Stavit Sinai - Profile on Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Books by Stavit Sinai
Routledge, The International Library of Sociology (ILS), 2019
Sociology, emerging in the 19th century as the study of national societies, is the intellectual p... more Sociology, emerging in the 19th century as the study of national societies, is the intellectual product of its time, power relations and social imaginaries. As a discursive practice that was enmeshed in the meta-narratives of modernity, the discipline of sociology bears the inherent capacity to shape socially shared concepts and construct collective identities. This book examines the relationships between sociology and projects of national identity construction, and presents a critique of Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, the prominent Israeli sociologist, known as the "father of Israeli sociology".
The book focuses on Eisenstadt’s sociology of Israel as a case of knowledge construction within an ideological system and examines the relationships between his various sociological analyses of Israeli society and the Zionist imaginary, namely the deeply entrenched political myths and historiographical narratives that constitute Israel’s hegemonic national identity. By emphasizing the interrelation between textuality, identity, and loaded language, the volume seeks to demythologize Eisenstadt’s sociology of Israel. Three major concepts in Eisenstadt’s scholarship are specifically thematized: integration, civilization, and modernities. In each of these foci, the author shows how Eisenstadt’s sociological conjectures reproduce dominant Zionist historiographical representations of the past, rationalize prevalent social hierarchies, reify the boundaries of a national collective "Self", and render legitimacy to Israel’s governing ethnocratic tendencies, underlying the premises of the Zionist settler-colonial project.
Sociological Knowledge and Collective Identity will appeal to those interested in the interconnectedness of sociology and political memory, as well as in a radical postcolonial reconstruction of sociology.
Papers by Stavit Sinai
Explaining the Holocaust and Genocide in Contemporary Curricula, Textbooks and in Pupils‘ Writings in Europe: Country Studies
This text contains summaries of explanations of the Holocaust and other atrocities and genocides ... more This text contains summaries of explanations of the Holocaust and other atrocities and genocides found in curricula, textbooks and pupils’ writings in twenty-two countries in Europe and in Turkey. It focuses on conceptualisations of events, protagonists, effects and aftereffects of the events, the timescale and spatial scale ascribed to them, the points of view of implied readers and authors, and the causes of the Holocaust and of other instances of extreme violence. This supplementary material is based on data collected in 2016 and 2017 and is representative not of national historical understandings, but of understandings expressed in specific places at a specific time.
Ethnic and Racial Studies
The Identities and Modernities in Europe series examines one of the central issues in the social ... more The Identities and Modernities in Europe series examines one of the central issues in the social sciences, modernity, by way of a comparative study of processes of Europeanisation. Arising from a European Commission funded FP7 project, 'Identities and Modernities in Europe', an international collaborative research project, the series brings together the latest research findings into modernity carried out by cutting-edge researchers across Europe using 'identity' and 'Europe' as a way into the study of modernity. In the post-Cold War, 9/11 and Lehman Brothers era, which is also marked by a rapid pace of globalisation, questions concerning 'Europe' and identity are becoming more and more urgent and the debates are heating up. With the unfolding of the euro crisis, both 'Europe' and European identity are earnestly interrogated on a daily basis by a wide range of people, not only at the periphery of 'Europe' -both member states and non-member states of the European Union -but also within the euro area. In fact the question of 'Europe' has not been so pertinent for a long time since the inception of the EU. This is taking place against a wider background of rapid globalisation which is accompanied, perhaps paradoxically, by an increasingly fragmented world. In such a supposedly fragmenting world, identities inevitably attract more and more attention. Identities are a modern concern and 'Europe' is the birth place of the currently dominant form of modernity, and therefore these existential questions about 'Europe' and identities eventually lead to the questioning of modernity as we know it. The series endeavours to address these concerns by gathering latest and interdisciplinary research results about the idea of Europe, European identities and Europeanisation. The volumes collected in the series present original research grounded in history, sociology and anthropology on the question of 'Europe', identity and modernity. Some contributors present a comparative analysis; others present a one-country based case study. The geographical areas covered in the series go beyond the EU and include Turkey, Croatia and Japan. Various dimensions about 'Europe', identity and modernity are explored: Europeanisation and modernisation, tolerance, discursive construction of Europe, religion, nationalism, collective identity construction and globalisation. A variety of methods to collect data are employed: in-depth interviews, discourse analysis, civilisational analysis and biographical interviews. Each volume's nuanced analysis will come together to help realise a more comprehensive understanding of 'Europe', identity and modernity.
