Ethnographic Encounters in Israel

Fran Markowitz is Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. She is author of Sarajevo: A Bosnian Kaleidoscope and Coming of Age in Post-Soviet Russia and editor (with Michael Ashkenazi) of Sex, Sexuality and the Anthropologist and (with Anders H. Stefansson) of Homecomings: Unsettling Paths of Return.

"Ethnographic Encounters offers outstanding ethnography, persuasively close to its subject but at the same time posing wider themes and questions vital to Israel and to the practice of anthropology in an intensely "edgy" contemporary society."—Journal of Anthropological Research"[I]ntroduces readers to a variety of ethnographic settings that are not often part of discussions about Israel.March 2015"—H-Judaic"A collection of first-person accounts . . . [of the] contradictions of religion, politics, identity, kinship, racialization, and globalization in the fascinating and often vexing dimensions of the Israeli experience.Summer 2014"—Jewish Book World"A compelling anthology on the diversity of contemporary Israel by a wide range of insightful observers who challenge conventional images. The willingness of the contributors to speak openly, bravely, and critically about the dilemmas of doing research in Israel makes this volume of great value as a contribution to anthropological debates on ethnographic fieldwork."—Ruth Behar, author of An Island Called Home: Returning to Jewish Cuba

• Introduction: Edgy Ethnography in a Little Big PlaceFran MarkowitzPart I.Confrontations and Conversions1. How Christian Pilgrims Made Me IsraeliJackie Feldman2. Mission Not Accomplished: Negotiating Power Relations and Vulnerability Among Messianic Jews in IsraelTamir Erez3. Doing Dimona: An Americanist Anthropologist in an Africanized IsraelJohn L. Jackson, Jr.Part II. State Categories and Global Flows4. Seeking Truth in Hip Hop Music and Hip Hop EthnographyUri Dorchin5. The State of the Family: Eldercare as a Practice of Corporal Symbiosis by Filipina Migrant WorkersKeren Mazuz6. Diasporas Collide: Competing Holocausts, Imposed Whiteness and the Seemingly Jewish non-Jew Researcher in IsraelGabriella DjerrahianPart III. Fieldwork to the Point of Worry7. Traveling Between Reluctant Neighbors: Researching with Jews and Bedouin Arabs in the Northern NegevEmily McKee8. On the Matter of Return to Israel/Palestine: Autoethnographic ReflectionsJasmin Habib9. Some Kind of Masochist: Fieldwork in Unsettling TerritoryJoyce Dalsheim10. The Impurities of Experience: Researching Prostitution in IsraelHilla Nehushtan11. Falling in Love with a Criminal? On Immersion and Self-RestraintVirginia R. Dominguez