Haim Hazan – författare

Through an ethnohistorical chronicling of the emotionally-laden treatment of selected suicide media-events, this book offers a neo-Durkheimean account of suicide, addressing its social-moral threat and the ensuing need to gloss over its unsettling incomprehensibility. An analysis of the social dramas, cultural performances, and suicide talk aired in the Israeli public sphere, it suggests that such public glossing practices atone for and bring about the symbolic rectification of the socially detrimental effects of suicide. Drawing on Durkheim’s thought on the social significance of suicide and the sacred cohesive power of society’s self-representations through rituals and commemorations, the authors revamp the contemporary pertinence of these cultural devices, showing how, in the process of reconstituting and redressing the disrupted order, suicide talk constitutes a revival mechanism of communal ‘life giving’. A rekindling of the Durkheimian approach to suicide that examines how society deals with suicide’s shattering of normative we-feelings, Suicide Social Dramas: Moral Breakdowns in the Israeli Public Sphere will appeal to scholars and students of sociology and anthropology with interests in social theory, Israel studies, suicide studies, and the interpretation of societal and cultural processes.

Through an ethnohistorical chronicling of the emotionally-laden treatment of selected suicide media-events, this book offers a neo-Durkheimean account of suicide, addressing its social-moral threat and the ensuing need to gloss over its unsettling incomprehensibility. An analysis of the social dramas, cultural performances, and suicide talk aired in the Israeli public sphere, it suggests that such public glossing practices atone for and bring about the symbolic rectification of the socially detrimental effects of suicide. Drawing on Durkheim’s thought on the social significance of suicide and the sacred cohesive power of society’s self-representations through rituals and commemorations, the authors revamp the contemporary pertinence of these cultural devices, showing how, in the process of reconstituting and redressing the disrupted order, suicide talk constitutes a revival mechanism of communal ‘life giving’. A rekindling of the Durkheimian approach to suicide that examines how society deals with suicide’s shattering of normative we-feelings, Suicide Social Dramas: Moral Breakdowns in the Israeli Public Sphere will appeal to scholars and students of sociology and anthropology with interests in social theory, Israel studies, suicide studies, and the interpretation of societal and cultural processes.

Haim Hazan is a leading specialist on old age in anthropology, and has published several books on particular communities of old people. The latest book is an essay on the realities of old age, as it is experienced, as opposed to the ideas about the old current in western societies. It argues that the construction of this world by outsiders is inevitably affected by deeply ingrained social attitudes and structures, such as the spatial segregation of the aged as a population, and the fear of death with which they are associated. By approaching the subject from the social constructionist perspective, and by drawing on a variety of detailed ethnographic accounts, the author describes a unique and nuanced social world. This is a sophisticated and original book, which should have a significant impact on a field still dominated by a 'social problems' approach.

One of the major characteristics of our contemporary culture is a positive, almost banal, view of the transgression and disruption of cultural boundaries. Strangers, migrants and nomads are celebrated in our postmodern world of hybrids and cyborgs. But we pay a price for this celebration of hybridity: the non-hybrid figures in our societies are ignored, rejected, silenced or exterminated. This book tells the story of these non-hybrid figures Ð the anti-heroes of our pop culture.The main example of non-hybrids in an otherwise hybridized world is that of deep old age. Hazan shows how we fervently distance ourselves from old age by grading and sequencing it into stages such as ‘the third age’, ‘the fourth age’ and so on. Aging bodies are manipulated through anti-aging techniques until it is no longer possible to do it anymore, at which point they become un-transformable and non-marketable objects and hence commercially and socially invisible or masked. Other examples are used to elucidate the same cultural logic of the non-hybrid: pain, the Holocaust, autism, fundamentalism and corporeal death. On the face of it, these examples may seem to have nothing in common, but they all exemplify the same cultural logic of the non-hybrid and provoke similar reactions of criticism, terror, abhorrence and moral indignation.This highly original and iconoclastic book offers a fresh critique of contemporary Western culture by focusing on that which is perceived as its other Ð the non-hybrid in our midst, often rejected, ignored or silenced and deemed to be in need of globally manageable correction.

One of the major characteristics of our contemporary culture is a positive, almost banal, view of the transgression and disruption of cultural boundaries. Strangers, migrants and nomads are celebrated in our postmodern world of hybrids and cyborgs. But we pay a price for this celebration of hybridity: the non-hybrid figures in our societies are ignored, rejected, silenced or exterminated. This book tells the story of these non-hybrid figures Ð the anti-heroes of our pop culture.The main example of non-hybrids in an otherwise hybridized world is that of deep old age. Hazan shows how we fervently distance ourselves from old age by grading and sequencing it into stages such as ‘the third age’, ‘the fourth age’ and so on. Aging bodies are manipulated through anti-aging techniques until it is no longer possible to do it anymore, at which point they become un-transformable and non-marketable objects and hence commercially and socially invisible or masked. Other examples are used to elucidate the same cultural logic of the non-hybrid: pain, the Holocaust, autism, fundamentalism and corporeal death. On the face of it, these examples may seem to have nothing in common, but they all exemplify the same cultural logic of the non-hybrid and provoke similar reactions of criticism, terror, abhorrence and moral indignation.This highly original and iconoclastic book offers a fresh critique of contemporary Western culture by focusing on that which is perceived as its other Ð the non-hybrid in our midst, often rejected, ignored or silenced and deemed to be in need of globally manageable correction.

