Social Class Structure in a Fluctuating Community

HE purpose of this paper is to analyse some fundamental features of | the social class structure of Israel. Despite the fact that the object t of our inquiry is thus geographically limited, our intention is to stress a certain aspect of the issue, which might be of a more general interest, namely the impact of an unusual social multiplicity and fluctuation on class-stratiIScation. To put the case in a more concrete form: Israel has been -not only since its political foundation, but ever since the beginnings of the Zionist settlenlent in the last decades of the nineteenth century the arena of repeated influxes of immigration from a great variety of countries and of great social and cultural diversity. This fact has been a decisive factor working against social and cultural stabilization, and it has also exercised a preponderant influence on the class stratification of modern Israel. The problem of the class structure of Israel vvill, therefore, be examined chiefly in the light of the impact of that other social phenomenon, called currently in Zionist usage the ingathering of exiles. VVe use in this essay the conception of class distinction as formulated in Ginsberg's Sociology

Archaeology · Biology · Class (philosophy · Community structure · Geography · Judaism · Political science · Social class · Sociology · Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science · Ecology · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Law