G Yair
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 1627 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | G Yair |
| NOMBRES | G |
| APELLIDO | Yair |
| FIRMA | YAIR G |
| AFILIACIONES | Hebrew University of Jerusalem |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3376-1132 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 53 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 175 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 53 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1989 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 7 |
Mount Horribilis
The publish-or-perish adage and the winner-takes-all grant making practices are widely regarded as central organizing principles of academic careers. Its underlying assumption is that competitive evaluation systems incentivize scholars to maintain continuous research productivity over time. Yet little is known about the extent to which academic careers conform to this expectation. Using the concept of the Annus Horribilis —a career year with zero…
Israeli scientists in an American looking glass
Cultural trauma and constitution
The sociology of constitutions is a rather new domain. This paper adds to the legal and political literature on national constitutions and their effects on political traditions and collective identities by using the theory of cultural trauma. Using cultural sociology's analyses of national trauma, it demonstrates that the meaning of national constitutions and their particular articles become clear when juxtaposed with the narratives of trauma tha…
The structured frustration of cultural aspirations
This paper tells a story of Israeli male high schoolers who spend their adolescent years preparing for service in elite military units in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). They dream of serving in special units and begin training at 15 or 16 years old. After years of taxing preparations, at the age of 17 they arrive at the grueling military exams. They are at their peak – potent and energized, motivated, and in the best shape of their lives. Yet m…
Emotional reason
Scientists often surmise that scientific thought is a universal faculty akin to Kant’s description of “pure reason.” The conventional view insists that science should censor the passions and bar the intrusion of emotional and subconscious motives into scientific work. This article challenges this truism by showing that the split between reason and emotions is rather culturally mediated. Using interviews with 125 Israeli scientists who had collabo…
The three cultures in American science
A March for Power
The present paper reviews recent studies of politics and political events on the Eurovision stage. We provide testimony to the ubiquity of nationalistic sentiments and ideological, political, historical, and even military tensions that pulsate underneath the agenda of European integration and European peace-abiding values. We advance beyond the now accepted truism, namely that the Eurovision is political, by detailing several different forms of p…
Dropping out of master’s degrees
While student attrition constitutes a major institutional concern at the undergraduate level, this topic is overlooked at the master's level. Dropout rates have been documented, but no solid predictive models are to be found. Likewise, little is known about students' decision to terminate their studies. With growing enrolment numbers in postgraduate programmes, this blind spot should be addressed. The multi-method research presented here, combini…
Open the gates wider
The end of ethnicity? Racism and ambivalence among offspring of mixed marriages in Israel
Research into ethnic inequality in Israel indicates continuing gaps in education and employment between Israelis whose ethnic origin lies in Muslim countries and those with roots in Christian countries. The categories that were created ex nihilo with the establishment of the state of Israel to refer to these groups were ‘Mizrahi’ and ‘Ashkenazi’, and these continue to play a role in Israeli society today. ‘Mixed’ Israelis (those who were born to …
The Annus Mirabilis paper
Hierarchy versus symmetry in German and Israeli science
Culture counts more than money
While economic investments and organizational reforms may support Germany's scientific ambitions, its culture remains a significant influence on how those ambitions work themselves out. The study relied on interviews with 125 Israeli scientists and on responses of nineteen of their German collaborators to a questionnaire. Data analysis found four cultural priorities that - in the context of comparisons with Israeli scientific culture - respondent…
The Conspiracist Strategy
Hofstadter's classic essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" opened a floodgate of analyses of fear and conspiracy theories in American culture. The present paper adds to those studies by providing a cultural interpretation of commercials for alternative cures. It shows that publishers of such commercials often use a "conspiracist strategy" in two interrelated steps. They first raise fears of government collusion with 'Big Pharma.' They t…
Douze point
The Eurovision Song Contest is an annual international competition held by the European Broadcasting Union. The present article provides an updated review of the academic literature devoted to the study of the Eurovision Song Contest which in the past two decades developed into a serious and rich academic field with four main areas: (1) studies of imagining a unified Europe – wherein I review research devoted to cosmopolitan European visions and …
Parent-based early childhood interventions do make a difference! A rebuttal to See and Gorard (2015a)