This book is an ethnographic study of an old age home in Israel that sheds light on the existential experience of elderly retirees. Hazan looks carefully at the universal concerns of old age, specifically examining the nature of everyday life in the institutional setting. He shows the workings of the micropolitics of control in an old age home and the tension between controlling dwindling resources and sustaining life-long meaning for residents. He also effectively brings out distinctive features of the Israeli situation, its cultural and bureaucratic codes. Hazan's study of the life cycle, based in the anthropology of process, is a senstive portrayal of the dynamics of institutionalized elderly in a complex society.

Most studies of ageing have been done by the non-aged. To correct this imbalance, Hazan enlisted the resources of an unusual and innovative group of elderly persons in Cambridge, England. Gathering together in a structured curriculum of seminars and discussion groups and calling themselves the University of the Third Age, the elders intellectually reexamine the spectrum of sociocultural and epistemological principles starting with basics. Hazan's careful observation, description and transcription of the words of the Third Agers demonstrates that cognition and discourse go through transformations and permutations as individuals attain the so-called wisdom years. Alone in the literature on ageing, Hazan's contribution lights the way for much new thinking and research on and among our older population.

First published in 1980, The limbo people is based upon research carried out in a day centre (‘the Centre’) for elderly Jewish people in a London Borough and studies the experience and the conception of time among the elderly. The development of the arguments concerning time was founded on (a) the relationship between the community of participants and the outside world; and (b) the construction of events and interactions between participants at the Centre. The organization of this book re-enacts the process of reconstituting time as manifested in the Centre, against the background of the participants previous experiences, and in terms of their present existential situations. This book will be of interest to students of sociology, anthropology and gerontology.

First published in 1980, The limbo people is based upon research carried out in a day centre (‘the Centre’) for elderly Jewish people in a London Borough and studies the experience and the conception of time among the elderly. The development of the arguments concerning time was founded on (a) the relationship between the community of participants and the outside world; and (b) the construction of events and interactions between participants at the Centre. The organization of this book re-enacts the process of reconstituting time as manifested in the Centre, against the background of the participants previous experiences, and in terms of their present existential situations. This book will be of interest to students of sociology, anthropology and gerontology.

Challenging the idea that fieldwork is the only way to gather data, and that standard methods are the sole route to fruitful analysis, Serendipity in Anthropological Research explores the role of fortune and happenstance in anthropology. It conceives of anthropological research as a lifelong nomadic journey of discovery in which the world yields an infinite number of unexplored issues and innumerable ways of studying them, each study producing its own questions and demanding its own methodologies. Drawing together the latest research from a team of senior scholars from around the world to reflect on the experience of research, Serendipity in Anthropological Research presents rich new case studies from Europe and the Middle East to examine both new and old questions in novel and enriching ways. An engaging examination of methodology and anthropological fieldwork, this book will appeal to all those concerned with writing ethnography.

Challenging the idea that fieldwork is the only way to gather data, and that standard methods are the sole route to fruitful analysis, Serendipity in Anthropological Research explores the role of fortune and happenstance in anthropology. It conceives of anthropological research as a lifelong nomadic journey of discovery in which the world yields an infinite number of unexplored issues and innumerable ways of studying them, each study producing its own questions and demanding its own methodologies. Drawing together the latest research from a team of senior scholars from around the world to reflect on the experience of research, Serendipity in Anthropological Research presents rich new case studies from Europe and the Middle East to examine both new and old questions in novel and enriching ways. An engaging examination of methodology and anthropological fieldwork, this book will appeal to all those concerned with writing ethnography.

The city of Jaffa presents a paradox: intimate neighbors who are political foes. The official Jewish national tale proceeds from exile to redemption and nation-building, while the Palestinians' is one of a golden age cut short, followed by dispossession and resistance. The experiences of Jaffa's Jewish and Arab residents, however, reveal lives and nationalist sentiments far more complex. Twilight Nationalism shares the stories of ten of the city's elders—women and men, rich and poor, Muslims, Jews, and Christians—to radically deconstruct these national myths and challenge common understandings of belonging and alienation.Through the stories told at life's end, Daniel Monterescu and Haim Hazan illuminate how national affiliation ultimately gives way to existential circumstances. Similarities in lives prove to be shaped far more by socioeconomic class, age, and gender than national allegiance, and intersections between stories usher in a politics of existence in place of politics of identity. In offering the real stories individuals tell about themselves, this book reveals shared perspectives too long silenced and new understandings of local community previously lost in nationalist narratives.

