Session 4a: Negotiating Boundaries
5th Global Conference
Friday 9th March – Sunday 11th March 2012
Prague, Czech Republic
Where Common Defines Differences: Experiences of Israeli and Jewish Women Living in Brussels
Efrat Tzadik
KUL (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven), Belgium
This paper invites the reader to an open discussion on migration, gender and identity in times of changing migration patterns. The paper focuses on Israeli and Belgian Jewish women living in Brussels. It defines and explains the differences between the two groups throughout an ethnographic research.
The subject of mobility has been well documented in recent social sciences’ literature. Mobility is in fact seen as a process; a progression leading us to see cultures as hybrid and dynamic phenomena (Cresswell, 2006). This paper will look at how identities change in times of migration. It will show the influence that mobility has on identity. The research investigates different identities and core issues in a woman’s life such as marriage, motherhood, profession, religion and nationality, and how these issues and identities are influenced by migration. It will also highlight the integration of different cultural groups within other sub-cultural groups; for example, the integration of the Israeli women in the local Jewish community on the one hand and the integration of Jewish women in the general community on the other. The paper will also pose the question of assimilation in terms of identity. It will underline gender and identities as factors that influence integration both in the local Jewish community, and society at large.
The core of the dissertation is a field study of the Israeli-Jewish community in Belgium and more specifically in Brussels. In depth interviews were carried out. However, the actual research was completed through participatory observation and is based on life stories. As this is Anthropological research, these stories explain in detail the dynamism in life that women are exposed to and underline the process of coping with questions of identity.
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Masculinity and Fatherhood in South Africa – A Colourful Hierarchy
Frederika Cronje
Psychology Department, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa
As part of the positive reconstruction of post-Apartheid South Africa, the country claimed the identifier “Rainbow Nation” in celebration of unity in diversity. Historically defined as a “symbolic and literal dumping ground for the hybrid peoples, who did not quite ‘fit into’ other pure apartheid classifications”, the Coloured population has been caught in the middle of the great divide pre-, during and post- Apartheid and as such has been conspicuous in their absence from the literature. It is within the context of this Rainbow Nation that questions regarding identity, and especially cultural identity, have been of particular interest. The recent global trend towards a shift in focus on the father’s place in the home in addition to the so called crisis of masculinity has stimulated enquiries into the construction of masculinity and fatherhood, two closely related and intertwined terms. In South Africa, a history of violence has been closely related to the construction of masculinity along with several forms of abuse, and particular attention has been paid to the occurrence of such in the low-income urban and rural areas. In this paper R. W. Connell’s theory of Hegemonic Masculinity and Social Constructionism are employed as the theoretical lens through which to critically consider what is known regarding the construction of masculinity and fatherhood for the target population. Specifically, this paper addresses the ideals informing the conception of the ideal man, the notion of the new man and the new father, as well as considering the place of violence in the construction of masculinity and fatherhood for semi-rural, low-income, coloured communities.
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