E Ben-Ari
Biographic Data
| ID | 14986 |
|---|---|
| NAME | E Ben-Ari |
| GIVEN NAMES | E |
| FAMILY NAME | Ben-Ari |
| SIGNATURE | BEN-ARI E |
| AFFILIATIONS | Hebrew University of Jerusalem |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3559-4622 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 106 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 535 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 104 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1987 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 13 |
Revisiting Military as a Total Institution
This article revisits the concept of the military as a total institution through the lens of conscript service in Estonia. Employing a longitudinal qualitative methodology, it captures the dynamic experiences of conscripts. The findings reveal that tensions arise as conscripts face the totality of their service, leading to short-term situational negotiations and long-term goal adaptations. The study underscores the significant role of transitions…
Conscription and social transformations
While most scholarly works on conscription in democracies focus on its abolition, the few works that explain its retention usually attribute it to countries’ security needs. Using the Estonian case, the article shifts the focus to ask how conscription systems are maintained to adapt to changing defense challenges, as well as transforming public expectations about security, military effectiveness and efficiency, recruitment policies, and social di…
Making military conscription count? Converting competencies between the civilian and military spheres in a neoliberal Estonia
While past decades Western societies have been shifting from mandatory military service toward all-volunteer forces, a number of them have retained conscription. A growing emphasis on individualization and neoliberalist ideas results in a tension for youths between fulfilling a duty and the need for constant self-development. We argue that a central mechanism for addressing this challenge is convertibility, the ability to use competencies gained …
How Does a Military Create a Tradition in a New Democracy
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, former Soviet republics became sovereign states and faced a challenge of building new political systems. While some of the countries have become authoritarian, democratic political systems were successfully built in a number of post-Soviet countries. In this study the focus is on these new democracies and their armed forces, as such states face questions related to the armed forces’ monopoly over the means …
The Military Covenant, Contractual Relations, and Social Cohesion in Democracies
The military covenant is a set of morally binding expectations marking the exchange between military, society, and the state. Its base is the military's duality: like other large public institutions delivering services and its uniqueness in holding the monopoly over the use of legitimate organized state violence. The covenant is a form of relational (not transactional) contract based on trust between, and a long-term orientation of, partners; it …
Neither a Conscript Army nor an All-Volunteer Force
This article develops an analytical model of force composition that combines the advantages of conscription with those of an all-volunteer force. Using Israel as a hypothesis-generating case study, it argues that mandatory military service has undergone changes centered on five key organizing principles: selective conscription, early discharges, elongated lengths of service, forms of voluntary service and differing pay-scales, and other material …
Anthropology of the Military
The anthropology of militaries in industrial countries is a relatively young discipline, which has seen significant growth since the end of the Cold War and the advent of the “new wars.” The chapter focuses on the anthropological analysis of social and cultural concerns related to (and derived from) the armed forces, war, and the provision for national security. It charts the main clusters of issues anthropologists are engaged with and explains t…
Introduction to the Armed Forces & Society Forum on Military Reserves in the 'New Wars
This Armed Forces & Society forum is dedicated to exploring recent trends in the characteristics of military reserves and of the changing character of reserve forces within the armed forces within the military, the civilian sphere, and in between them. To bring new and critical perspectives to the study of reserve forces and civil-military relations, this introduction and the five articles that follow draw on two organizing conceptual models: The…
The Israel Reserve Law
Enacted in 2008, 60 years after Israel Defense Forces was established, the Israeli Reserves Law is a striking expression of the decline of military autonomy in a democratic country. While not aimed at reducing the military's discretion in regard to the training, deployment, and compensation for reservists, the formal enactment of the Law in effect did so. The legislative process was preceded by a crisis between reservists and the military and was…
