Summary
Israeli sociologist identified by Lev Grinberg as Talcott Parsons’s best disciple and the first and best-known author of a paradigmatic sociological meta-narrative of Israel: his 1967 work translated Labor Zionist ideology into structural-functionalist sociology as a triumphal theory of Labor Zionism modernizing the Jewish people (Moments of Resistance, PDF p.13-14).
Details
- Eisenstadt published the first sociological paradigmatic meta-narrative in 1967, interpreting Labor Zionism as better suited to build nation-state institutions and power, and analyzing Zionism as a revolutionary movement modernizing the Jewish people (Eisenstadt 1967) (PDF p.14).
- For Grinberg, 1967 was the crucial turning point when Labor Zionist ideology and power interest defeated itself, expanding the borders of the Jewish State and inserting the Palestinians in the Israeli economy under a military-imposed structure of domination (PDF p.14).
- His disciples Horowitz and Lissak (1978) attempted to correct his Parsonian functionalist model using a center and periphery model, arguing Labor Zionism built functional adaptive institutions and the political center of Jewish society despite the dual society of Jews and Arabs under the pre-1948 British Mandate (PDF p.14).
- Baruch Kimmerling is identified as Eisenstadt’s most brilliant and prolific disciple, whose reframing of the society’s borders broke the paradigm (PDF p.16).
Related pages
Lev Grinberg, Baruch Kimmerling, Yonatan Shapiro, Moments of Resistance