Alon Helled – författare

The book analyses the development of Israel''s national identity through the world of local Jewish Zionist historiography. Inspired by Norbert Elias’ historical and figurational sociology, the book examines the different phases and generations in Israel in light of the collective habitus and the nation-state survival unit, set by Zionism. It does so by putting in relation the intellectual profession of history-writing and the processes of state and identity building. It processually pursues the autonomization of the historiographical field in Israel from its socio-genesis in pre-state Israel to recent decades. By combining together well-established literature on the relations between nationalism and statehood and on the particularity of the Israeli case, the book updates the state of the art and opens new debates on Jewish\Israeli exceptionalism, while shedding light on continuity and change in Israeli statehood vis-à-vis the supposed uniqueness of Jewish history, as reinterpreted and codified by Zionism. As it examines the interconnections between local intelligentsia and politics, the enquiry avails of the sociological concepts of “generation,” “habitus,” “survival unit,” “field,” according to the long-period tradition of research in Pierre Bourdieu, Norbert Elias, Max Weber, and more. This rich sociological conceptualization permits to mirror and contextualize Israel’s national identity with both intellectual and sociopolitical emphases. By situating Israeli historians and their profession on the dynamic crossroads and intersections of academia, politics, and greater society, the study delineates the deep meaning of “Israeliness.”

Nations adapt. Nations are resilient both within and outside the boundaries of statehood. Yet scholarship tends to downplay nationhood, as it focuses on the polity. As a consequence, the investigation of modern societies, though usually articulated around the nation-state model, falls into state-centrism, whilst neglecting the other side of the coin. This book initiates an interdisciplinary debate that encourages research in a field that has largely been overlooked in European social and political sciences. The analysis, offered by the authors, reinstates the concept of the ''nation'' beyond the traditional, and somewhat dichotomous, schools of thought, hence neither judging the nation as a mere invention nor as a deterministic product of history. The book provides those interested in nationalism with new approaches to exploring national identity and its connection to statehood. By using concepts inspired by political science and sociology, namely habitus, survival unit, polity, hysteresis, and so forth, the different chapters of the volume revitalise the inquiry of the dimensions and features in which the nation and the identification they engender become tools of adaptation in relation to the transformative reality of our own contemporaneity. The authors thus contextualise the latter via the mid-range concept of national resilience at both meso- and macro-levels.