How can depressed communities be upgraded? One approach is to import settlers with higher incomes. In a unique experiment in Israel, this approach was utilized, and the results are the focus of the Ayalon, Ben-Rafael, and Yogev study.

The three authors examine the costs and benefits of an experiment in community change in Mobiltown. The experiment, which brought higher status people to a poor community, is evaluated on the basis of surveys, indepth interviews, and observations. The research shows that the experiment has mainly resulted in the status enhancement of the community as a whole. Yet, expectations for social integration between the new and veteran residents were not fulfilled. Many of the cultural, economic, commercial, and social developments were based on some form of implicit segregation. The dynamics of unbalanced outcomes are demonstrated in the areas of intergroup attitudes, the formation of social networks, and in the political and educational arenas. The Mobiltown experiment demonstrates how the cost of newly introduced social gaps are countered by the benefits of the status enhancement of the entire community. An important study for sociologists, urban planners, and those concerned with social change in Israel.

"This analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict offers a wide-ranging theoretical framework to approach various aspects of terrorism, guerilla and antiguerilla warfare, the peace process, and other complex issues. The distinction between the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and that of the Jewish State and its neighbors has been neglected in past writings. The author suggests that this distinction is the key to understanding not only the extent of international support obtained by the PLO, but the setbacks and the ability to withstand them, that are characteristic of Israel's position." Shofar

This book is a major sociological analysis of the characteristics and interrelationships of ethnicity, religion, and socio-economic class in Israeli society. The analysis of ethnicity focuses on the differences among Jews from different countries of origin (from Europe, North Africa and Asia), although there is also a chapter on Palestinian Arabs in Israel. This work takes the analysis of ethnic identities and relations much further than previous studies of Israeli society, and is the first to compare the importance of ethnicity with both religion and class and to illustrate the nature of the relationships between all three divisions. The combination of sophisticated theory and research advances the study of Israeli society in particular and the study of social cleavages and conflicts within society in general.

This book focuses on linguistic landscapes in present-day urban settings. In a wide-ranging collection of studies of major world cities, the authors investigate both the forces that shape linguistic landscape and the impact of the linguistic landscape on the wider social and cultural reality. Not only does the book offer a wealth of case studies and comparisons to complement existing publications on linguistic landscape, but the editors aim to investigate the nature of a field of study which is characterised by its interest in 'ordered disorder'. The editors aspire to delve into linguistic landscape beyond its appearance as a jungle of jumbled and irregular items by focusing on the variations in linguistic landscape configurations and recognising that it is but one more field of the shaping of social reality under diverse, uncoordinated and possibly incongruent structuration principles.

The shift to Hebrew as a national language is at the root of the creation of Israel, yet many Jewish former immigrants still use the language of their country of origin. Ultra-orthodox communities retain their own codes, and the use of Arabic remains a clear marker of the Israeli-Arab town and village. At the same time Israel's position in international affairs has encouraged a wide penetration of the society, along class lines, by languages of world-wide communication. These very same languages, for example English and French, have different values in their local context, and play active, and different, roles in the formation of social boundaries. In his analysis Eliezer Ben-Rafael focuses on linguistic resources and symbols which reflect and reveal the complex structure of class, ethnic, religious, and national identities and cleavages in Israeli society. More generally, he uses the Israeli case to show how sociolinguistic ideas may be related to sociological approaches to test some general sociological propositions about social aspects of language use.

This book is a major sociological analysis of the characteristics and interrelationships of ethnicity, religion, and socio-economic class in Israeli society. The analysis of ethnicity focuses on the differences among Jews from different countries of origin (from Europe, North Africa and Asia), although there is also a chapter on Palestinian Arabs in Israel. This work takes the analysis of ethnic identities and relations much further than previous studies of Israeli society, and is the first to compare the importance of ethnicity with both religion and class and to illustrate the nature of the relationships between all three divisions. The combination of sophisticated theory and research advances the study of Israeli society in particular and the study of social cleavages and conflicts within society in general.

The Handbook of Israel: Major Debates serves as an academic compendium for people interested in major discussions and controversies over Israel. It provides innovative, updated and informative knowledge on a range of acute debates. Among other topics, the handbook discusses post-Zionism, militarism, democracy and religion, (in)equality, colonialism, today's criticism of Israel, Israel-Diaspora relations, and peace programs. Outstanding scholars face each other with unadulterated, divergent analyses. These historical, political and sociological texts from Israel and elsewhere make up a major reference book within academia and outside academia. About seventy contributions grouped in thirteen thematic sections present controversial and provocative approaches refl ecting, from different angles, on the present-day challenges of the State of Israel. Other Major Works by the Editors: Eliezer Ben-Rafael Is Israel One? Religion, Nationalism and Ethnicity Confounded, Brill (2005) Ethnicity, Religion and Class in Israel, Cambridge University Press (paperback) (2007) Julius H. Schoeps Begegnungen. Menschen, die meinen Lebensweg kreuzten. Suhrkamp (2016) Pioneers of Zionism: Hess, Pinsker, Rulf. Messianism, Settlement Policy, and the Israeli-Palestinan Conflict. De Gruyter (2013) Yitshak Sternberg World Religions and Multiculturalism: A Relational Dialectic. Brill (2010). Transnationalism. Brill (2009) Olaf Gloeckner Being Jewish in 21st Century Germany. De Gruyter (2015, with Haim Fireberg) Deutschland, die Juden und der Staat Israel. Olms (2016, with Julius H. Schoeps)