Sociology in the Garden: Beyond the Liberal Grammar of Contemporary Sociology

This article poses a simple question: why do marginalized Mizrahim, a group most likely to benefit from liberal justice and human rights, so vehemently and repeatedly reject the liberal message? To address this question, we shift the direction of inquiry from problems in the message’s transmission or reception to the message itself. By doing so, we seek to go beyond the ‘liberal grammar’ shared by most social activists and critical sociologists. The insight emerging from this theoretical turn is that the politics of universalism, rooted in the liberal grammar of human rights and viewed from the liberal standpoint as a key to social emancipation, is experienced by the target population as a heartless betrayal and a grave identity threat. This article offers the initial outline for a new interpretive space and seeks to surpass both the limits of the Israeli case and those of the liberal grammar of contemporary critical sociology. KeywordS: critical sociology, dignity, honor, human rights, identity, liberalism, particularism, universalism In “For Public Sociology,” the article based on his presidential address to the American Sociological Association, Michael Burawoy (2005) describes two interrelated trends in contemporary American sociology. First, he notes, sociology and the world it studies have traveled in polar directions since the second half of the twentieth century, with sociology moving ‘left’ in taking a critical stance toward the political order, the market economy, and state authority, while “the world it studies has moved in the opposite direction” (ibid.: 6), with the global market economy expanding, neo-liberalism on the rise, and civil rights violations becoming commonplace. Second, the Israel Studies Review, Volume 31, Issue 1, Summer 2016: 36–65 © Association for Israel Studies doi: 10.3167/isr.2016.310104 • ISSN 2159-0370 (Print) • ISSN 2159-0389 (Online) Sociology in the Garden | 37 affinity between sociology and social activism is tightening. This bond has given rise to what Burawoy terms an “organic public sociology” (ibid.: 7), meaning the collaboration of sociologists with labor movements, human rights organizations, and immigrant groups, among others. Burawoy’s observation of the growing collaboration between the two fields does not remain on the descriptive level; it is also prescriptive. And yet, Burawoy does not suggest that sociology has an intrinsic commitment to liberal values. As he points out: “If sociology actually supports more liberal or critical public sociologies, that is a consequence of the evolving ethos of the sociological community” (ibid.: 8). Nonetheless, its de facto commitment to liberal justice and human rights has become contemporary American sociology’s zeitgeist.1 In this spirit, Burawoy concludes that “sociology—and in particular its public face—defends the interests of humanity” (ibid.: 24). In the current article, I enlarge on Burawoy’s observation and widely accepted diagnosis of contemporary sociology. The insight emerging from my analysis is that, contrary to Burawoy, the ‘liberal grammar’ shared de facto by contemporary sociology and civil society NGOs, as indicated by sociology’s growing kinship with civil society, narrows the discipline’s interpretive space and consequently limits its added value and potential public impact. As I will show, the interpretive repertoire available to sociologists and human rights activists hampers their attempts to decipher a widely recognized yet puzzling local phenomenon—the ‘refusal’ of working-class Mizrahi Jews, one of Israel’s disadvantaged groups, to embrace the liberal message of social justice, equality, and human rights. Moreover, this group of Mizrahim, frequently regarded by critical sociologists as victims of state discrimination, positions itself on the side of the state, actively protecting the state from any inroads sought by the liberal message and its messengers. Thus, one of the very groups expected to benefit most from the values of liberal justice and human rights vehemently rejects the liberal message. Viewed from the interpretive space available to sociologists and human rights activists, the resistance of marginalized Mizrahim to the liberal message remains an ‘anomaly’, a problem awaiting a solution. In a different vein, the proposed analysis resonates with the broader literature on the failure of human rights to penetrate non-liberal societies (Bauer 1999).2 Ever since the UN ratified the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, but especially since the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s, human rights have gained increasing legitimacy in international politics and jurisprudence (Simmons 2009; Sjoberg et al. 2001). However, despite effectively positioning itself as a global moral order transcending international borders, encounters between the liberal human rights discourse and 38 | Nissim Mizrachi local worlds of meaning have often been