The city of Jaffa presents a paradox: intimate neighbors who are political foes. The official Jewish national tale proceeds from exile to redemption and nation-building, while the Palestinians' is one of a golden age cut short, followed by dispossession and resistance. The experiences of Jaffa's Jewish and Arab residents, however, reveal lives and nationalist sentiments far more complex. Twilight Nationalism shares the stories of ten of the city's elders—women and men, rich and poor, Muslims, Jews, and Christians—to radically deconstruct these national myths and challenge common understandings of belonging and alienation.Through the stories told at life's end, Daniel Monterescu and Haim Hazan illuminate how national affiliation ultimately gives way to existential circumstances. Similarities in lives prove to be shaped far more by socioeconomic class, age, and gender than national allegiance, and intersections between stories usher in a politics of existence in place of politics of identity. In offering the real stories individuals tell about themselves, this book reveals shared perspectives too long silenced and new understandings of local community previously lost in nationalist narratives.

At the core of the author's concern stands the question of cultural transmutation in an era riddled with media channels and all-embracing messages. Fragments of the Israeli experience are pieced together in this provocative essay to provide a socio-anthropological agenda for some of the issues involved in the manufacturing of items of symbolic solidarity and common national imagery in an epoch of social disunification and cultural pastiche. The author argues that even though the aesthetic forms of major cultural idioms have unrecognizably altered and are accommodated to befit the shape and style of post-modern living, the basic programs underlying them have remained immutable. Furthermore, it is the quality of adaptability to changing aesthetic conventions that allow such symbolic corner-stones to be left unturned. The case of the youth culture is chose here as a yardstick for examining the double voice of such process - the global versus the tribal.

At the core of the author's concern stands the question of cultural transmutation in an era riddled with media channels and all-embracing messages. Fragments of the Israeli experience are pieced together in this provocative essay to provide a socio-anthropological agenda for some of the issues involved in the manufacturing of items of symbolic solidarity and common national imagery in an epoch of social disunification and cultural pastiche. The author argues that even though the aesthetic forms of major cultural idioms have unrecognizably altered and are accommodated to befit the shape and style of post-modern living, the basic programs underlying them have remained immutable. Furthermore, it is the quality of adaptability to changing aesthetic conventions that allow such symbolic corner-stones to be left unturned. The case of the youth culture is chose here as a yardstick for examining the double voice of such process - the global versus the tribal.

Talking about the Holocaust has provided an international language for ethics, victimization, political claims, and constructions of collective identity. As part of a worldwide vocabulary, that language helps set the tenor of the era of globalization. This volume addresses manifestations of Holocaust-engendered global discourse by critically examining their function and inherent dilemmas, and the ways in which Holocaust-related matters still instigate public debate and academic deliberation. It contends that the contradiction between the totalizing logic of globalization and the assumed uniqueness of the Holocaust generates continued intellectual and practical discontent.

Talking about the Holocaust has provided an international language for ethics, victimization, political claims, and constructions of collective identity. As part of a worldwide vocabulary, that language helps set the tenor of the era of globalization. This volume addresses manifestations of Holocaust-engendered global discourse by critically examining their function and inherent dilemmas, and the ways in which Holocaust-related matters still instigate public debate and academic deliberation. It contends that the contradiction between the totalizing logic of globalization and the assumed uniqueness of the Holocaust generates continued intellectual and practical discontent.

Age into Race is a socio-anthropological essay on the repercussions of the Covid-19 pandemic on the cultural status of the old. As the worldwide horrors of the Corona era have since been publicly repressed, the text is geared to revisit and relive the tenor of that time while considering its latent revolutionary aftermath. There was wide agreement that Covid-19 policies targeted older people as a risk group in need of protection, setting it apart from the rest of society. Yet, paradoxically, long-term facilities for older people effectively became Covid-19 death traps. What kind of abandonment propelled this apparent contradiction? This book provides an answer by looking at ageist practices regarding Covid-19 triaging, lockdowns and distancing that affected older people around the world, devising Covid-19 as an inevitable "problem of the elderly" and, by implication, instating and categorizing "the elderly" as a public problem to be bio-politically managed and wrought.The Covid-19 pandemic and its concomitant "state of emergency" triggered an accelerated transmutation of customary ageism into emergent racism, spelling a fatal switch to designating the old as bearers of "bare" life unworthy of human living, thus turning old age from a seemingly cultural category to a socially fabricated viral menace of nature. The book tracks down the process through which the "Coronization" of culture legitimized and impelled a further stigmatization of old age beyond mere ageism to sheer racism. Thus, this transmutation, while compromising their autonomy and subjectivity via imposed lockdowns, social isolation, excommunication and selective discrimination rendered the old a race apart. Subsequently, the moral panic invoked by the specter of the pandemic transformed the social perceptions of later life from a containable social problem to an unbridled public hazard that summoned total measures presented as bureaucratically regimented regulations that dehumanized its victims with impunity.