Abstract
Elderly Bedouin men in southern Israel are a unique traditional population living in remote unrecognized villages and experiencing rapid social transition, in addition to deep poverty and political tension. In this study, we aimed to explore stressful events, as self-defined by the participants, and the ways in which these men have coped with those stressful events. This study involved 12 men, aged 69–74, who participated in in-depth narrative interviews during which they were asked about transformative stressful events in their lives and how they had managed, understood, and utilized human capital, meaning-making, and other methods of coping. Analysis of the interviews revealed several themes: (a) the definition of stressful events within the cultural context, (b) the use of human capital to overcome those events, (c) the transformation of experience from hindsight into a didactic narrative that can be used to assign meaning to past events, which can then be passed on to the next generation, and (d) cultural transition as a catalyst for the creation of new understandings of events. This paper sheds new light on how elderly indigenous Bedouin men self-define stressful situations within a complex and unstable cultural context. This specific context, can help us to gain insight into how indigenous impoverished older men in similar contexts may self-define their stress and coping, based on the types of generalization accepted in qualitative research. The methodological contribution of this work lies in its use of narrative to culturally contextualize phenomenological meaning structures. Its theoretical contribution lies in its examination of the concept of stress within a specific cultural context.
Highlights
Older Bedouin men are part of the last generation in their communities to have grown up in closed traditional tribal groups
The stressful events mentioned by the participants involved home demolitions, moving to another settlement, tension between tribes, honor killing, and polygamy and marital problems
The house is a central element in Bedouin culture as it organizes the stability and wealth of the family and family interaction is centered around the house
Summary
Older Bedouin men are part of the last generation in their communities to have grown up in closed traditional tribal groups Their society has undergone an intense cultural transition over the course of their adult lives, an experience that is known to be highly stressful. Over recent decades, this society has experienced rapid change from a collectivistic to a more individualistic culture and from a traditional lifestyle to more Western lifestyle. This society has experienced rapid change from a collectivistic to a more individualistic culture and from a traditional lifestyle to more Western lifestyle These men are in a unique position to shed light on traditional cultural norms, and how they themselves have coped with the first transitions to Western culture. It aims to see how those definitions correlate with salutogenic theory and its core components of meaningfulness, manageability, and comprehensibility, in the context of the human capital that is available in a traditional collectivist society
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