How Does House Demolition Affect Family Conspicuous Consumption?

Family conspicuous consumption behavior is affected by many factors. Existing pieces of literature seldom focus on the impact of house demolition on family conspicuous consumption and its underlying mechanism. Based on the mental accounting theory and conservation of resources theory, this study uses the micro-data of the 2011 China Household Finance Survey to empirically examine the relationship between house demolition and family conspicuous consumption. Robustness results suggest that house demolition positively affects household conspicuous consumption, which is not only reflected in the overall consumption level but also in the level of average consumption. Further analysis finds that household wealth and materialism value have a significant positive moderating effect on the relationship of the main effect. In addition, in order to clarify the relationship between conspicuous consumption and luxury consumption, this study finds that conspicuous consumption and luxury consumption are not completely equivalent through in-depth theoretical analysis and exploratory investigation. There are similarities in both consumption motivation and pattern, but with differences on consumer subject and object. The contribution of this research is to enrich the theory of decision-making in consumer behavior, which also has certain significance in deepening the understanding of the relationship between conspicuous consumption and luxury consumption.

Ruptures

Pursuing a relational approach, Part II tells the story of Amat al-Latif’s childhood and early adult life in an elite household viewed through the prism of her intimate relationship with her father. Amat al-Latif’s narrative explains how the momentous events of 1948 – her father’s arrest, the collapse of the constitutional government, the sack of her city, house demolition ‒ have impacted upon her life’s trajectories, above all the loss of close relatives to disease and execution, early marriage and dispossession after the failed revolt. It dwells on the precariousness of everyday life in the aftermath of her family’s downfall and women’s exposure to destitution, and the ways in which she has dealt with violent bereavement. Amat al-Latif also had to deal with her husband’s father’s overbearing wife in her patrilocal household, refusing to subordinate herself to her. However, instead of employing the trope of resistance, it is argued that women’s noncompliance is frequently articulated within existing socio-cultural norms rather than the expression of an oppositional subjectivity.

Selective or collective? Palestinian perceptions of targeting in house demolition

There is a growing consensus that repression and counter-insurgency can be effective when selective. Yet the empirical evidence is mixed and theories specify that (unmeasured) perceptions of target selection matter. This article addresses this gap by directly measuring individuals’ interpretations of a coercive policy which varies in target selection. It employs original surveys with Palestinians on their exposure to house demolition, views on the policy and attitudes towards the Israel–Palestine conflict. The study finds that when interpreted as indiscriminate, house demolition increases opposition to compromise. The results are consistent when perceived target selection is manipulated in an embedded survey experiment.

Being Unfaithful to One's Own Principles: The Israeli Supreme Court and House Demolitions in the Occupied Palestinian Territories

The practice of house demolition in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (‘the Territories’) pursued by Israel for the purpose of deterring potential terrorist activities (as opposed to planning or operational purposes) has attracted voluminous literature, most of which is critical. Scholarship postulates that the practice is immoral and ineffective, that it is contrary to Jewish morals and international law, and that it may amount to an international crime. Some of the critical writings focus on the practice of the Israel Defence Forces; others concentrate on the failure of the Israeli Parliament to curb the practice, while others examine the practice in its wider context, namely the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. This article focuses on the regulation of the practice by the Israeli Supreme Court (‘the Court’). This theme has already been examined by numerous scholars including, in particular, Kretzmer and Simon, who found that the Court's jurisprudence is contrary to public international law and its reasoning is unpersuasive. This article aims to add to the existing scholarly corpus by using a different prism. It contrasts the Court's house demolition jurisprudence with its own jurisprudence in comparable areas in which it is called upon to resolve tensions between security and human rights in the Territories, postulating that in handling house demolition measures the Court is unfaithful to its own jurisprudence. Building upon these findings, the article distils the manifestations of that unfaithfulness and its negative repercussions in normative, coherence and legitimacy terms. It concludes with the call that when the issue of house demolition is brought back before the Court, it should apply the same approach, spirit, techniques and benchmarks that it has employed in analogous areas of law.