Jewish New Age and the Middle Class: Jewish Identity Politics in Israel under Neoliberalism

Sociology ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 575-591 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dana Kaplan ◽  
Rachel Werczberger
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Religious Pluralism ◽  
New Age ◽  
Identity Based ◽  
Class Reproduction

This article asks why middle-class Israeli seculars have recently begun to engage with Jewish religiosity. We use the case of the Jewish New Age (JNA) as an example of the middle class’s turn from a nationalised to a spiritualised version of Judaism. We show, by bringing together the sociology of religion’s interest in emerging spiritualities and cultural sociology’s interest in social class, how after Judaism was deemed socially significant in identity-based struggles for recognition, Israeli New Agers started culturalising and individualising Jewish religiosity by constructing it in a spiritual, eclectic, emotional and experiential manner. We thus propose that what may be seen as cultural and religious pluralism is, in fact, part of a broader system of class reproduction.

scholarly journals Class, Culture, and Downward Mobility

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessi Streib
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Interview Data ◽  
National Study ◽  
Downward Mobility ◽  
Class Culture ◽  
Class Reproduction

The study of class and culture is predominately the study of class reproduction, not also downward mobility. This article maintains that sociologists do not see the cultural mechanisms associated with downward mobility because we share three collective blinders. First, we under-emphasize the ways that middle-class cultural practices are mismatched with the practices that institutions reward. Second, we over-emphasize the utility of middle-class cultural practices for their class reproduction. We do this as we focus on youths’ cultural practices within institutions, ignoring that not all youth enter institutions associated with class reproduction. Third, we assume that the dominant cultural practices of each class keeps youth in their original social class. In doing so, we do not consider that middle-class actors avoid downward mobility by adopting the dominant practices of the working-class. Using interview data from the National Study of Youth and Religion, this article shows how removing these blinders can help us understand how culture relates to downward mobility. It does so by revisiting Lareau’s theory of how entitlement and constraint relate to class reproduction.

Privilege Lost

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessi Streib
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
White Youth ◽  
Downward Mobility ◽  
Academic Knowledge ◽  
Time Periods ◽  
Class Reproduction ◽  
Upper Middle Class ◽  
Class Youth

One in two white youth born into the upper-middle class will fall from it. Drawing upon 10 years of longitudinal interviews with over 100 American youth, this book shows which upper-middle-class youth are most likely to fall, how they fall, and why they do not see it coming. The book shows that upper-middle-class youth inherit different amounts of academic knowledge, institutional insights, and money from their parents. Those raised with more of these resources enter class reproduction pathways, while those raised with fewer of these resources enter downwardly mobile paths. Of course, upper-middle-class youth whose families give them few resources could switch courses by acquiring these resources from their community. They rarely do. Instead, they internalize identities that reflect their resource weaknesses and encourage them to maintain them. Those who fall are then youth raised with resource weaknesses, and they fall by internalizing identities that discourage them from gaining more resources. They are often surprised by their downward mobility as they observed other time periods in which their resources and identities kept them or their parents in their social class.

Identity Politics: The Struggle for Recognition or Hegemony?

2007 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 704-725 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ibrahim Kaya
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Central Element ◽  
Social Classes ◽  
Cultural Identities ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Economic Interests ◽  
New Middle Class ◽  
Identity Based ◽  
Struggle For Recognition

This article aims to answer the question whether identity-based movements are free from economic interests. By analyzing the actions and orientations of the Islamists in Turkey, I show that new social movements based on cultural identities are far from representing the demands of groups for recognition. Rather, these movements aim at establishing hegemony by controlling the intellectual life of society by cultural means. It is insisted that we need a Gramscian view of culture in order to understand the so-called identity politics. Identity-based movements do not refer to the end of social classes, but to the emergence of a new middle class. And against the advocating perspectives on identity politics, I argue that the possible solution to the question of fragmentation could be found in the idea of republic that does not prioritize any culture but seeks a central element that makes it meaningful to talk about such a collective arrangement as society.

scholarly journals Towards a Kenotic Identity Politics: Migration, Transformation and the Eucharist

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 380
Author(s):  
Matthew John Paul Tan
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Body Of Christ ◽  
Eucharistic Theology ◽  
Critical Tradition ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Massive Influx ◽  
Identity Based ◽  
The One

This paper will focus on one element of the pushback against the massive influx of immigrants taken in for humanitarian purposes, namely, an identity-based chauvinism which uses identity as the point of resistance to the perceived dilution of that identity, brought about by the transformation of culture induced by the incorporation of a foreign other. The solution to this perceived dilution is a simultaneous defence of that culture and a demand for a conformity to it. While those in the critical tradition have encouraged a counter-position of revolutionary transformation by the other through ethics, dialogue, or the multitude, such a transformation is arguably impeded by what is ultimately a repetition of the metaphysics of conformity. Drawing on the personalism of Emmanuel Mounier and the Eucharistic theology of Creston Davis and Aaron Riches, this paper submits an alternative identity politics position that completes the revolutionary impulse. Identity here is not the flashpoint of a self-serving conflict, but the launch-point of politics of self-emptying, whose hallmarks include, on the one hand, a never-ending reception of transformation by the other, and on the other hand, an anchoring in the Body of Christ that is at once ever-changing and never-changing.

Social Class and Ethnicity Effects on Clinical Judgments

1978 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph D. Norman ◽  
Ricardo Martinez
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Treatment Recommendations ◽  
Clinical Judgments ◽  
Involuntary Hospitalization ◽  
Professional Help ◽  
Class Bias ◽  
Psychotic Behavior

To resolve conflict between earlier studies finding contradictory recommendations on need for professional help of middle- vs lower-class persons given normal, neurotic, and psychotic behavior descriptions, and to explore ethnicity effects, 92 students (70 Anglo, 22 Chicano) rated fictitious biographical vignettes. A pro-middle-class bias was found consistent with Routh and King's study but inconsistent with that by Schofield and Oakes. Also contrary to the latter, treatment recommendations agreed with ratings. Ethnicity bias appeared, since Anglos recommended Chicanos more often for involuntary hospitalization. Inconsistency between the two earlier studies results from a methodological variation, discussed in this study.

Social Class and Code Elaboration in Oral Communication

1971 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 421-427 ◽  
Author(s):  
Millicent E. Poole ◽  
T. W. Field
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Oral Communication ◽  
Class Groups ◽  
Parental Occupation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Linguistic Coding

The Bernstein thesis of elaborated and restricted coding orientation in oral communication was explored at an Australian tertiary institute. A working-class/middle-class dichotomy was established on the basis of parental occupation and education, and differences in overall coding orientation were found to be associated with social class. This study differed from others in the area in that the social class groups were contrasted in the totality of their coding orientation on the elaborated/restricted continuum, rather than on discrete indices of linguistic coding.

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