Gad Yair

‘Unite Unite Europe’ The political and cultural structures of Europe as reflected in the Eurovision Song Contest

Abstract This study focuses on the voting matrix of the yearly song festival, the Eurovision Song Contest. It analyzes the cohesive bonds among the participating nations and studies the positional equivalencies in taste. The cohesive bonds analysis reveals a three-Bloc political structure. The cohesion of each Bloc is based on different sentiments and interests. The Western Bloc can be viewed as a coalition based on historical and political interests. The Northern Bloc draws its solidarity from common cultural and primordial lingual codes (i.e. German). The diffuse Mediterranean Bloc probably achieves its unstable alliance from common cultural experiences. In contrast, the structural equivalence analysis - which focuses on taste as revealed by similar patterns of voting - portrays a more diffuse structure, interpreted as ‘islands of taste’; these are dispersed in line with cultural and lingual cleavages. The implications of these findings are discussed.

The commitments to long distance running and levels of activity: personal or structural?

Sport and leisure roles contribute to health and to the quality of life. Therefore, understanding the underlying causes of the commitments to these roles have gained in importance. This paper analy...

School Organization and Market Ecology: a realist sociological look at the infrastructure of school choice

Abstract Programs of school choice are based largely on the idea of a free market’. Recent reform efforts have been based on the assumption that market‐driven educational systems would bring higher achievement levels and greater satisfaction among clients. According to popular views, parents would shop for a school just as they do for any other commodity and competition between schools would ensue, with each school trying to improve itself thereby attracting consumers. There is a major drawback to this reasoning. Markets are rarely completely free from regulation and control, and the desires of individuals do not fully explain the social facts of school choice. As a complement to current school choice studies, a structural explanation of school choice within the theory of network analysis is presented. The study analyses choice in terms of inter‐school student transfers and explains choice as the combined result of two factors. The first is the organization of student mobility in schools, in terms of vaca...

When Classrooms Matter: implications of between‐classroom variability for educational policy in Israel

ABSTRACT This study assesses several policy implications of within‐school, between‐classroom variability in pupil achievement. It diverges from current school effect studies by directly modelling pupil achievement in the Jerusalem public primary school system. This three‐level study includes pupils, classrooms and schools, thus allowing an appropriate estimate of the variations between these three levels. The findings show that between‐classroom variability is consistently greater than the estimated variation between schools. These findings contrast with traditional school‐level analyses that usually ignore within‐school variability. In the light of these findings we address three educational and policy issues. First, we probe into the moral consequences of between‐classroom, within‐school variability, specifically focusing on issues of choice and commitment. Second, we scrutinize the administrative policy of ‘social integration’ and reflect on some educational consequences that result from our findings. ...

What keeps them running? The ‘circle of commitment’ of long distance runners

Analysis of commitment in long distance running has developed rapidly over the past decade. No attention has been devoted, however, to different commitment patterns of runners. This paper identifies the commitments of ‘professional level’, ‘semi-professional level’ and ‘amateur level’ long distance runners. Discriminant analysis reveals that those of amateur level have relatively weaker personal and structural commitment in comparison with the professional level runners. Semi-professional level runners are in a marginal position: while they have the same personal commitment as the more serious runners, they do not have the parallel structural commitment. The implications of this position are analysed. The preliminary formulation of a theoretical model of sport and leisure commitment is presented, in terms of ‘a circle of commitment’. This involves commitment profile, self-concept, activity levels and achievements.

Israeli existential anxiety: cultural trauma and the constitution of national character

The present paper extends recent studies of national character – suggesting that the Israeli case revolves around a set of deep cultural codes which constitute various empirical manifestations. Broadening on this re-emerging paradigm, the study provides a specific case study of a major trait of Israeli national character, namely existential anxiety and fear of annihilation. It does so while advancing the idea that cultural trauma sets a context for Israeli national character. The analysis shows that Israelis constantly reference persistent and endemic existential fears of annihilation. They do so while tying together four levels: the mythological predicament, historical evidence, contemporary threats and future risks.

The cultural inertia of the habitus: gendered narrations of agency amongst educated female Palestinians in Israel

Key experiences are short and intense instructional episodes that students remember to have had a decisive effect on their lives and are usually equated with a sense of self‐direction and empowerment. This study analyzes gender differences in the narrations of key educational experiences of Palestinian Israeli students—an educated segment in Israeli‐Palestinian society. The results suggest that while female Palestinians in Israeli academic programs have attained more than equal gender representation, a significant number of respondents still express traditional gendered conceptions. Though academically successful, many female students hide motives of agency, while expressing their stories as traditional gendered narratives. These results imply that while gender equality has been formally attained amongst Palestinians in Israel, gender differences persist with regard to womens basic cultural habitus, even amongst educated students. It thus suggests that while efforts to achieve formal and institutional ge...

Existential Uncertainty and the Will to Conform: The Expressive Basis of Coleman's Rational Choice Paradigm

This article provides a new reading of Colemans rational choice paradigm. Colemans overt assumptions about action depicted the latter to be purposive and rational, suggesting that action is taken in order to maximize long-term instrumental utility. This article shows that, in his empirical studies, Coleman relied on expressive assumptions about the motives of action, in particular self-related existential anxieties. Coleman argued that in response to their uncertainty, actors choose to emulate others because conformity allows them to secure their social position in the short term. The decisive motive which appears to drive action is not the maximization of instrumental utility, but rather the short-term reduction of existential uncertainty. According to the standards Coleman set for a pure rational choice model, this type of conformist rationality is not rational in the long run. Future studies may improve on prior efforts to utilize the rational choice program by appreciating that the most known figure in this school himself held two alternative conceptions of action: expressive and rational.

Insecurity, Conformity and Community James Coleman's Latent Theoretical Model of Action

James S. Coleman was the major proponent of rational choice theory. This article challenges the traditional reading of his work by showing that under the explicit theory of rational choice lay a latent non-rational theory of action. The article shows that instead of rationality, Colemans psychological starting point was existential insecurity; that instead of the alleged mechanism of the maximization of utility, actors choose to conform to peer values and norms in order to alleviate insecurity; and that the optimal setting for action is provided by intimate and dense communities, rather than unregulated free markets. These three non-rational presuppositions are analyzed and it is suggested that they are crucial for understanding Colemans assessment of modernity, social change and his call for the rational reconstruction of society.

Israel and the Exile of Intellectual Caliber Local Position and the Absence of Sociological Theory

Jews have played a decisive role in the history of sociological theory. Paradoxically, Israeli sociologists – who came from similar Jewish social backgrounds, and shared the same intellectual traditions – have not left a mark on general sociological discourse. This study sets out to solve this paradox and explain why Israeli sociologists have had a negligible impact on the development of general sociological theories. Israeli sociologists have proved to play no significant role in the development of general sociological theory because they exhibited a specific mode of thought: (a) their theoretical questions were contextual; (b) their cognitive interest was to solve practical problems; (c) their theoretical perspective reflected national priorities; and (d) they exhibited a fragmented mode of thought.The article argues that the extreme local position of Israeli sociologists in the collective Zionist project propelled them to adopt the aforementioned intellectual features and therefore marginalized their contribution to general sociological theory.