The Space Between Us: On Shifting Sitting Patterns in Tel Aviv Taxi-Cabs, and Their Meanings

Abstract

The taxi is a widespread mode of public transportation. In this everyday-life urban setting total strangers, a driver and his fare, interact and co-operate. In Israel, taxi passengers must choose whether to sit in the front seat, near the stranger-driver, or in the backseat, behind him. This choice pre-structures the incoming interaction and sets its general “tone.” Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in a taxi in Tel Aviv, as well as on interviews and street observations, this article examines shifting sitting patterns in Tel Aviv taxis. These shifting proxemic patterns reveal homophilous tendencies and reflect, in a nutshell, wider structural, socioeconomic, and ideological changes undergone by Israeli society.