shaped by aspects of their identity through race, class, religion, sexual orientation or traditional dominance...
, Shenhav believes the Israeli society must become multi-ethnic and therefore multi-culturalist. Among his publications on the subject is the anthology Coloniality and the Postcolonial Condition which included translations of founding texts by writers such as Frantz Fanon
Frantz Fanon
Frantz Fanon was a Martiniquo-Algerian psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary and writer whose work is influential in the fields of post-colonial studies, critical theory and Marxism...
, Homi K. Bhabha
Homi K. Bhabha
Homi K. Bhabha is the Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of English and American Literature and Language, and the Director of the Humanities Center at Harvard University. He is one of the most important figures in contemporary post-colonial studies, and has coined a number of the field's neologisms and...
and Edward Said
Edward Said
Edward Wadie Saïd was a Palestinian-American literary theorist and advocate for Palestinian rights. He was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and a founding figure in postcolonialism...
.
Shenhav focuses his multiculturalist program mostly on around the postcolonialist discourse, but also includes the postmodernist and feminist ones. For Shenhav, identity is a dynamic, constructivist, random and non-primordial concept, and seeks to deconstruct the social and cultural constructions (which he sees as basically European) in order develop a perspective that would advance identity politics. Shenhav admits the existence of an asymmetry between the way in which he negates a substantive identity and criticizes the formation of a Hegemonic identity, while encouraging the formation of another substantive identity he wants to liberate within his identity politics. In his opinion, this can be morally justified since an analogy cannot be made between the oppressors and the oppressed and between the rulers and the ruled.
Shenhav seeks to look at the postcolonial and postmodern discourse frames not merely as critical and deconstructivist frameworks, but rather as ones proposing a principal basis to change reality. Therefore, he negates one option of liberal multiculturalism which asks for a liberal democracy
Liberal democracy
Liberal democracy, also known as constitutional democracy, is a common form of representative democracy. According to the principles of liberal democracy, elections should be free and fair, and the political process should be competitive...
promising full equality between its citizens by overcoming the mechanisms of oppression and discrimination; and also a second option of a liberal multiculturalism which asks for asks for a liberal democracy which institutionalizes the various groups of society. He thinks nationality, wisely using the values of liberalism and democracy, is major a mechanism of oppression and discrimination in the Israeli society. Therefore, he believes it is not enough for liberal democracy to grant equality to its minorities, since it also renders the "majority" group transparent
Transparency (humanities)
Transparency, as used in science, engineering, business, the humanities and in a social context more generally, implies openness, communication, and accountability. Transparency is operating in such a way that it is easy for others to see what actions are performed...
. Appropriate multiculturalist alternatives, according to Shenhav, may include, for instance, a cultural/national autonomy to the Israeli Arabs, or the establishment of a binational state in Israel or the West Bank
West Bank
The West Bank ) of the Jordan River is the landlocked geographical eastern part of the Palestinian territories located in Western Asia. To the west, north, and south, the West Bank shares borders with the state of Israel. To the east, across the Jordan River, lies the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan...
. Shenhav suggests the multiculturalist arrangements be in accordance with the degrees of openness of various groups of society, and the degrees of closeness between them. He also stresses the importance of cultural representations and distributive justice
Distributive justice
Distributive justice concerns what some consider to be socially just allocation of goods in a society. A society in which incidental inequalities in outcome do not arise would be considered a society guided by the principles of distributive justice...
.
Shenhav's analysis of Israel within the postcolonial framework has been argued to be irrelevant, since Zionism is not a colonial movement conquering overseas territories, but rather a people returning to its homeland. and the concept of a two state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been described as unrealistic. In addition, he has been criticized by the right. Steven Plaut
Steven Plaut
Steven Plaut is an American-born Israeli associate professor of Business Administration at the University of Haifa and a writer. Plaut is a member of the editorial board of the Middle East Quarterly, a publication of the Middle East Forum think tank....
, for example, accused him of being outright anti-zionist, as well as anti-liberal.