Synopses & Reviews
Since 1999 hundreds of thousands of young American Jews have visited Israel on an all-expense-paid 10-day pilgrimage-tour known as Birthright Israel. The most elaborate of the state-supported homeland tours that are cropping up all over the world, this tour seeks to foster in the American Jewish diaspora a lifelong sense of attachment to Israel based on ethnic and political solidarity. Over a half-billion dollars (and counting) has been spent cultivating this attachment, and despite 9/11 and the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict the tours are still going strong.
Based on over seven years of first-hand observation in modern day Israel, Shaul Kelner provides an on-the-ground look at this hotly debated and widely emulated use of tourism to forge transnational ties. We ride the bus, attend speeches with the Prime Minister, hang out in the hotel bar, and get a fresh feel for young American Jewish identity and contemporary Israel. We see how tourism's dynamism coupled with the vibrant human agency of the individual tourists inevitably complicate tour leaders' efforts to rein tourism in and bring it under control. By looking at the broader meaning of tourism, Kelner brings to light the contradictions inherent in the tours and the ways that people understandtheir relationship to place both materially and symbolically. Rich in detail, engagingly written, and sensitive to the complexities of modern travel and modern diaspora Jewishness, Tours that Bind offers a new way of thinking about tourism as a way through which people develop understandings of place, society, and self.
Review
“
Tours that Bind is an exceptional work. Shaul Kelner offers one of the finest social scientific studies of contemporary Jewish life in a generation.”
- Riv-Ellen Prell, author of Fighting to Become Americans: Jews, Gender and the Anxiety of Assimilation
Review
“The best book to date on diaspora tourism. Kelner sweeps away the cobwebs that have clouded the relationship between young American Jews and the state of Israel. Rich description, subtle theory, and jargon-free writing make this book a joy to read. A major contribution to the literature on tourism and Jewish studies.”
- Edward M. Bruner, author of Culture on Tour: Ethnographies of Travel
Review
“Tours that Bind . . . serve[s] up some fascinating insights into one of the most daring and effective social experiments of the modern Jewish Diaspora.”
- The Jerusalem Post
“Drawing mainly on his own participant-observation experiences, Kelner situates the program in a context of political tourism, giving us new tools with which to understand the visceral, emotional and cognitive impacts on the participants. This provides a sophisticated lens through which to analyze what the Birthright program, and others like it, does, how it accomplishes its goals, what those goals are and why the mechanisms used may also limit its impact.”
- Harriet Hartman, The Foreward
“...[O]ffers some intriguing insights into a phenomenon of considerable importance in the American Jewish community.”
- Adam Kirsch, Tablet Magazine
“Tours that Bind is an exceptional work. Shaul Kelner offers one of the finest social scientific studies of contemporary Jewish life in a generation.”
- Riv-Ellen Prell, author of Fighting to Become Americans: Jews, Gender and the Anxiety of Assimilation
“The best book to date on diaspora tourism. Kelner sweeps away the cobwebs that have clouded the relationship between young American Jews and the state of Israel. Rich description, subtle theory, and jargon-free writing make this book a joy to read. A major contribution to the literature on tourism and Jewish studies.”
- Edward M. Bruner, author of Culture on Tour: Ethnographies of Travel
Review
"Kelner, assistant professor of sociology and Jewish studies at Vanderbilt University, has written an original and persuasive account of the ways in which tourism has evolved into an important means for the creation of transnational identities and commitments. Using Birthright tours to Israel as his example, Kelner offers new ways to think about place, society, and self." "This fascinating, carefully researched study focuses on a specific kind of tourism... the Israeli Taglit-Birthright program... This study is insightful, rich in data, and exceptionally well informed. While the subject focus is unique, the volume contributes broadly to understanding pilgrimage and tourism, youth culture, and Israel-diaspora relations... Highly recommended." "After several years of serious scholarship, Kelner concludes that tourism is the great equalizer, an opportunity for institutions to compete for the ability to represent a people.Though not the first book to explore Birthright's impact,
Tours That Bind approaches the subject academically, analyzing how Israel co-opts the Jewish diaspora to strengthen its nation-state."
“Tours that Bind . . . serve[s] up some fascinating insights into one of the most daring and effective social experiments of the modern Jewish Diaspora.”
“Drawing mainly on his own participant-observation experiences, Kelner situates the program in a context of political tourism, giving us new tools with which to understand the visceral, emotional and cognitive impacts on the participants. This provides a sophisticated lens through which to analyze what the Birthright program, and others like it, does, how it accomplishes its goals, what those goals are and why the mechanisms used may also limit its impact.”