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to refute See and Gorard’s paper published in this journal in 2015 which argues that parent-based interventions for school readiness are ineffective. Design/methodology/approach Methods and results from 107 studies that were cited in See and Gorard (2015a) and associated reports were reviewed. Evaluations were made based on comparing the original studies with the summaries of those studies in the publication. …
Meritocracy
The term “meritocracy” has three inter‐related meanings. First, it refers to the type of social order where rewards are distributed to individuals in accordance with criteria of personal merit. Put differently, it denotes the “rule of the talented,” a system of governance wherein the brightest and most conscientious individuals are accurately and efficiently assigned to occupy the most important positions, based on their talent and achievements. …
Character, National
The idea of a “national character” enjoyed great popularity after World War II; declined to a point of oblivion from the 1970s on; and is now being revived following September 11, 2001. The following entry suggests that the social and moral history of the idea of national character is tied to global security contexts. It also suggests that political sensitivities curtailed the use of this highly promising scientific idea. New security challenges …
Meritocracy
“Meritocracy” is a type of society, structure, or arrangement that distributes resources, roles, and esteem according to merit. The term refers to criteria of allocation of positions, roles, prestige, power, and economic reward whereby excellent individuals receive greater rewards than others. Those criteria are based on achieved rather than ascribed characteristics and reflect the assumption that, while achievements of merit are rare and difficu…
The Germans
Israeli Diplomacy
Israeli politicians are diplomatic agents provocateurs . Presidents, prime ministers and foreign office executives craft diplomatic scenes that betray diplomatic protocol. This article exposes the deep cultural codes that explain the unique behaviour of Israeli diplomacy. It documents different occasions of Israeli exceptional diplomacy and suggests that they reflect the cultural traumas that underlie Israeli culture. The analyses apply a new the…
Neutrality, Objectivity, and Dissociation
This article applies the theory of “key educational experiences” to argue that while German memorials and documentation centers provide visitors with ample information about the Third Reich, their tone of neutral objectivity and their strategies of identity dissociation prevent German visitors from identifying with the German past. The sites' declared educational goals are thus undermined. The author concludes that a post-traumatic pedagogy of re…
Israeli existential anxiety
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 f…
Quantifying Theory
The Social Structure of the Liquid Self
This paper provides an empirical investigation of Israeli flight attendants in order to characterize the structural underpinnings of the liquid self, and their resultant phenomenological consequences on personal morality, conceptions of self and interpersonal relations. The study touched upon the motivations and behaviours of flight attendants, how they juggle family and personal commitments, and the internal persona they adopt vis-à-vis their ow…
The Commitments to Long Distance Running and Levels of Activity
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 analyzes the commitments of the Israeli long distance runner. The study draws upon the theory of personal and structural commitment. These two concepts were operationalized and tested on a sample of 284 runners. The seven factors of commitment which are used…
Unite Unite Europe’ The political and cultural structures of Europe as reflected in the Eurovision Song Contest
Educational Battlefields in America
This study shows that gaps between opportunities to learn and students' appropriation of those opportunities are instructionally produced and socially distributed via mechanisms that affect engagement and lead to alienation from instruction-the dissociation between students' physical presence in academic classes and their thoughts while in class. Using an innovative approach to measuring engagement and different types of alienation from instructi…
The Persistent Structure of Hegemony in the Eurovision Song Contest
The Eurovision Song Contest is an international contest of artistic prowess. The organization of the voting process in the contest aims to create a 'veil of ignorance' that promotes unbiased evaluations by providing an equal opportunity for all contestants. This study scrutinizes the departure of the Eurovision Song Contest's outcomes from its ideal organizational conception and points to systematic preferences among European blocs. By analyzing …
The Catch 22 syndrome of social scientists in the semiperiphery
This paper describes the parochial predicament of the social sciences by looking at world sociology in its Janus-like face: on the one hand we focus on the intellectual, political, and sometimes even ethical compromises that social scientists in European semiperipheral countries forgo in order to gain acceptance and recognition in world sociology. On the other hand we show how these compromises paradoxically impoverish intellectual potentialities…
Key educational experiences and self-discovery in higher education
School Organization and Market Ecology
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 attract…
Douze point
The Eurovision Song Contest is an annual international competition held by the European Broadcasting Union. The present article provides an updated review of the academic literature devoted to the study of the Eurovision Song Contest which in the past two decades developed into a serious and rich academic field with four main areas: (1) studies of imagining a unified Europe – wherein I review research devoted to cosmopolitan European visions and …
