Synopses & Reviews
This book examines how the social and cultural paradigms of contemporary Israel are articulated through the body. To construct a panoramic view of how the Israeli body is chosen, regulated, cared for, and ultimately made perfect, the author draws upon some twenty years of ethnographic research in Israel in a range of subjects. These include premarital and prenatal screening, the regulation of the body and its imagery among appearance-impaired children and their families, the screening and sanctifying of the body as part of the bereavement and commemoration of fallen soldiers, and the discourse of the chosen body as it surfaces during terrorist attacks, military socialization, war, and the peace process.
Review
The Chosen Body demonstrates that passionate scholarship is not an oxymoron . . . . [This] is a great ethnography of how societies shape bodies, but its importance as a work of moral testimony may be even greater.”Canadian Journal of Sociology Online
Review
"The Chosen Body is thought-provoking and has far-reaching importance and relevance for all students of human behavior."The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease
Synopsis
Includes bibliographical references (p. 157-174) and index.
Synopsis
The Zionist revolution, which aimed to create a new people fit for a new land, had a unique bodily aspect. Zionism was not just a political and cultural movement, but to Zionist thinkers at the beginning of the twentieth century, returning to the land of Israel and becoming involved in agriculture would restore the health of Jewish bodies. Agriculture, land, and military power were seen as antidotes to what was perceived as the passivity and "spirituality" of Jews and Judaism in the diaspora. The essential feature of Judaism, namely, learning, was traditionally disembodied; Zionism regarded itself as a revolutionary attempt to re-embody the Jew and reposition him in history. In Max Nordau's term, coined as early as 1900, Zionism was to be "Judaism with muscles."
The book examines how the social and cultural paradigms of contemporary Israel are articulated through the body. To construct a panoramic view of how the Israeli body is chosen, regulated, cared for, and ultimately made perfect, the author draws upon some twenty years of ethnographic research in Israel in a range of subjects. These include premarital and prenatal screening, the regulation of the body and its imagery among appearance-impaired children and their families, the screening and sanctifying of the body as part of the bereavement and commemoration of fallen soldiers, and the discourse of the chosen body as it surfaces during terrorist attacks, military socialization, war, and the peace process.
The social construction of the body in Israel followed a gendered, utopian, and collectivist pattern characteristic of nineteenth-century nationalistic movements. Scholars have probed the connection between bodybuilding andnation-building, but the author argues that previous studies have ignored another, no less important physical dimension: the idealization of health and perfection resulting in what she calls "the chosen body, " an ideal type of the Israeli body that is screened and molded from birth to death.
Synopsis
“The Chosen Body demonstrates that passionate scholarship is not an oxymoron . . . . [This] is a great ethnography of how societies shape bodies, but its importance as a work of moral testimony may be even greater.”—Canadian Journal of Sociology Online
“The Chosen Body is thought-provoking and has far-reaching importance and relevance for all students of human behavior.”—The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease
Synopsis
This book examines how the social and cultural paradigms of contemporary Israel are articulated through the body, constructing a panoramic view of how the Israeli body is chosen, regulated, cared for, and ultimately made perfect.
About the Author
Meira Weiss is Associate Professor of Sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Table of Contents
The body as social mirror -- Choosing the body: pregnancy, birth, military, war, and death -- Sanctifying the chosen body: bereavement and commemoration -- Engendering the chosen body: women and soldiering -- The chosen body and the media -- Writing the body.