Reserve Military Service
This study examines reserve military service from a perspective of social construction-the ways in which the reservist's conscious experiences are constructed to give meaning to military service. Content descriptions of conscious experiences of reserve military service are identified in past studies. Constructions fell into four broad categories: (1) complementary to life-reserve military service providing wanted satisfaction not otherwise achiev…
Discussing Empathy and Critique in the Ethnography of Things Military
Whenever we discuss fieldwork experiences with fellow anthropologists working on 'things military', concerns over ethics, politics, and critique pop up as a matter of course.Though important in any field, these matters seem particularly conspicous and insistent in the military field.Meanwhile, anthropology of the military is garnering increasing attention in response to a changing global security landscape.This motivated us to organize this speci…
Israel’s Ground Forces in the Occupied Territories
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) routinely rotate ground forces in and out of the Occupied Territories in the West Bank. While these troops are trained for soldiering in high-intensity wars, in the Territories they have long had to carry out a variety of policing activities. These activities often exist in tension with their soldierly training and ethos, both of which center on violent encounters. IDF ground forces have adapted to this situation b…
Area studies and the disciplines
This article analyzes the social and institutional dynamics by which knowledge in Japanese studies is produced in the English-using academic world, the dominant global academic system, which as such is an arbiter for much of what “we” take as research. It utilizes the case of Japanese Studies as the analytical focus because it has been the site of great changes during the past seven or so decades, is rooted in a number of (linguistic) academic co…
Mutuality and the study of suicide
This article addresses the complementary work of psychological notions and courts in handling suicides occurring in the course of military service. We suggest the category of mutuality between individuals and social settings as an analytic perspective for the study of suicide, illuminating not only how suicide is constructed, but also theorizing the effects of this construction. Our findings rest on content analysis of 34 verdicts on cases of sui…
Military, State, and Society in Israel
There have been many books on the place of war, security, or military service in Israeli society. The Military, State, and Society in Israel makes contributions to the debate-theoretical, empirical, and polemical-that are related to the Israeli case and to wider debates about the place of war and the military in contemporary industrialized societies. The Israeli case is important in the development of more macro approaches to the study of "things…
The Rise of Special Operations Forces
The special operations forces (SOF) of the industrial democracies have suddenly and rapidly grown in numbers and resources during the past decades. Most explanations for this growth focus on factors external to the armed forces. We argue that the enlargement of SOF is also the result of internal organizational dynamics. First, we compare SOF to other units and military appendages that have grown over the past 30 years in order to delineate what i…
Upgraded Masculinity
This article examines the importation of new gender ideals into a highly masculine organization through top-down and bottom-up processes. We analyze how a dominant group of men undo and redo gender to reproduce their supremacy and create a new, 'improved' form of masculinity. Based on qualitative research on the practice of debriefing in the Israel Air Force, we explore how new practices of masculinity are incorporated into a hegemonic masculinit…
Armed Forces, Cyberspace, and Global Images
This study centers on the relation between militaries, violence, and publicly available digital images. Military websites can be characterized as forms of representation of national institutions comparable to the sites of any large organization. However, the way these websites publicly frame and explain the military's use of organized violence has not been investigated. Accordingly, this study examines how contemporary militaries manage their pub…
Kibbutz Under Fire
For two months during the war in Gaza (summer of 2014) Hamas bombarded the kibbutzim in the vicinity using rockets and mortar shells, and exercising tunnel warfare. A century after its establishment dilemmas about kibbutz life similar to those arising during the decades of struggle were raised by members when they had to stand the test of survival under fire: with rockets and mortars landing should they stay or leave? Consequently, should those w…
Military Violence in Its Own Right