Review
“Drawing mainly on his own participant-observation experiences, Kelner situates the program in a context of political tourism, giving us new tools with which to understand the visceral, emotional and cognitive impacts on the participants. This provides a sophisticated lens through which to analyze what the Birthright program, and others like it, does, how it accomplishes its goals, what those goals are and why the mechanisms used may also limit its impact.”
-Harriet Hartman,The Foreward
Review
"Lutz makes a real contribution to the study of the American empire of bases."
-Chalmers Johnson at Truthdig.com,
Review
"These fascinating case studies provide a powerful assessment of the worldwide network of U.S. military bases and the burgeoning anti-base campaign, and analyze the changing nature of empire building and the re-mapping of the sociopolitical terrain within the context of the 'global war on terror.' A major contribution to understanding the causes and consequences of U.S. military bases at home and abroad."
-—Kimberly Theidon,Harvard University
Review
"A real contribution to the study of the American empire of bases. . . This book is an antidote to parochialsim."-Truthdig,
Review
“The authors, primarily anthropologists, have written a series of essays demonstrating the ills of American military bases in various parts of the world, especially Latin America, the Middle East, and the Pacific Basin. Much of what they have written is accurate. American military bases and forces deployed overseas very often have been sources of insecurity and problems rather than promoting democracy, economic development, and stability.”
-Hal M. Friedman,Henry Ford Community College
Review
“This book contains a powerful set of ideas and well referenced information to help inform the world of the reality of U.S. militarization of the global community.”
-The Palestine Chronicle,
Synopsis
Winner, 2010 Association for Jewish Studies Jordan Schnitzer Book Award
2011 Honorable Mention for the American Sociological Association Culture Section's Mary Douglas Prize for Best Book
Since 1999 hundreds of thousands of young American Jews have visited Israel on an all-expense-paid 10-day pilgrimage-tour known as Birthright Israel. The most elaborate of the state-supported homeland tours that are cropping up all over the world, this tour seeks to foster in the American Jewish diaspora a lifelong sense of attachment to Israel based on ethnic and political solidarity. Over a half-billion dollars (and counting) has been spent cultivating this attachment, and despite 9/11 and the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict the tours are still going strong.
Based on over seven years of first-hand observation in modern day Israel, Shaul Kelner provides an on-the-ground look at this hotly debated and widely emulated use of tourism to forge transnational ties. We ride the bus, attend speeches with the Prime Minister, hang out in the hotel bar, and get a fresh feel for young American Jewish identity and contemporary Israel. We see how tourism's dynamism coupled with the vibrant human agency of the individual tourists inevitably complicate tour leaders' efforts to rein tourism in and bring it under control. By looking at the broader meaning of tourism, Kelner brings to light the contradictions inherent in the tours and the ways that people understandtheir relationship to place both materially and symbolically. Rich in detail, engagingly written, and sensitive to the complexities of modern travel and modern diaspora Jewishness, Tours that Bind offers a new way of thinking about tourism as a way through which people develop understandings of place, society, and self.
Synopsis
A quarter of a million U.S. troops are massed in over seven hundred major official overseas airbases around the world. In the past decade, the Pentagon has formulated and enacted a plan to realign, or reconfigure, its bases in keeping with new doctrines of pre-emption and intensified concern with strategic resource control, all with seemingly little concern for the surrounding geography and its inhabitants.
The contributors in The Bases of Empire trace the political, environmental, and economic impact of these bases on their surrounding communities across the globe, including Latin America, Europe, and Asia, where opposition to the United States' presence has been longstanding and widespread, and is growing rapidly.
Through sharp analysis and critique, The Bases of Empire illuminates the vigorous campaigns to hold the United States accountable for the damage its bases cause in allied countries as well as in war zones, and offers ways to reorient security policies in other, more humane, and truly secure directions.
Contributors: Julian Aguon, Kozue Akibayashi, Ayse Gul Altinay, Tom Engelhardt, Cynthia Enloe, Joseph Gerson, David Heller, Amy Holmes, Laura Jeffery, Kyle Kajihiro, Hans Lammerant, John Lindsay-Poland, Catherine Lutz, Katherine McCaffrey, Roland G. Simbulan, Suzuyo Takazato, and David Vine.
About the Author
Catherine Lutz is Professor of Anthropology at Brown University, where she has a joint appointment with the Watson Institute for International Studies. Her books include Homefront: A Military City and the American 20th Century.