Sociological Knowledge and Collective Identity
This text contains summaries of explanations of the Holocaust and other atrocities and genocides ... more This text contains summaries of explanations of the Holocaust and other atrocities and genocides found in curricula, textbooks and pupils’ writings in twenty-two countries in Europe and in Turkey. It focuses on conceptualisations of events, protagonists, effects and aftereffects of the events, the timescale and spatial scale ascribed to them, the points of view of implied readers and authors, and the causes of the Holocaust and of other instances of extreme violence. This supplementary material is based on data collected in 2016 and 2017 and is representative not of national historical understandings, but of understandings expressed in specific places at a specific time.
The multiple modernities thesis has been the focus of scholarly debates in the last decade and ha... more The multiple modernities thesis has been the focus of scholarly debates in the last decade and has become widely accepted in the study of non-Western societies. Yet the thesis suffers from a major incoherence which lies in its principal assumptions about the process by which social change occurs. The article offers a critique of the multiple modernities thesis which challenges Eisenstadt’s understanding of diverse cultural contexts and their localized institutional constellations on account of its dualistic division into two levels: the intangible (ontological visions or culture) and the tangible (structure or system) by which it seeks to account for the plurality of modern societies.
Book Reviews by Stavit Sinai
Conference Presentations by Stavit Sinai
IV ISA Forum of Sociology Paper 676.3: Sociology and Settler-Colonialism Research Committees Ses... more IV ISA Forum of Sociology
Paper 676.3: Sociology and Settler-Colonialism
Research Committees Session: Multiple Modernities and Colonialism(s)
Tuesday, 23 February 2021: 16:00 - 17:30 Brasília Time (BRT)
Eisenstadt’s Civilizational Approach and Zionist Historical Imaginary, ESA 2015 Prague
Junior Scholar’s Prize for Best Paper: Self and Otherness in Israeli Sociology, ISA 2014 Yokohama.
Talks by Stavit Sinai
Eisenstadt and the Zionist Narrative, ISA International Laboratory for Ph.D. Students 2015, Singapore
Drafts by Stavit Sinai
The study examines the political philosophy of Zionism in relation to European colonial ideology.... more The study examines the political philosophy of Zionism in relation to European colonial ideology. It analyzes the conceptual application of meta-narratives such as "progress", "modernity", and "civilization" which dominated the fin de siècle discursive sphere. The study focuses on the different discursive strategies means of writing and knowledge production in the works of Zionist intellectuals. In doing so, the research advances the conception of Zionism within the field of settler colonialism and sheds light on the relations between the constitutive imaginaries of late European colonialism and Zionism's self-understanding from a postcolonial perspective. It is argued that based on the myths of progress, modernity, and civilization, Zionism has established not just a new social-political system, but also a new epistemic order whose roots lie in the symbolic construction of the "West" and it's "other".
Opinions by Stavit Sinai
Speaking Up in Times of Apartheid
Virtue cannot be taught for it can only be practiced in a particular historical context of upheav... more Virtue cannot be taught for it can only be practiced in a particular historical context of upheaval. Going back to the Aristotelian notion of virtue, this political piece lays out the following questions which intellectuals must face in times when apartheid is ever-expanding structure that poses a risk of a fragmented society, bifurcated across pseudo-ethnic and economic divisions: What level of responsibility one has to evince when encountering a war criminal and representative of an apartheid state? Under what conditions must one fulfill the moral duty of speaking up against a regime whose modus operandi is the practice of crimes against humanity? The following text provides a vivid example of such a situation.
Berlin, 2018
Stavit Sinai
Teaching Documents by Stavit Sinai
What is to be and what is to become? What is the essence of being, of time, and human existence? ... more What is to be and what is to become? What is the essence of being, of time, and human existence? These are some of the questions that Aristotle’s metaphysics unravels and that we will explore in the course.
The execution of Socrates at the hands of the Athenian democracy and the philosophical reactions ... more The execution of Socrates at the hands of the Athenian democracy and the philosophical reactions to it have formed what is known as western thought. Despite the profound beauty of this philosophy, to be able to rebel against its deeply entrenched oppressive mechanisms that dominate contemporary everyday lives one must first learn it.
In my introduction to Plato, we explore questions like How can something BE and NOT BE at the same time? What are the psychological dynamics involved in getting a person to focus attention on first principles rather than on the titillating fascinating particulars that absorb us most of our lives? What is Plato's perception of justice, time, love, and virtue - and how do they all relate to Plato's moral absolutism?
