The University of Wisconsin Press

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Anthropology / Jewish Studies

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People as Subject, People as Object Selfhood and Peoplehood in Contemporary Israel Virginia R. Domínguez New Directions in Anthropological Writing "The best ethnography of Israeli Jews, collapsing the boundaries between tradition, culture, and nation. . . . Domínguez ambitiously focuses her fieldwork on processes that form the public discourses of national culture and that objectify and police individual and ethnic experiences through the national collectivity."—Smadar Lavie, Middle East Journal "This book is fascinating, enlightening, maddening, and disturbing [but] by the end one feels that Domínguez has, in fact, gotten to the bottom of what she convincingly argues is a condition for the very possibility of Israeli society—namely, the definition of peoplehood. . . . The two key concepts with which she deals throughout are 'culture' and 'ethnicity.' She analyzes newspaper accounts for both content and rhetoric or discourse on these subjects, and in addition, examines 'story-telling events' dealing with the lifestyles and situations of various Jewish minority groups—especially the Orientals or Sephardim—who have been only uneasily accommodated in Israeli society in recent years. 'Nationality' is distinguished both from 'religion' and from 'citizenship' in official Israeli usage, and Domínguez tries to analyze what this means for Israel as a polity, and as a community of persons who, in a cultural sense, have very little in common."—Nancie L. Gonzalez, American Anthropologist "Domínguez conveys much insight into the perception, attitudes, and contradictions of Israeli society. She effectively explains the internal and external boundaries of Israeli peoplehood and does surprisingly well with enormously confusing issues, such as 'who is a Jew?' The discussion of Israeli Independence Day, Sephardic/Ashkenazic ethnicity, and vignettes of theater and storytelling are especially worthy of mention. Her evaluation of the ongoing process of creating an Israeli national identity is outstanding." —Choice Virginia Domínguez is professor of anthropology and director of the Center for International and Comparative Studies at the University of Iowa. She is the author of White by Definition: Social Classification in Creole Louisiana. Media & bookseller inquiries regarding review copies, events, and interviews can be directed to the publicity department at publicity@wwwtest.uwpress.wisc.edu or (608) 263-0734. (If you want to examine a book for possible course use, please see our Course Books page. If you want to examine a book for possible rights licensing, please see Rights & Permissions.)

December 1989 LC: 89-040254 DS 238 pp.  2 tables Paper $19.95 x ISBN 978-0-299-12324-6 ADD TO CART

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