Meritocracy
The term “meritocracy” has three inter‐related meanings. First, it refers to the type of social order where rewards are distributed to individuals in accordance with criteria of personal merit. Put differently, it denotes the “rule of the talented,” a system of governance wherein the brightest and most conscientious individuals are accurately and efficiently assigned to occupy the most important positions, based on their talent and achievements. …
Israeli existential anxiety
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 f…
Teachers' polarisation in heterogeneous classrooms and the social distribution of achievement
Tutorial relations — The dynamics of social contract and personal trust
Quantifying Theory
Israel and the Exile of Intellectual Caliber
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 pr…
The end of ethnicity? Racism and ambivalence among offspring of mixed marriages in Israel
Research into ethnic inequality in Israel indicates continuing gaps in education and employment between Israelis whose ethnic origin lies in Muslim countries and those with roots in Christian countries. The categories that were created ex nihilo with the establishment of the state of Israel to refer to these groups were ‘Mizrahi’ and ‘Ashkenazi’, and these continue to play a role in Israeli society today. ‘Mixed’ Israelis (those who were born to …
Ambivalence
Ambivalence denotes contrasting commitments and orientations; it refers to simultaneous conflicting feelings toward a person or an object; and it is commonly used to describe and explain the hesitance and uncertainty caused by the juxtaposition between contradictory values, preferences, and expectations. Lay‐person use follows intuitive psychological explanations which refer to ambivalence interchangeably with personal hesitation, confusion, inde…
Reforming Motivation
Over the past decade, several US school and instructional reforms have sought ways to counter trends of mediocrity in education. These reforms are grounded in structural motivation theories which postulate that students' learning experiences are optimised when instruction is authentic, challenging, demands skills, and allows for student autonomy. This study set out to investigate empirically the effects of these four structural characteristics of…
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 pr…
Hierarchy versus symmetry in German and Israeli science
The Germans
Israeli Diplomacy
Israeli politicians are diplomatic agents provocateurs . Presidents, prime ministers and foreign office executives craft diplomatic scenes that betray diplomatic protocol. This article exposes the deep cultural codes that explain the unique behaviour of Israeli diplomacy. It documents different occasions of Israeli exceptional diplomacy and suggests that they reflect the cultural traumas that underlie Israeli culture. The analyses apply a new the…
The Social Structure of the Liquid Self
This paper provides an empirical investigation of Israeli flight attendants in order to characterize the structural underpinnings of the liquid self, and their resultant phenomenological consequences on personal morality, conceptions of self and interpersonal relations. The study touched upon the motivations and behaviours of flight attendants, how they juggle family and personal commitments, and the internal persona they adopt vis-à-vis their ow…
The cultural inertia of the habitus
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 progra…
Cinderellas and ugly ducklings
Positive turning points touch upon the essence of education. They epitomize its power and reflect its core agenda: maximizing human capital. Paradoxically, previous studies have not looked into this important phenomenon. The current exploratory study fills this lacuna by building on extensive empirical research of key educational experiences to shed light on four aspects of turning points in students' educational careers. Data come from a sample …
Insecurity, Conformity and Community
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, Coleman's psychological starting point was existential insecurity; that instead of the alleged mechanism of the maximization of utility, actors choose to conform to peer …
Tutorial relations — The dynamics of social contract and personal trust
The Commitments to Long Distance Running and Levels of Activity
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 analyzes the commitments of the Israeli long distance runner. The study draws upon the theory of personal and structural commitment. These two concepts were operationalized and tested on a sample of 284 runners. The seven factors of commitment which are used…
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 pr…
Unite Unite Europe’ The political and cultural structures of Europe as reflected in the Eurovision Song Contest
Changing of the Guards
Pendant l'intifada, lie a la revolte des palestiniens contre l'occupation israelienne, l'ordre social et l'autorite dans les ecoles arabes de Jerusalem-Est ont ete bouleverses sur deux plans : le declin de l'autorite des professeurs vis-a-vis des eleves qui s'est manifeste par un relâchement de la discipline, l'utilisation de la provocation a l'encontre des forces de securite israeliennes pour declencher des emeutes et les contraindre a faire fer…
Contexts as switchmen
School Organization and Market Ecology
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 attract…
The Persistent Structure of Hegemony in the Eurovision Song Contest
The Eurovision Song Contest is an international contest of artistic prowess. The organization of the voting process in the contest aims to create a 'veil of ignorance' that promotes unbiased evaluations by providing an equal opportunity for all contestants. This study scrutinizes the departure of the Eurovision Song Contest's outcomes from its ideal organizational conception and points to systematic preferences among European blocs. By analyzing …
