War bodies, hedonist bodies: dialectics of the collective and the individual in Israeli society

Abstract

During the last 13 years I have collected university students'drawings of theirbodies. Between 1983 and 1993, I asked students to draw "the normal body" as well as "the body in disease." During the Gulf War, I discovered that a new type of body had emerged and replaced "the normal body." I call this type "the body in war." The powerful emergence of "the body in war" prompted me to analyze these drawings as concrete manifestations of the dialectics between the collective and the individual in Israeli society. Because I have examined "the body in disease" elsewhere {Weiss in press b and in press c), in this article I focus exclusively on the contrast between "the normal body" and "the body in war." I have divided the article into three parts. In the first section I introduce the historical axes of social analysis and the structural analogies between body imagery and images of the social order with comparisons to American society. In the second section I consider the Gulf War and examine its effect on the normal body. In the third section I conclude by offering a panoramic reading of how people narrate their socially informed bodies to suit changing cultural contexts and problematize the "individuality" presumed to be inherent in "normal bodies." the body as social mirror: the view from Israeli society Social paradigms are articulated through bodies. The existence and absence of bodily paraphernalia and practices such as clothing, makeup, bodybuilding, and diet reflect abstract social dispositions. These issues comprise some of the possible fields of research in the new sociology of the body-or, rather, the sociology of embodiment (see Turner 1991 b). Sociologists who study the body have made great strides in recent years, embracing such different theoretical concerns as feminist studies, post-Foucau/t sociology, semiology, ethology, and the more conventional social anthropology "of health and illness" (see Douglas and Calvez 1990; . I do not attempt to survey this fast growing corpus of literature here; rather, I focus on two outstanding contributions in order to compare these with my own discussion of the body: EmilyIn this paper I analyze images of the "normal body" in Israel between 1983 and. By correlating body imagery with images of the social order, I argue that this "normal body" reflects a social discourse of growing individualism. During the Gulf War (1991), images of the "normal body" changed to reflect a rising collectivism. I consider this abrupt change in the context of Israel's "interrupted system." I conclude by offering a panoramic reading of how people narrate their socially informed bodies to suit varying cultural contexts and thus problematize the "individuality"presumed inherent in "normal bodies." [body politic, embodiment, Israeli society, collectivism, individualism, social narratives] American Ethnologist 24(4):813-832.

Individual Bodies, Collective State Interests

“…The Israeli militarized body is fashioned according to a utopian collectivist and gendered ideology, emphasizing the "chosen body" of the healthy, strong, and active Jewish male (Weiss 2002). This "perfect" body, which in reality was the lot of only a select few, was seen as an ideal type, and comparisons with it generated a hierarchy of bodies, defining the boundaries of the collective and its internal stratification (see also Peniston-Bird 2003).…”

“…The combat body project not only creates hierarchal gender differences, however, but also stratifies male bodies. The "chosen body" (Weiss 2002) of the combat soldier depends on the existence of the wrong body, the body that fails to become a combat soldier. The literature often specifies female or homosexual bodies as representative of the "wrong" military body.…”

“…Serving as a combat soldier provides one of the very few chances in life to receive recognition for heroism, which is a source of honor and thrill in itself. Endangering one's life is seen by soldiers as the ultimate actualization of both masculinity and nationality, and thus, it serves as a criterion in social and military stratification systems (Weiss 2002;E. Levy 1998;Lomsky-Feder 1998).…”

Advertising in a Collective-Horizontal Culture: Israeli Lottery Advertisements Between Collectivism and Individualism

“…This discourse, which was expressed in different conduits of mass media and popular culture-from literature to street posters-depicted the Zionist state as the final objective of a collective project, the focus of institutionalized authority, and the moral inspiration of the community (Eisenstadt, 1967). In this social, political, and cultural climate, determining the status of the citizens was made contingent on the extent of their willingness to take an active role in shaping, defending, and making sacrifices for the common social goal (Weiss, 1997).…”

Differences between Jewish–Israeli and Arab–Israeli college students in attitudes toward date selection and sex relations: A research note

“…Where date selection is concerned, young Israelis appear to be more in line with Western patterns, although gender gaps in the ruling-out criteria for potential dating partners toward known gender stereotypes are somewhat larger in the United States (Hetsroni, 2000). Perhaps the remains of the Zionist heritage, which encouraged collectivist group activities in adolescence, equalized men and women, and undermined romance, can partly explain both the relative conservatism and the smaller gender gaps that characterize young Israelis' reference to sex (Weiss, 1997). Another explanation to this relative conservatism may have to do with strong family values of the Israeli public and the consistent instillation of ''sexual responsibility'' in young people via different channels of sex education (Brenner, 1999).…”