Description
Book SynopsisEvolving Nationalism examines how the idea of Israel as a nation-state has developed within Zionist and Israeli discourse over the past eight decades. Nadav G. Shelef focuses on the changing ways in which the main nationalist movements answered three distinct questions in their private and public ideological articulations between 1925 and 2005: Where is the Land of Israel? Who ought to be Israeli? What should the Zionist national mission be?
Framed within broader debates about how and why changes in foundational definitions of the nation occur, Shelef''s analysis centers on the mechanisms of ideological change and then subjects them to empirical scrutiny. He thus moves beyond the common but problematic assumptions that such transformations must be either a rare, rational adaptation to traumatic shock or a relatively constant product of manipulation by power-hungry elites. He finds that nationalist movements, including radical and religious fundamentalist ones, can and
Trade Review
As presented by Shelef, who writes in an admirably lucid style that manages to be both sophisticated and coherent, this is undoubtedly a compelling thesis.... He is to be highly commended for having opened up a new avenue of enquiry in a field that, because it has been so extensively ploughed by others, a less courageous scholar might have given a very wide berth.
* The Journal of Israeli History *
Table of ContentsPreface
Nationalism, Change, and EvolutionPart I. Where Is the Land of Israel?
1. Labor Zionist Mapping of the Homeland
2. Religious Zionist Mapping of the Homeland
3. Revisionist Zionist Mapping of the HomelandPart II. Destiny and Identity
4. Transformations of the Collective Mission
5. Arabs and Diaspora Jews in Israeli National Identity
6. Ongoing Transformations of Israeli NationalismNationalism and the Question of ChangeNotes
Bibliography
Index
