The Relationship between Development Towns (Ayarot Pitu'ah) and the Kibbutzim: Class, Identity and Space. The Case of Sderot - Shaar Ha'negev between 1950-2012
Author: Moti Gigi, motig@mail.sapir.ac.il
Department: Sociology
University: Ben-Gurion , Israel
Supervisor: Yehouda Shenhav; Nitza Berkovitch
Year of completion: 2016
Language of dissertation: Hebrew
Keywords:
ethnicity
, Ashkenazim-Mizrachim
, kibbutzim-development Towns
, Hegemony-dominance
Areas of Research:
Political Sociology
, Social Classes and Social Movements
, Migration
Abstract
This study presents an historical, sociological and anthropological analysis of the power relationships between the residents of Sderot, an Israeli development town in the southern, Negev region, and their neighbors, kibbutz members of the Sha’ar Hanegev Regional Council, between the years 1950-2012. In the 1950s, the kibbutzim in the region held economic-political dominance over the residents of the town, which was reflected in the spatial separation between the kibbutzim and Sderot, and in the economic exploitation of the Sderot residents in public works projects and in the factories owned by Sha’ar Hanegev. The separation and the exploitation led to local and national unrest, which among things, erupted in the emergence of the Black Panthers movement in Israel in the 1970s. The kibbutz movement, which was worried about losing its economic dominance, developed a hegemonic process.
In Sderot, this hegemonic development was reflected in its “Project for Sderot-Sha’ar Hanegev Cooperation,” which was called “From Paternalism to Cooperation.” The project led to educational and cultural activities run by kibbutz members in Sderot, which included the appearance of kibbutz groups in the town, the establishment of an urban kibbutz and the founding of the Cinemateque. Later on, after the economic crisis that hit the kibbutz movement in the 1980s, a few Sderot residents had the opportunity to move to community expansions, located in the periphery areas in the kibbutzim, in the Sha’ar Hanegev region. However, acceptance into the expansions was dependent upon the kibbutz admissions’ committees, who chose residents they perceived as being ‘suited’ to kibbutz values.How were the historical power relations between Sderot and Sha’ar Hanegev formed? How did these relations influence the shaping/design of the space, identity and the class relations between Sderot and the regional council? I argue that the answers to these questions are grounded in the historical transformations, which reflected the aspects of space, identity and space. These historical changes reflect the tension between political and economic dominance and cultural hegemony.
