The Ethnic Factor in the Development of Rural Settlements in Israel

The Ethnic Factor in the Development of Rural Settlements in IsraelSurveys of development were carried out in 1958 and 1963 in 223 co-operative, small-holder villages which had been newly settled in Israel. The farmers in each village belonged to one of three groups - North African, Asiatic and Western - each one with sufficient distinct characteristics to warrant terming them 'ethnic' groups.In order to separate the effect of the ethnic factor, four external parameters which might have influenced the development of the villages were examined first. Only one, the allocation of natural means of production, was found to be unequally distributed among the three ethnic groups. The development of each ethnic group was then determined according to a model based on ten criteria, bearing on the social and economic situation of the villages.The study showed that the ethnic factor was important in determining the rate of development. The group with the highest level of technical background, the Western, exhibited the highest level of development in both survey years, but by the end of the five-year period, its level was slightly declining, while the levels of the other two groups were tending to catch up. Each ethnic group exhibited a specific rate of development, with the lower the starting point, the greater the development rate.The study bears on the adaptation of 'folk' people, who in most cases were not originally farmers, to modern agriculture with a complicated technology and organization, and on the importance of settling homogeneous ethnic groups, particularly in the case of non-modern people

Agriculture · Archaeology · Ethnic group · Geography · Homogeneous · Human settlement · Political science · Rural area · Rural settlement · Socioeconomics · Sociology · Agricultural Innovations and Practices · Demography · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Land Rights and Reforms · Mathematics

• The stratified middle class and the formation of ethnic identities

  Open Access•Guy Abutbul Selinger, Avraham Shnider•Ethnicities•2022

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