Teachers' polarisation in heterogeneous classrooms and the social distribution of achievement
Reforming Motivation
Over the past decade, several US school and instructional reforms have sought ways to counter trends of mediocrity in education. These reforms are grounded in structural motivation theories which postulate that students' learning experiences are optimised when instruction is authentic, challenging, demands skills, and allows for student autonomy. This study set out to investigate empirically the effects of these four structural characteristics of…
Educational Battlefields in America
This study shows that gaps between opportunities to learn and students' appropriation of those opportunities are instructionally produced and socially distributed via mechanisms that affect engagement and lead to alienation from instruction-the dissociation between students' physical presence in academic classes and their thoughts while in class. Using an innovative approach to measuring engagement and different types of alienation from instructi…
Ex Cathedra
This study analyses three recurrent themes in the presidential addresses read at the American Sociological Association (ASA) annual meetings, 1906-98. First, most ASA presidential addresses reflected a pride in democracy and equality - a spirit that positions America as leader of the world both socially and morally. The second theme was race conflict. ASA presidents frequently discussed the question of equal rights for `African-Americans', sugges…
In a Double Bind
Many European countries have decentralised governance structures to local communities with the direct election of mayors by local residents. This article provides a case study from Israel to assess the interplay between education and local politics. It investigates election outcomes for 75 locales, with a focus on the unique tensions involved in the dual loyalties of mayors to local parents, on the one hand, and state officials, on the other. May…
The Golem Narrative in Max Weber's Work
This paper provides a new metaphor for reading Weber's writings by exposing an underlying cultural pattern–the Golem narrative–and showing how it is reflected in Weber's work. We depict the Jewish story of the Golem and the German demonic version of the narrative as presented in the movie Der Golem. We analyze the structure of this story and distinguish three components in this cultural narrative: the will to be empowered; the use of a non-human …
Israel and the Exile of Intellectual Caliber
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 pr…
Key educational experiences and self-discovery in higher education
Reflections on “Brokerage and Closure”
Ambivalence
Ambivalence denotes contrasting commitments and orientations; it refers to simultaneous conflicting feelings toward a person or an object; and it is commonly used to describe and explain the hesitance and uncertainty caused by the juxtaposition between contradictory values, preferences, and expectations. Lay‐person use follows intuitive psychological explanations which refer to ambivalence interchangeably with personal hesitation, confusion, inde…
Existential Uncertainty and the Will to Conform
This article provides a new reading of Coleman's rational choice paradigm. Coleman's 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 respo…
Vive La (Sexual) Révolution
This paper argues that the French Revolution constituted the basic metaphor through which Pierre Bourdieu perceived and analyzed gender hierarchies; that the class structure of the ancien régime and the mechanisms of its legitimation were the major metaphors he used through his scathing critiques on the order of the sexes; and that the ideals of liberté, égalité and fraternité were always his reformatory aims for a just, gender-neutral society. T…
The Ghost is Back, Again
This paper proposes to re-read Marx's oeuvre through the cultural narrative of the Golem. It suggests that this narrative reappeared in the writings of Karl Marx throughout his career. There are three typical parts in this narrative: (a) the will of men to be empowered; (b) the use of a non-human material instrument to garner this power; culminating in (c) the instrument developing an autonomous spirit, which fatefully makes it turn against its m…
Insecurity, Conformity and Community
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, Coleman's psychological starting point was existential insecurity; that instead of the alleged mechanism of the maximization of utility, actors choose to conform to peer …
Paralysis at the Top of a Roaring Volcano
Cinderellas and ugly ducklings
Positive turning points touch upon the essence of education. They epitomize its power and reflect its core agenda: maximizing human capital. Paradoxically, previous studies have not looked into this important phenomenon. The current exploratory study fills this lacuna by building on extensive empirical research of key educational experiences to shed light on four aspects of turning points in students' educational careers. Data come from a sample …
Key Educational Experiences in Israeli Families
This paper highlights the importance of key educational experiences for studies of family socialization. It shows that these rare yet decisive educative events constitute opportunities for self-discovery and personal transformation. The empirical investigation is based on a large qualitative study of key educational experiences in Israel, using retrospective accounts provided by adults speaking about their best educational experiences, focusing o…
Sociology (42 obras) · Political science (37 obras) · Law (30 obras) · Psychology (26 obras) · Epistemology (20 obras) · Politics (18 obras) · Law (17 obras) · Philosophy (15 obras) · Social Psychology (15 obras) · Economics (14 obras)