Masculinities and Citizenship in the Israeli Army (original) (raw)

Feminism and Military Gender Practices: Israeli Women Soldiers in "Masculine" Roles

Sociological Inquiry, 2003

Women's military service is the focus of an ongoing controversy because of its implications for the gendered nature of citizenship. While liberal feminists endorse equal service as a venue for equal citizenship, radical feminists see women's service as a reification of martial citizenship and cooperation with a hierarchical and sexist institution. These debates, however, tend to ignore the perspective of the women soldiers themselves.

Military, Masculinity, and Citizenship: Tensions and Contradictions in the Experience of Blue-Collar Soldiers

Identities-global Studies in Culture and Power, 2003

This article seeks to problematize the relationship between military service, masculinity, and citizenship, from the perspective of lower-class soldiers who serve in blue-collar roles in the Israeli military. Introducing class and ethnicity into the "taken for granted" equation of men, military, and the state reveals counter-hegemonic conceptions of masculinity and citizenship, and exposes tense and often contradictory relationships between them.

Women and the Israeli military culture

The relationship between security and gender has long been central to the academic discourse, both in Israel and beyond. The standard argument is that militarization processes create and reinforce dichotomous, hierarchical and essentialist perceptions of femininity and masculinity, thereby relegating women to the status of second-class citizens. 1 Given the militarist nature of Israeli society, this argument is pertinent to scholarship concentrating on Israel, which has long validated the contention. 2 However, in this chapter, we ask how Israeli women located at relatively powerful intersectional positions of ethnicity, class and nationality might, in fact, actually capitalize on their positionality to gain power in the military and political arenas.

From the Military as a Gendered Organization to Militarized Inequality Regimes: Research on Gender and the Military in Israel.

This article offers an analytical review of the research on gender and the military in Israel since the 1970s. I argue that the research in this field has undergone a paradigmatic shift that is based on five analytical transformations: (1) a move from a binary gendered conception to intersectionality analysis; (2) a shift from a dichotomous perception of the military organization to an analysis based on 'inequality regime' theory; (3) an emphasis on women as agents of change and resistance; (4) a focus on men and militarized masculinities; and (5) macro-analysis of the significance of women's service in a militaristic society. The article concludes with a discussion of the current political dynamics and conflicts that shape both the construction of the military gender regime and the production of the research in this field.

Masculinity and Violence in Israel and Palestine

Unpublished research paper for undergraduate course. My research paper will explore the concepts of masculinity in relation to Israeli soldiers and Palestinians living under occupation. I will explore the intertwined relationships between masculinity and Palestinian nationalism, and how gender is constructed in ways that promote Israeli national identity. First, I will analyze the findings of scholars concerning the masculinities of Palestinian refugees in refugee camps in Jordan. We will also examine Palestinian volunteers serving in the Israeli military and the implications of the gifts and withholdings of the Israeli state on the construction of Palestinian masculinity and citizenship in Israel. Next, I will look at the effects of physical violence on the identity construction of Israeli soldiers and Palestinians. The beating of the Palestinian enforces the Israeli perception of the Palestinian as a non-resistant subject of colonialism, while the battered body to the Palestinian is a symbolic embodiment of the 20th century history of subordination and powerlessness, but also the determination to resist and struggle for national dependence. Lastly, I will explore how the military impacts hegemonic masculinity in Israel and how that promotes national identity. Masculinity in Israel is defined by traits usually associated with soldiers; thus, the soldier persona is the ideal masculine figure. This is furthered by the reach of military culture in Israel. Israeli national identity is cemented by othering those who don’t fit the Israeli soldier mold, comparing the masculinity and militarism of the Israeli mane with the Arab enemy and other undesirable traits, juxtaposing this to the ideal image. This hegemonic masculine identity plays a major role in shaping the hierarchy of gendered and civic identities in Israel.

Is " Hegemonic Masculinity " Hegemonic as Masculinity? Two Israeli Case Studies

In this article, we consider Connell's theory of masculinity through a phenomenon we encountered in our respective research projects, one focusing on the construction of masculinity among early Zionist ideological workers and the other focusing on present-day military masculinities and ethnicity in Israel. In both contexts , a bodily performance which marks the breach of " civilized behavior " is adopted in order to signify accentuated masculinity. In both, a symbolic hierarchy of masculinities emerges, in which Arabs—and in the case of Golani soldiers, also " Arab Jews, " that is, Jews who descended from Arab countries—are marked as more masculine than hegemonic Ashkenazi men (i.e., men of European descent). Thus, while our case studies support Connell's argument that masculinity may be practiced in various ways, the hierarchical relationship between masculine styles appears to be more multilayered than Connell's theory suggests. We connect the tension between masculine status, understood as a location within a symbolic hierarchy of masculinities, and social status in our case studies to the contradiction at the heart of modern masculinity. We argue that in order to account for this tension, which may arise in specific interactional contexts, we need a concept of masculinity as a cultural repertoire, of which people make situated selections. The repertoire of masculinity is where the elements and models that organize both