Language:
Hebrew
Year of publication:
2013
Titel der Quelle:
תיאוריה וביקורת; במה ישראלית
Angaben zur Quelle:
41 (2013) 45-68
Keywords:
Israel Social conditions
;
Israel Economic conditions
Abstract:
The relations among the economic and political factors that led to the unexpected eruption of the social protest are examined. The class and generational analysis focuses on the diminishing opportunities available to the protest’s instigators and leaders—young middle-class adults—and how the change is linked to the dynamics of inequality in Israel. The main argument is that the Israeli political economy has produced a situation in which this class-generational cohort is struggling to maintain the lifestyle and standard of living enjoyed by its parents’ generation. The general liberalization of the Israeli economy in recent decades, which contributed to a substantial rise in the living standards of the previous generation and to expanded opportunities in the 1990s, now impedes class reproduction for a significant segment of the next generation of the middle class. This class-generational dynamic was decisive for the emergence of the protest movement and its inclusive demands for social justice.Such an analysis can illuminate one of the key theoretical questions that the current wave of protests raises for the study of social movements. In a number of important ways, Occupy-type protests have followed a pattern familiar from earlier “new” social movements, particularly with regard to the social background of the activists and participants and the forms of collective action they have adopted; but the context of socio-economic injustice that animates these protests and constitutes their core is unmistakably materialistic. They challenge key elements of the prevailing model of state-economy relations, in pursuit of a redistribution of resources and remaking of the structure of inequality. In a dialectical process, the class and generational dynamic that accompanied the installation of the neoliberal regime and its current crisis led to the emergence of protest movements that seek to repoliticize distributive and economic issues.
URL:
אתר את הפרסום בקטלוג המאוחד של ספריות ישראל
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