In this article, we use the case of the Israeli military occupation of the Palestinian territories to offer a microsociological analysis of military violence in noncombat situations. Utilizing the insights of Randall Collins, we suggest that in order understand these encounters, the emotional dimensions of violent behaviors must be linked to the interactional dynamics that trigger the transformation of these emotions into violent actions. We revi…
War, peace and human nature
Saints' Sanctuaries In Israeli Development Towns
Since the 1970s new sacred sites for Jewish saints have been established in a number of Israeli development towns. In this paper this phenomenon is interpreted as a mechanism by which some of the social and cultural qualities of those urban settlements are being transformed. Development towns, which were planted in the periphery of the country by the central organs of the young Israeli state during the 1950s, turned into residual communities, i.e…
Status and Stratification
The Anime Boom in the United States
This volume extends and develops an aspect of anime studies that is usually peripheral to the plethora of analyses rooted in media and cultural studies. These works often focus on the contents of a
Everyday Occupations
In its own words, this volume attempts to chart out the ‘intertwining of popular culture and expressive culture with the political in exploring the logics of occupation’ (p. 3). It does so through
Mastering Soldiers
Studies of the military that deal with the actual experience of troops in the field are still rare in the social sciences. In fact, this ethnographic study of an elite unit in the Israeli Defense Force is the only one of its kind. As an officer of this unit and a professional anthropologist, the author was ideally positioned for his role as participant observer. During the eight years he spent with his unit he focused primarily on such notions as…
Reserve Soldiers as Transmigrants
This article suggests a new perspective for examining the particular social and organizational characteristics of military reserves forces and the special experiences of serving in the reserves. To illustrate the unique social position of reservists, the authors develop a theoretical model that likens them to transmigrants. Accordingly, the authors suggest that society may benefit from looking at reserves both as sorts of social and organizationa…
Masks and Soldiering
Why Don't They Fight Each Other? Cultural Diversity and Operational Unity in Multinational Forces
This article poses the question of how multinational forces can achieve a working level of cooperation and coordination despite their high cultural diversity? It first illustrates the range of cultural diversity in multinational forces. Then, relying on the literature on diversity in organizations and cross-cultural differences in value priorities, and on an analysis of the circumstances under which such forces operate, the possible implications …
Grasping Land
Epilogue
As an epilogue to the present volume, this article picks up its central themes. It elaborates some of the main points about casualty aversion that are made in the preceding contributions. At the same time, by adding its own themes and insights, this article is complementary in character. It focuses on how a 'good' military death is defined by cultural scripts and how, in accordance with those scripts, death is dealt with by the military organizat…
Cohesion during Military Operations
Military leaders and social scientists often regard unit cohesion as the key element in combat motivation and fighting resilience. However, a close look at today's battlefield calls for rethinking this assumption. This study is based on observations of combat units during the current Arab-Israeli conflict (the 'Al-Aqsa Intifada'). In contrast to the usual depiction found in the scholarly literature, these units were characterized by some rather u…
Blue Helmets and White Armor multi-nationalism and multi-culturalism among UN peacekeeping forces
Multi-national peace-keeping forces as organizations are characterized by an inherent tension between national and transnational belonging. Derived from a wider ethnography of peacekeeping, this article focuses on these military missions as transnational sites and explores the implications of this tension between national belonging and allegiance and membership and operations within an international framework.The data is derived from interviews a…
The Making of Modern Saints
In this article we analyze the sanctification of two figures in contemporary Israel. The two figures-Baba Sali and his son Baba Baruch-belong to the Abu-Hatseira family, which many Jews of North African origin perceive to possess lineage or clan charisma. We use the analytical metaphor of "manufactured" charisma in order to explore the ways in which such present-day means as the media (written and broadcast), industry, and various state structure…
Brothers and Others in Arms
Although policies regarding the enlistment of homosexuals in Western armies have become the subject of a heated debate, their own experiences in the military have received little systematic analysis. The authors examine the experience of gay men in combat units of the Israeli army, as derived from retrospective life stories. The authors found no common adjustment problems related to these men's sexual orientation. At the same time, variable ident…
