Abstract
How unique is Israel? and, as unique as it may be, what are the scholarly implications of such uniqueness? Those are the main questions, and the unifying themes, of Michael Barnett's Israel in Comparative Perspective: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom. The issue was raised, so it seems, in response to skeptical reactions that some of the contributors encountered when they included Israel as one of the cases in their cross-national comparisons. Israel, as Barnett argues, has been "excluded" from the research agenda of comparative politics, not for methodological reasons, but for political and sociological ones. Thus the contributors challenge conventional wisdom by asserting that the study of Israel can benefit from comparative research and, at the same time, that it can contribute to theory-building [End Page 294] in the social sciences in general, and in political sociology and political economy specifically. From various angles and in different spheres of analysis, the contributors to this volume present a comprehensive and comparative picture of Israel. Foreign policy is discussed by Shibley Telhami; Israel-Diaspora relations by Gabriel Sheffer; gender and citizens attitudes toward the peace process in Israel and Egypt by Mark Tessler and Ina Warriner; Israel's economic development by Michael Barnett; the fetish of Jerusalem by Ian Lustick; society formation by Joel Migdal; the politics of Israeli identity by Rebecca Kook; Zionism and colonialism by Gershon Shafir; and the discourse on Israeli uniqueness by Yehezkel Dror.
Published Version
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