Abstract
Drawing on conversations around issues of morality and politics carried out with Israeli soldiers who served in the occupied territories during the second Palestinian uprising (during the 2000s), Goodman examines how subjects abandon accepted political standpoints and act politically. He argues that changes in a person’s political views and actions do not happen abruptly as may be conceived following a Christian conversion tale. Furthermore, political and moral matters are not explicitly and clearly expressed in themselves. Often they are mediated within meaningful frameworks: army regulations, being part of a group, and the like. Service in the Israeli military is especially depoliticizing, but he suggests that this point could be applied to other milieus, not only in situations that quite deliberately try to downplay the political.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Asad, Talal. 2003. Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Ben-Ari, Eyal. 1989. “Masks and Soldiering: The Israeli Army and the Palestinian Uprising.” Cultural Anthropology 4 (4): 372–389.
———. 1998. Mastering Soldiers: Conflict, Emotions, and the Enemy in an Israeli Military Unit. Oxford: Berghahn Books.
Briggs, Charles. 1986. Learning How to Ask. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Collier, Stephen J., and Aihwa Ong. 2005. Global Assemblages, Anthropological Problems. In Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics and Ethics as Anthroplogical Problems, edited by Aihwa Ong and Stephen J. Collier, 3–21. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Das, Veena. 2006. Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Das, Veena, and Deborah Poole. 2004. State and Its Margins: Comparative Ethnographies. In Anthropology in the Margins of the State, edited by Veena Das and Deborah Poole, 3–33. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.
Fischer, Michael M.J. 2003. Emergent Forms of Life and the Anthropological Voice. Durham: Duke University Press.
Garro, Linda C., and Cheryl Mattingly. 2000. Narrative as Construct and Construction. In Narrative and the Cultural Construction of Illness and Healing, edited by Cheryl Mattingly and Linda C. Garro, 1–49. Berkeley: California University Press.
Gergen, Kenneth J., and Mary Gergen. 1988. “Narratives and the Self as Relationships.” Advances in Experiemental Psychology 21: 17–56.
Grassiani, Erella. 2013. Soldiering under Occupation: Processes of Numbing among Israeli Soldiers in the Al-Aqsa Intifada. New York: Berghahn.
Goffman, Erving. 1974. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Goodman, Yehuda. 2001. “Dynamics of Inclusion and Exclusion: Comparing Mental-Illness Narratives of Ultraorthodox Patients and Their Rabbis.” Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 25 (2): 169–194.
Gutmann, Mathew, and Catherine Lutz. 2010. Breaking Ranks: Iraq Veterans Speak Out against the War. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Holland, Dorothy, William Lachicotte Jr., Debra Skinner, and Carole Cain. 1998. Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Kirmayer, Lawerence J. 2000. Broken Narrative: Clinical Encounters and the Poetics of Illness Experience. In Narrative and the Cultural Construction of Illness and Healing, edited by Linda C. Garro and Cheryl Mattingly, 153–180. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Lutz, Catheine A., and Lila Abu-Lughod, eds. 1990. Language and the Politics of Emotion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Marcus, George E., and Michael M.J. Fischer. 1986. Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Ochs, Eleanor, and Capps Lisa. 2001. Living Narrative: Creating Lives in Everyday Storytelling. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Ortner, Sherry B. 2006. Anthropology and Social Theory: Culture, Power, and the Acting Subject. Durham: Duke University Press.
Ragson, Adam. 2016. “Poll Indicates Majority Supports Two-States, but Not on Previous Negotiations.” Accessed April 7, 2017. http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Majority-of-Israelis-Palestinians-still-support-two-state-solution-464748.
Stromberg, Peter. 1993. Language and Self-Transformation: A Study of the Christian Conversion Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Weiss, Erica. 2014. Conscientious Objectors in Israel: Citizenship, Sacrifice, Trials of Fealty. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Yiftachel, Oren. 2006. Ethnocracy: Land and Identity Politics in Israel/Palestine. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Zigon, Jarret. 2008. Morality: An Anthropological Perspective. Oxford: Berg.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Goodman, Y.C. (2018). Mediating Moralities: Intersubjectivities in Israeli Soldiers’ Narratives of the Occupation. In: Strauss, C., Friedman, J. (eds) Political Sentiments and Social Movements. Culture, Mind, and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72341-9_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72341-9_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-72340-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-72341-9
eBook Packages: Behavioral Science and PsychologyBehavioral Science and Psychology (R0)