Fundamentalism's encounters with citizenship
This paper centers on the challenge that fundamentalist groups – such as the Israeli ultra-Orthodox community (the Haredim) – pose for citizenship. It focuses on two issues: challenges centering on contribution to and sacrifice for the Israeli nation-state; and alternatives that fundamentalism poses to definitions of citizenship. Empirically, it is based on research in three arenas: service in the Israeli military; a voluntary organization aiding…
From Mothering to Othering
The celebration of violence
In this article we analyze an annual live-fire exercise held by Japan's Self-Defense Forces for the general public. On the basis of our analysis, we suggest that anthropologists seriously examine the military establishments of technologically advanced societies. If anthropologists want to understand violent acts, we need to study the perpetrators of such acts and not only their victims. In most of the scholarly literature, violence is seen as ano…
Israeli snipers in the Al-Aqsa intifada
This article is an analysis of Israeli military snipers who served during the Al-Aqsa intifada. It takes issue with the scholarly consensus that, for such acts to take place, perpetrators have to somehow dehumanise their enemies. Based on interviews with 30 individuals, it shows that snipers do not always need to dehumanise their targets and that they experience killing in conflicting ways, both as pleasurable and as disturbing. The snipers simul…
Other-Worldly Soldiers? Ultra-Orthodox Views of Military Service in Contemporary Israel1
Managing Diversity in Context
This article is an exploratory study of the factors influencing the management of diversity at the unit level. This management is carried out through ongoing negotiations between troops and commanders and is heavily influenced by the character of the unit within which bargaining takes place and involves the active role of both sides. The most important factors are the unit's structural characteristic (dominant military roles or social composition…
The military and militarization in the United States
I examine three ethnographies of the U.S. military and of militarization in the contemporary United States. These phenomena have hitherto received little scholarly attention by anthropologists. After describing the contents of the three volumes, I suggest that their wider import for anthropology lies in their demonstration of the usefulness of the discipline's theories and analytical tools for analyzing the political economy of militarization and…
A Knock on the Door
This paper discusses death that occurs within organizations through an analysis of how deaths of soldiers are handled by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). While such deaths challenge the military's organizational order and legitimacy, the IDF handles them through the institution of a "moving bureaucracy": a combination of fixed administrative procedures and intense emotional work carried out by liminal military personnel (reserve officers). This a…
Posing, Posturing and Photographic Presences
Hungry, Weary and Horny’
The aphorism used as the title of this article – ‘hungry, weary and horny’ – is frequently employed by Israeli soldiers to characterize their experience upon entering reserve duty. In its comic ton
Resonance and reverberation
Card Games and an Israeli Army Unit
This essay includes a description and an analysis of the gambling encounters that took place in an Israeli reserve company during the early 1980s. The aims of this analysis are: (1) to consider army life in light of some current social scientific thinking about symbolic action; (2) to explore the implications of expressive behavior for an understanding of the armed forces; and (3) to show the importance of examining the place and functioning of l…
Neither a Conscript Army nor an All-Volunteer Force
This article develops an analytical model of force composition that combines the advantages of conscription with those of an all-volunteer force. Using Israel as a hypothesis-generating case study, it argues that mandatory military service has undergone changes centered on five key organizing principles: selective conscription, early discharges, elongated lengths of service, forms of voluntary service and differing pay-scales, and other material …
Epilogue
This concluding epilogue places the individual studies presented in the special volume in wider perspective. The importance of studying reserve forces centers on (1) their centrality in missions carried out by the militaries of the contemporary industrial democracies and (2) their unique cultural and organizational characteristics. Concretely, reserve components are a foundation for the legitimacy of the military, yet are often a source for criti…
Terror, Aid and Organization