conflictual. Israel’s local Mizrahi anomaly therefore echoes a worldwide social phenomenon. The article progresses as follows. In the next section I present three snapshots of confrontations between liberal demonstrators and Mizrahim (Jews of Middle Eastern or North African origin) of low socio-economic status. This is followed by an analysis of focus group sessions in which activists from two major civil society NGOs attempt to grapple with the Mizrahi anomaly together with declining public support for their message. The section also presents selected findings from comprehensive research examining how different groups in Israel perceive social justice, human rights, and equality.3 I then move to a discussion of the liberal grammar guiding the NGOs’ thinking and acting. The available repertoire of explanations found in contemporary Israeli critical sociology is then reviewed. In the closing section I turn the sociological gaze upon itself to offer an initial outline of an alternative interpretive space outside the liberal grammar of critical sociology. Zooming in on the Israeli case A left-wing demonstration against the Second Lebanon War, at the corner of Chen and Ben-Zion Boulevards, Tel Aviv, 16 July 2006. Dozens of demonstrators are marching with signs displaying anti-war slogans: “We do not have children for unnecessary wars,” “Stop the killing in Haifa, Beirut, and Gaza,” and the like. The demonstrators chant: “In Beirut and in Haifa, others want to live like brothers.” A middle-aged woman defiantly claps her hands in front of a cameraman while twisting her upper torso as if performing a Middle Eastern dance. She points to him and shouts: “Only war, only war. Film me for the TV. The Arabs understand only war and nothing else. Only power, power [you hear]. The people of Israel have survived thanks to force” (Mizrachi 2011: 51). A demonstration against the deportation of children of foreign workers, Meir Park, in central Tel Aviv, 4 March 2011. A 12-year-old girl representing these children reads a speech, written in Hebrew, that stresses her Israeliness and integration into local life. In the background, a few dozen residents of poor, south Tel Aviv neighborhoods jeer at the demonstrators, shouting: “Israel isn’t up for grabs,” “South Tel Aviv for the Jews.” Several slogans, printed on the placards they hold, proclaim: “Children from slums aren’t worth less than the children of illegal workers” and “The next generation is in danger” (Yassur Beit-Or 2011). A silent protest march against the lack of social justice, held during the fifth week of tent city protests in Charles Clore Park, Tel Aviv, 20 August 2011. Sociology in the Garden | 39 The march takes place under the pall of recent missile firings from Gaza directed at Israel’s southern towns. At the march’s conclusion, a moment of silence is held in recognition of the events in the south. Thereafter, during delivery of the muted speeches, heckling is heard from the perimeter. A group of about five men with distinctively Mizrahi accents demand that the speakers denounce the missile barrage. Their heckling increases when an Arab speaker approaches the podium. The audience loudly applauds his words about the shared fate of Jews and Arabs in times of economic stress. In contrast, the hecklers’ leader shouts: “It’s become a leftist protest.” A demonstrating activist replies: “If you don’t like it, leave.” In response, the heckler yells: “Shut up, you queer!” which is answered by: “That’s right, I like screwing ass.” The atmosphere becomes increasingly charged. At one point, a demonstrator shouts: “Go back to the zoo.” The hecklers’ leader responds in kind: “You son of a bitch. Hitler didn’t kill enough of you.”4 The verbal violence is dangerously close to becoming physical as dozens if not hundreds of the demonstration’s participants turn toward the hecklers and shout: “Arabs and Jews refuse to be enemies” (Mizrachi 2011: 52). Dissent against war, protest against the expulsion of foreign workers and their children, demands for social justice and Jewish-Arab solidarity: the issues raised at these events initially appear unconnected. The contexts also vary: armed conflict, social protest, and the struggle to reform government policy. Yet common to all of them is the clear and stable social profile of the two opposing camps. The demonstrators clearly belong to Israel’s educated elite, the Ashkenazim or Jews of European origin. They include academics and professionals, the offspring of the country’s founding fathers, or those having a clear demographic link to those elites (Hermann 2009). Absent among them are immigrants from the former Soviet Union, religious nationalists, and ultra-Orthodox Jews, as well as Mizrahim. The presence of working-class Mizrahi hecklers at each of the cited events is particularly interesting precisely because the Mizrahi world of meaning reflects neither orderly right-wing ideology nor strict religious Orthodoxy. Mizrahi unclassifiability according to the religious-secular dicho