This course was and is taught at Spandau's community college in Berlin since Autumn 2018.
Feel free to join me in this intellectual journey.
Routledge, The International Library of Sociology (ILS), 2019
Sociology, emerging in the 19th century as the study of national societies, is the intellectual p... more Sociology, emerging in the 19th century as the study of national societies, is the intellectual product of its time, power relations and social imaginaries. As a discursive practice that was enmeshed in the meta-narratives of modernity, the discipline of sociology bears the inherent capacity to shape socially shared concepts and construct collective identities. This book examines the relationships between sociology and projects of national identity construction, and presents a critique of Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, the prominent Israeli sociologist, known as the "father of Israeli sociology".
The book focuses on Eisenstadt’s sociology of Israel as a case of knowledge construction within an ideological system and examines the relationships between his various sociological analyses of Israeli society and the Zionist imaginary, namely the deeply entrenched political myths and historiographical narratives that constitute Israel’s hegemonic national identity. By emphasizing the interrelation between textuality, identity, and loaded language, the volume seeks to demythologize Eisenstadt’s sociology of Israel. Three major concepts in Eisenstadt’s scholarship are specifically thematized: integration, civilization, and modernities. In each of these foci, the author shows how Eisenstadt’s sociological conjectures reproduce dominant Zionist historiographical representations of the past, rationalize prevalent social hierarchies, reify the boundaries of a national collective "Self", and render legitimacy to Israel’s governing ethnocratic tendencies, underlying the premises of the Zionist settler-colonial project.
Sociological Knowledge and Collective Identity will appeal to those interested in the interconnectedness of sociology and political memory, as well as in a radical postcolonial reconstruction of sociology.
Explaining the Holocaust and Genocide in Contemporary Curricula, Textbooks and in Pupils‘ Writings in Europe: Country Studies
This text contains summaries of explanations of the Holocaust and other atrocities and genocides ... more This text contains summaries of explanations of the Holocaust and other atrocities and genocides found in curricula, textbooks and pupils’ writings in twenty-two countries in Europe and in Turkey. It focuses on conceptualisations of events, protagonists, effects and aftereffects of the events, the timescale and spatial scale ascribed to them, the points of view of implied readers and authors, and the causes of the Holocaust and of other instances of extreme violence. This supplementary material is based on data collected in 2016 and 2017 and is representative not of national historical understandings, but of understandings expressed in specific places at a specific time.
Ethnic and Racial Studies
The Identities and Modernities in Europe series examines one of the central issues in the social ... more The Identities and Modernities in Europe series examines one of the central issues in the social sciences, modernity, by way of a comparative study of processes of Europeanisation. Arising from a European Commission funded FP7 project, 'Identities and Modernities in Europe', an international collaborative research project, the series brings together the latest research findings into modernity carried out by cutting-edge researchers across Europe using 'identity' and 'Europe' as a way into the study of modernity. In the post-Cold War, 9/11 and Lehman Brothers era, which is also marked by a rapid pace of globalisation, questions concerning 'Europe' and identity are becoming more and more urgent and the debates are heating up. With the unfolding of the euro crisis, both 'Europe' and European identity are earnestly interrogated on a daily basis by a wide range of people, not only at the periphery of 'Europe' -both member states and non-member states of the European Union -but also within the euro area. In fact the question of 'Europe' has not been so pertinent for a long time since the inception of the EU. This is taking place against a wider background of rapid globalisation which is accompanied, perhaps paradoxically, by an increasingly fragmented world. In such a supposedly fragmenting world, identities inevitably attract more and more attention. Identities are a modern concern and 'Europe' is the birth place of the currently dominant form of modernity, and therefore these existential questions about 'Europe' and identities eventually lead to the questioning of modernity as we know it. The series endeavours to address these concerns by gathering latest and interdisciplinary research results about the idea of Europe, European identities and Europeanisation. The volumes collected in the series present original research grounded in history, sociology and anthropology on the question of 'Europe', identity and modernity. Some contributors present a comparative analysis; others present a one-country based case study. The geographical areas covered in the series go beyond the EU and include Turkey, Croatia and Japan. Various dimensions about 'Europe', identity and modernity are explored: Europeanisation and modernisation, tolerance, discursive construction of Europe, religion, nationalism, collective identity construction and globalisation. A variety of methods to collect data are employed: in-depth interviews, discourse analysis, civilisational analysis and biographical interviews. Each volume's nuanced analysis will come together to help realise a more comprehensive understanding of 'Europe', identity and modernity.
