Ariela Popper-Giveon

Women as Healers; Women as Clients: The Encounter Between Traditional Arab Women Healers and Their Clients

Interviews conducted with Arab women in Israel who sought treatment from traditional women healers show that such women undergo a change of both a personal and a social nature after the visit. This study enumerates and analyzes the aspects of this change and concludes that visiting traditional Arab women healers constitutes a coping path that empowers clients. Such empowerment, achieved primarily by clients who maintain regular, extended contact with healers, is not social but personal and follows traditional norms without challenging them. This is a model of practical empowerment that derives from the accepted norms of its culture, implying the existence of an empowering agent and an individual who are involved in a process of growth in a social context that embodies numerous restrictions.

Claiming power through hardship: Initiation narratives of Palestinian traditional women healers in Israel

This article offers a new perspective regarding the initiation of traditional healers through an analysis of the initiation narratives of ten Muslim Palestinian traditional women healers in Israel. The analysis points to three shared themes within these narratives: they begin with a description of the initiations source (inheritance or revelation); they focus primarily on a later stage of the woman healers life; and they include an in-depth description of the suffering and hardships that she has endured. These findings describe the initiation of Palestinian traditional women healers in Israel as a process rather than an event; as a derivative of the woman healers life rather than its driving force.

Returning to Ourselves: Palestinian Complementary Healers in Israel

Studies of traditional healers in various cultures describe their initiation into the healing profession as a climax that constructs their professional and personal identity. Literature emphasizes the healers’ intense association with the culture in which they work, as reflected in the initiation narratives that healers in various cultures recount. In this article we reveal unique initiation stories and identity formation from Palestinian nonconventional healers in Israel who described a cross-cultural journey: After studying healing traditions of foreign cultures and on returning to their own cultural environment, they developed a unique and complex combination of healing values and traditions. We examine the stories of these healers, whose personal and professional identities are affected by cultural, political, and social contexts. We note the blending of healing traditions and practices, and the changes in identity, assessing them against cultural processes that many Palestinians in Israel have been undergoing over the past few decades.

Race-based experiences of ethnic minority health professionals: Arab physicians and nurses in Israeli public healthcare organizations

ABSTRACT Increasing workforce diversity was found to contribute to the narrowing of disparities in health. However, racism toward ethnic minority health professionals has not been adequately researched. In Israel, public healthcare organizations that serve a mixed Jewish-Arab population employ Arab minority healthcare professionals. Instances of prejudice and manifestations of racism toward them, which frequently surface in public discussion and the media, have unfortunately gained little scholarly attention. We used the intergroup contact approach and the theory of the social process of everyday racism as a theoretical framework. The objective of the research was to study race-based experiences of Israeli Arab healthcare professionals. Methodology: We used a qualitative research method that allows respondents to describe their views, experiences, beliefs and behavior in the way they think about them. During 2013 and 2014 we conducted in-depth interviews with a snowball sample of 10 Arab physicians and 13 Arab nurses who work in Israeli public hospitals. The study protocol was ethically approved. Findings: Interviewees noted institutional efforts to maintain egalitarianism and equality. However, at the micro-level, interviewees, mostly nurses, reported instances that ranged from refusal to accept treatment from an Arab nurse, through verbal abuse, to the use of physical violence against them. At the meso-level, interviewees, mostly physicians, reported experiences of institutional discrimination. At the macro-level, one physician reported policy-related discrimination in the context of the immigration of Russian Jewish physicians to Israel. Conclusions: We recommend combining the intergroup contact approach with the social process theory of racism to examine minorities’ subjective perceptions, especially in conflictual and violent contexts; conducting broad-based quantitative research in Israeli healthcare organizations, which may have important implications for the specific strategies to be used; and emphasizing the importance of institutional support. By reconstructing race-based experiences of ethnic minority health professionals, health organizations can better manage racial situations and reduce their frequency.

The white coat trap: pharmacy as an ethnic-dominated occupation in Israel

ABSTRACT Health professions are perceived by the Arab minority in Israel as a desired path of education and employment. Arabs in Israel are thus highly represented in these professions, especially pharmacy. This study analyses the unique ethnic and gender composition of pharmacists in Israel and explores their career experiences and perceptions. Both quantitative and qualitative methodologies are employed. The findings reflect dual marginality in the pharmacy profession in Israel, that is currently both female and ethnic-dominated. This situation is described in the Arab pharmacists’ stories, that delineate the disparity between their aspirations when starting their careers and their hardships after working for several years as pharmacists. Arabs in Israel face unique difficulties in the labour market. Many choose the health professions, including pharmacy, as a path of mobility. Pharmacy, however, is perceived as a niche (ethnic and female-dominated) profession in Israel. Hence, its practitioners suffer from devaluation in wage and prestige.