Terror attacks are forms of social and cultural disasters that cause extensive harm to humans and the social order. Yet despite the sudden chaos they wreak and their prevalence during the last decade or so, most societies have only recently created organizational forms that can manage and handle their threatening potential. This article analyzes the relations between terror attacks and the emergence of new organizations specializing in death and …
Pygmies and Villagers, Ritual or Play? On the Place of Contrasting Modes of Metacommunication in Social Systems
How are social activities and relations maintained despite actors holding to divergent definitions of these activities and relations? This is explored through a reexamination of an ethnographic account of two groups that participate in joint activities but interpret them differently. The account is that of the Mbuti Pygmies and their neighboring Bantu villagers as described by Colin Turnbull. It is argued is that the maintenance of continued inte…
Masks and Soldiering
A Bureaucrat in Every Japanese Kitchen
This article represents an analysis of the cultural assumptions that are involved in the implementation of coproduction schemes. Through a case study of a garbage disposal scheme in a Japanese city, two interrelated themes are examined: (a) the nature of programs of coproduction as universal arrangements for the creation and delivery of urban services, and (b) the peculiar Japanese models and premises that form part of the implementation of such …
Japanese Models of Conflict Resolution
West Asia looks east
Unwrapping Japan
Unwrapping Japan
Transformation in Ritual, Transformation of Ritual
L'A. decrit le rite de passage (« seinenshiki ») des garcons âges de 20 ans a Yamanaka-cho (Japon) le 15 janvier : purification, invocation et solidarite rappellent le rite shito alors que le tir a l'arc et l'immobilisme sont lies au theâtre. Il montre aussi l'importance du public : si les villageois participent, les touristes ne s'interessent pas au rite en lui-meme mais au spectacle qui met en scene une ancienne tradition populaire
Posing, Posturing and Photographic Presences
Card Games and an Israeli Army Unit
This essay includes a description and an analysis of the gambling encounters that took place in an Israeli reserve company during the early 1980s. The aims of this analysis are: (1) to consider army life in light of some current social scientific thinking about symbolic action; (2) to explore the implications of expressive behavior for an understanding of the armed forces; and (3) to show the importance of examining the place and functioning of l…
Unwrapping Japan
Changing Japanese Suburbia
A Time to Mourn, a Time to Dance
Anthropologists have long known that different cultures give expression to their symbol systems through external mediums such as food and clothing, but they have not recognized as readily that cultures also mold emotional life to fit particular patterns of meaning. This prejudice against the role of behaviors in shaping the emotional and cognitive life is especially strong in the study of religion. Gary Anderson's study reveals that, in the Israe…
The Making of Modern Saints
In this article we analyze the sanctification of two figures in contemporary Israel. The two figures-Baba Sali and his son Baba Baruch-belong to the Abu-Hatseira family, which many Jews of North African origin perceive to possess lineage or clan charisma. We use the analytical metaphor of "manufactured" charisma in order to explore the ways in which such present-day means as the media (written and broadcast), industry, and various state structure…
From Paddy Field to Ski Slope
Uniqueness, typicality, and appraisal
This article examines the discourse attendant upon 'old' places in contemporary Japan through a case study of a commuter village near Kyoto. It shows how such localities are represented in a national debate about the strength of Japan's 'vanishing' tradition, and how local communities mobilize parts of this debate in their dialogue with a variety of collective others about local identity. The guiding axii of this nostalgic discourse are assertion…
Hard choices
Othernesses of Japan
Changing Japanese Suburbia
Changing Japanese Suburbia
Matsuri
Japanese Social Organization. Takie Sugiyama Lebra
Modernity and charisma in contemporary Israel
(1995). Modernity and charisma in contemporary Israel: The case of Baba Sali and Baba Baruch. Israel Affairs: Vol. 1, The Shaping of Israeli Identity: Myth, Memory and Trauma, pp. 224-236
Contested Identities and Models of Action in Japanese Discourses of Place-Making
Etude des discours lies aux voisinages nouvellement construits (cites) dans le Japon contemporain. L'A. montre qu'une exploration fructueuse de la complexite de ces discours consiste a decouvrir les modeles populaires de localite portes par differents groupes locaux. Les gens utilisent ces modeles pour decrire, analyser et evaluer ce qui se passe dans leurs communautes et pour prescrire des methodes pour les changer
Resonance and reverberation
Sociology (70 works) · Political science (67 works) · Law (58 works) · History (39 works) · Politics (35 works) · Law (32 works) · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies (26 works) · Computer Science (23 works) · History (23 works) · Psychology (22 works)