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>In the Cement Boxes
More details
Publisher:
Collaborators:
  • Eshkolot Library, Levi Eshkol Institute
Year:
2012
Catalog number :
45-680010
ISBN:
978-965-493-650-7
Pages:
276
Language:
Weight:
550 gr.
Cover:
Paperback

In the Cement Boxes

Mizrahi Women in the Israeli Periphery

Edited by:
Synopsis

Based on four years of ethnographic research the book offers an intimate, textured and rich depiction of contemporary life in one marginalized development town in the Negev. Placing the stories of five women at the center, the author (herself a Mizrahi woman born in a development town) depicts the creative strategies used by each woman in dealing with the multiple exclusions - gendered, ethnic, class-based, geographic marginalization - that these women have to deal with. The five paths include daily struggles to make ends meet and escape social isolation by one single mother who raises two children without the help of her drug addict partner; the investment in an increasingly more religious-observant lifestyle by another woman. The life stories of two other women are dramatized using texts these women wrote about their own lives. Experimenting with a range of writing styles we get a closer understanding of patterns of feminist rebellion at the margins and of a way of life that resists, adopts and refashions centrist narratives of what it means to be Israeli woman today.

Readable, engaging and at the same time theoretically informed the book is a sustained reflection about the ways in which gender, class, ethnicity, and religiosity are mutually produced in contemporary Israel and about how the center can be understood from its margins.

Reviews

Megamot, Tamar Hagar, December 2016
Ha'aretz, Vered Li, March 2016 
Habama, Zvi Goren, June 2015
"The author, however, refrains from turning these characters into simplistic illustrations of her analytical argument. Quite the opposite, she sensitively depicts the women’s own voices and interpretation of their lives, bringing their personal life-stories to the forefront." Society and Space, Michal Braier, August 2014
Ha'Bama, May 2015
Yediot Ha'Negev, Guy Zohar, May 2015 
NRG, Elishir Reichner, May 2015
"Indeed, reading In the Cement Boxes is much of the time more like reading a novel than professional literature, which will hopefully assist this important book to reach a wide readership within and beyond academic circles." - Society and Space, Michal Braier, November 2014
Sefer Hevra veTarbut, Gilad Sari-Levi, May 2014
Makor Rishon, Efrat Shani Shitrit, January 2014 
Israeli Sociology Magazene, Yali Hashash, October 2013 
Ha'oketz, Pnina Motzafi-Haller, July 2013
Haaretz, Vered Li, March 2013
Haaretz, Yizhak Laor, January 2013
NRG Maariv, Eran Eldar, December 2012