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New Middle Class and Environmental Lifestyle in Israel

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The New Middle Classes

Abstract

This chapter explores the way class location in general and new middle class location in particular affect environmental lifestyles among Israelis. Israel is a unique case because on the one hand it is well embedded in global processes of production and consumption but on the other hand labors under a volatile regional conflict, which means that the environment does not rank high on the public agenda. I test two competing theoretical predictions on the association between class location and environmental lifestyle. I pay particular attention to a relatively new class segment that the literature portrays as having special affinity with environmental issues, namely social-cultural specialists. The first prediction argues that contemporary environmentalism draws support from a broad cross-section of society rather than from particular social groups. The second prediction maintains that environmentalism draws more support from the social-cultural specialists because this class is composed of individuals who are highly educated, trained in more humanistic and value laden knowledge and skills, and develop more progressive attitudes and behavior. Based on analyses of survey data I conclude that in the Israeli context the hypothesis on the broadening base of environmentalism receives support, and that the cleavage between technocrats and social-cultural workers is of no consequence for environmental lifestyle.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    A notable exception is Tal’s (2002) detailed overview of environmental issues and environmentalism in Israel.

  2. 2.

    The data were made available to the authors by Israel Social Science Data Center (ISDC) at the Hebrew University.

  3. 3.

    I wish to thank Arye Rattner for allowing me to use the data in this survey, which he coordinated.

  4. 4.

    The reliability coefficient of the experts’ allocation is 0.95; no expert disagreed greatly with the others, and overall reliability could not be improved by leaving out experts (for more details see Güveli et al., 2007). The coding scheme was obtained from Güveli (2006).

  5. 5.

    Several occupations are listed in Israel under EGPI or EGPII, while in the Netherlands they are listed as some other class. In a personal communication with Güveli we obtained the class locations of those occupations as follows: 3310 primary education associate teaching professionals, 3320 pre-primary education associate teaching professionals, 3330 special education associate teaching professionals, 3340 other associate teaching professionals, 2149 architects, engineers and related professionals not elsewhere classified, 2211 biologists, botanists, zoologists and related professionals, 3231 nursing associate professionals, 5149 other personal services workers not elsewhere classified into IIb (low-grade social and cultural specialists), 4111 stenographers and typists and 4190 other office clerks classified into IIa (low-grade technocrats); this is because their work tasks do not involve social services or social-cultural skills, and performers of these tasks are easier to monitor.

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  1. Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel

    Tally Katz-Gerro

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Correspondence to Tally Katz-Gerro .

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    Katz-Gerro, T. (2009). New Middle Class and Environmental Lifestyle in Israel. In: Meier, L., Lange, H. (eds) The New Middle Classes. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9938-0_11

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