Traditional healing, higher education, autonomy and hardship: coping paths of Palestinian women in Israel

This article presents two coping paths available to Palestinian women in Israel today – turning to a traditional healer in the community, an act that represents turning ‘inwards’, and pursuing higher education, an act that represents turning ‘outwards’. These two paths enable coping – particularly in times of societal transition – and provide opportunities for the women who utilize them. On the other hand, each of these paths is laden with unique challenges and the women who take them must often pay a price. Despite the differences between them, the article reflects the similar ramifications of these coping paths on the womens lives.

Paths of Power: Traditional Palestinian Women Healers in Israel

This article presents a coping path currently available to Palestinian women in Israel—the vocation of traditional healing. Traditional healing is, by and large, considered as an acceptable vocation in the Palestinian society in Israel, even as a women’s vocation. It is identified with folk culture and local ethnicity, with common theories of disease and medicinal herbs that are part of the local landscape. The traditional women healers are considered by most of their community members as experts of the accepted values— collectivism and patriarchy—and are crowned as agents of socialization and acculturation for younger women. Although traditional healing is identified, in many ways, with the past, with conservatism and authenticity, for Palestinian women in Israel, it comprises a coping path also in the current, liberal and global reality. This path utilizes a culturally accepted way for Palestinian women to realize exceptional independence, influence and power. On the individual level, the vocation of traditional healing provides the women healers a route to self-realization, personal power, and enhanced self-esteem. On the social level, it provides the women healers with authority and influence among their families, their patients and to a certain extent, among the community at large. The current article examines the coping means which the vocation of traditional healing offers to Palestinian women in Israel. It commences with a description of traditional healing among Palestinians in Israel, of the coping paths available to Muslim women in the Middle East and a methodological survey. Subsequently, the article presents the coping means that traditional healing provides women while distinguishing between

The Secret Drama at the Patient’s Bedside—Refusal of Treatment Because of the Practitioner’s Ethnic Identity: The Medical Staff ’s Point of View:

Patients’ refusal of treatment based on the practitioner’s ethnic identity reveals a clash of values: neutrality in medicine versus patient-centered care. Taking the Israeli–Palestinian conflict into account, this article aims at examining Israeli health care professionals’ points of view concerning patients’ refusal of treatment because of a practitioner’s ethnic identity. Fifty in-depth interviews were conducted with 10 managers and 40 health care professionals, Jewish and Arab, employed at 11 public hospitals. Most refusal incidents recorded are unidirectional: Jewish patients refusing to be treated by Arab practitioners. Refusals are usually directed toward nurses and junior medical staff members, especially if recognizable as religious Muslims. Refusals are often initiated by the patients’ relatives and occur more frequently during periods of escalation in the conflict. The structural competency approach can be applied to increase awareness of the role of social determinants in shaping patients’ ethnic-based treatment refusals and to improve the handling of such incidents.

When Horizons Do Not Merge Perplexity, Doubt, and Research Implications

Gadamer claims that the horizons of the listener and the narrator merge and create a new understanding of the narrative’s meaning. This study examines encounters between researcher and informant in which these horizons do not merge, encounters—usually ignored in the literature—in which the researcher senses that the informant’s statements raise questions, cause confusion, or are perceived as perhaps unacceptable. It analyzes these moments and their implications regarding the research process and findings. We claim that not all statements are accepted. Researchers sift through questionable data, disregarding it at times. This may cause a “converse error,” leading researchers to ignore information perceived as doubtful that in fact could be valuable and contribute innovative understandings and knowledge.

Blood and Ink: Treatment Practices of Traditional Palestinian Women Healers in Israel

This article addresses the treatment practices of traditional Palestinian women healers in Israel. It begins with a presentation of the treatment practices utilized by women healers and continues with a description of the changes such practices are currently undergoing. The research indicates that some women healers—in particular, those residing in mixed Jewish-Arab cities in the countrys center—are slowly adopting treatment practices identified as masculine: they are abandoning the treatment of problems attributed to natural causes and taking up the treatment of problems attributed to supernatural causes, incorporating treatment practices of a magical or even a religious nature. These tendencies reflect their desire to attain the power and prestige ascribed to their male counterparts. Thus, in this community, the boundaries between feminine and masculine traditional healing, as well as the polarization between the little tradition and the great tradition (sensu Redfield) are not clear-cut, binary, or occurring in a vacuum, but rather contextual, dynamic, hazy, and elusive.