ACADEMIC CAPITAL OR SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS? A Critique of Studies of Kibbutz Stratification (original) (raw)

2005, Journal of Anthropological Research 61(3): 357-380

Why have six decades of kibbutz studies failed to discover its complex stratification? This curious blindness is explained by the dominance of a scientific coalition in the study of this complex organizational field. Kibbutz uniqueness allowed this coalition perpetuating a series of partial truisms, including a lack of stratification. Its critics exposed some stratification, but evaded its main and missed its true extent. The author’s desire to solve his own society’s problems, led him to engage in a ‘long effort applied to oneself which [converted]... one’s whole view of... the social world’ (Bourdieu, 1990:16), and this view exposed the true extent of stratification. Thus, his motivation to reform the kibbutz led to scientific progress which pure academic research did not achieve, supporting Whyte’s (1992) assertion social scientists must seek social theories for action, not for pure knowl-edge.

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