Sociological Knowledge and Collective Identity
This text contains summaries of explanations of the Holocaust and other atrocities and genocides ... more This text contains summaries of explanations of the Holocaust and other atrocities and genocides found in curricula, textbooks and pupils’ writings in twenty-two countries in Europe and in Turkey. It focuses on conceptualisations of events, protagonists, effects and aftereffects of the events, the timescale and spatial scale ascribed to them, the points of view of implied readers and authors, and the causes of the Holocaust and of other instances of extreme violence. This supplementary material is based on data collected in 2016 and 2017 and is representative not of national historical understandings, but of understandings expressed in specific places at a specific time.
The multiple modernities thesis has been the focus of scholarly debates in the last decade and ha... more The multiple modernities thesis has been the focus of scholarly debates in the last decade and has become widely accepted in the study of non-Western societies. Yet the thesis suffers from a major incoherence which lies in its principal assumptions about the process by which social change occurs. The article offers a critique of the multiple modernities thesis which challenges Eisenstadt’s understanding of diverse cultural contexts and their localized institutional constellations on account of its dualistic division into two levels: the intangible (ontological visions or culture) and the tangible (structure or system) by which it seeks to account for the plurality of modern societies.
IV ISA Forum of Sociology Paper 676.3: Sociology and Settler-Colonialism Research Committees Ses... more IV ISA Forum of Sociology
Paper 676.3: Sociology and Settler-Colonialism
Research Committees Session: Multiple Modernities and Colonialism(s)
Tuesday, 23 February 2021: 16:00 - 17:30 Brasília Time (BRT)
Eisenstadt’s Civilizational Approach and Zionist Historical Imaginary, ESA 2015 Prague
Junior Scholar’s Prize for Best Paper: Self and Otherness in Israeli Sociology, ISA 2014 Yokohama.
Eisenstadt and the Zionist Narrative, ISA International Laboratory for Ph.D. Students 2015, Singapore
The study examines the political philosophy of Zionism in relation to European colonial ideology.... more The study examines the political philosophy of Zionism in relation to European colonial ideology. It analyzes the conceptual application of meta-narratives such as "progress", "modernity", and "civilization" which dominated the fin de siècle discursive sphere. The study focuses on the different discursive strategies means of writing and knowledge production in the works of Zionist intellectuals. In doing so, the research advances the conception of Zionism within the field of settler colonialism and sheds light on the relations between the constitutive imaginaries of late European colonialism and Zionism's self-understanding from a postcolonial perspective. It is argued that based on the myths of progress, modernity, and civilization, Zionism has established not just a new social-political system, but also a new epistemic order whose roots lie in the symbolic construction of the "West" and it's "other".
Speaking Up in Times of Apartheid
Virtue cannot be taught for it can only be practiced in a particular historical context of upheav... more Virtue cannot be taught for it can only be practiced in a particular historical context of upheaval. Going back to the Aristotelian notion of virtue, this political piece lays out the following questions which intellectuals must face in times when apartheid is ever-expanding structure that poses a risk of a fragmented society, bifurcated across pseudo-ethnic and economic divisions: What level of responsibility one has to evince when encountering a war criminal and representative of an apartheid state? Under what conditions must one fulfill the moral duty of speaking up against a regime whose modus operandi is the practice of crimes against humanity? The following text provides a vivid example of such a situation.
Berlin, 2018
Stavit Sinai
What is to be and what is to become? What is the essence of being, of time, and human existence? ... more What is to be and what is to become? What is the essence of being, of time, and human existence? These are some of the questions that Aristotle’s metaphysics unravels and that we will explore in the course.
The execution of Socrates at the hands of the Athenian democracy and the philosophical reactions ... more The execution of Socrates at the hands of the Athenian democracy and the philosophical reactions to it have formed what is known as western thought. Despite the profound beauty of this philosophy, to be able to rebel against its deeply entrenched oppressive mechanisms that dominate contemporary everyday lives one must first learn it.
In my introduction to Plato, we explore questions like How can something BE and NOT BE at the same time? What are the psychological dynamics involved in getting a person to focus attention on first principles rather than on the titillating fascinating particulars that absorb us most of our lives? What is Plato's perception of justice, time, love, and virtue - and how do they all relate to Plato's moral absolutism?
This course was and is taught at Spandau's community college in Berlin since Autumn 2018.
Feel free to join me in this intellectual journey.