Danny Kaplan is an associate professor at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and directs the Men Studies track at the Gender Studies program at Bar Ilan University, Israel. His current work focuses on the study of national solidarity through the prism of friendship and public intimacy. He is also studying masculinity ideologies and involved fathering. Kaplan has published extensively on Israeli masculinity, media and popular culture, civic associations, and military culture.
When strangers meet in social clubs, watch reality television, or interact on Facebook, they cont... more When strangers meet in social clubs, watch reality television, or interact on Facebook, they contribute to the social glue of mass society—not because they promote civic engagement or democracy, but because they enact the sacred promise of friendship. Where most theories of nationalism focus on issues of collective identity formation, Kaplan’s novel framework turns attention to compatriots’ experience of solidarity and how it builds on interpersonal ties and performances of public intimacy. Combining critical analyses of contemporary theories of nationalism, civil society, and politics of friendship with in-depth empirical case studies of social club sociability, Kaplan ultimately shows that strangers-turned-friends acquire symbolic, male-centered meaning and generate feelings of national solidarity.
This book explores the interrelations between male friendship in everyday life and national senti... more This book explores the interrelations between male friendship in everyday life and national sentiments in Israeli culture. The author follows stories of friendship ranging over early childhood, school, the workplace, and some unique war experiences. Some semi-public, exclusive male settings, most noticeably in the military, encourage the production of intimacy and desire. Yet, whereas in most instances this desire is displaced through humor and aggressive gestures, it becomes acknowledged and outright declared once associated with sites of heroic death. The symbolism of friendship is revealed in rituals for the fallen soldiers, the commemoration of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and the national infatuation with recovering bodies of missing soldiers. The book concludes that the Israeli case offers an extreme instance of a much broader cultural phenomenon: declaring the friendship for the dead epitomizes the political "blood pact" between men, taking precedence over the traditional blood ties of kinship and heterosexual unions. The book underscores nationalism as a homosocial-based emotion of commemorative desire.
This book explores Israeli military culture focusing on the intersection between combat, masculin... more This book explores Israeli military culture focusing on the intersection between combat, masculinity and male-to-male desire. The first part of the book presents in-depth interviews with gay combat veterans. In the midst of their combat training and war experiences these men reflect on their sexual adventuring and the negotiation of their evolving identity. In the second part of the book the author analyzes the cultural and sexual underpinnings of the Israeli military, unveiling the thin line between brothers in arms and brothers in bed. How does sexuality reinforce the combat thrill and the “sexual targeting” of the enemy? How do individual soldiers manage their unique identity and at the same time identify with hegemonic heterosexist values and national ideals? The author discusses the implications of the current findings for gay recruitment policies, comparing the Israeli case with the American one.
This chapter unravels the symbolic cultural level of national solidarity discourse. National rhet... more This chapter unravels the symbolic cultural level of national solidarity discourse. National rhetoric reconciles two distinct tropes for close-knit ties, family and friendship, by invoking the figure of the “brother.” The magic of the national imagination lies not only in the transformation of strangers into friends but also in imagining these new friends as rediscovered brothers (and, only obliquely, sisters) of the same primordial tribe. Epitomizing the continuing demand for salvation in modern social life, this meta-narrative gives sacred meaning to mundane performances of sociability, operating as a set of binary codes that transform abstract, anonymous, inclusive, indifferent, and interest-based relations between strangers into concrete, familiar, intimately exclusive, loyal, and passionate relations between friends.
This study presents a novel analysis of social media as a staged performance of interpersonal tie... more This study presents a novel analysis of social media as a staged performance of interpersonal ties in front of a third party, here defined as public intimacy. This concept moves away from the current focus on the presentation of self in social media to the performance of relationships. Users of social media are compared to an interactive audience in a round theater. As inner-circle network members display their exclusive ties in front of other users they may also tease them into joining the conversation. Building on studies of Simmelian ties, interactive exchange, and phatic communication the study presents six characteristics of public intimacy along with brief examples drawn from users’ experiences on Facebook and Twitter. It is concluded that by mediating the shift from dyad to triad and from triad to mass community social media do not necessarily entail a reduction in intimacy but rather a concretization of social relations. The recursive relationship between interpersonal ties and mass solidarity is sustained and reaffirmed thanks to triadic interactions of public intimacy.
Despite the growing impact of the therapeutic discourse on family life there is limited research ... more Despite the growing impact of the therapeutic discourse on family life there is limited research on how it affects lay understanding of parenthood, beyond concerns with gender roles. Drawing on a case-study of caregiving fathers in new family forms we delineate an emerging folk model of parenthood as engineering. It construes parental caregiving as lay expertise in emotion management, which includes active planning and vision, pursuit of information, time management, and emotional engagement. The cultural shift toward parenting as expertise is reinforced by fathers increased participation in childcare, as men are often viewed as lacking " natural " maternal competence and more dependent on deliberate acquisition of expertise. Notions of engineering may not be as salient among heteronormative parents who are less compelled to actively reconstruct established familial structures. While this folk model underscores a gender-neutral ideal nested in liberal ideology, the actual shift raises renewed questions about gendered power relations. Acknowledgments We are indebted to our friends and colleagues Galit Ailon, Orly Benjamin, Sylvie Fogiel Bijaoui, Kathleen Gerson, Limor Gabay-Egozi, Shira Klimor Maman, Shira Offer, amd Zvi Triger for their careful reading and thoughts on previous drafts of this article. Their insightful comments have greatly improved the quality of our argument. Thanks, too, to Oran Moked for his help in translation and style editing. We thank the editor Constance Shehan and anonymous reviewers of Journal of Family Issues for their generous and most constructive suggestions on the finals versions of this manuscript.
published in Journal of Communication 67(5), 758-780 :
Scholarship on media events has rarely co... more published in Journal of Communication 67(5), 758-780 : Scholarship on media events has rarely considered how interpersonal interactions between participants mobilize collective feelings of solidarity. Drawing on a study of Big Brother Israel, we demonstrate how several structural-interactional features of the show encourage viewers to shift from a position of bystanders to one of confidants and companions of the contestants. We analyze this shift through the lens of mediated “public intimacy”—the staging of exclusive interactions in front of a third party. The emergent sense of collective complicity affects everyday interactions between viewers and public discourse on social media. We conclude that beyond the public staging of self, it is the staging and concretization of social relations in media events that serves to reaffirm the collective's solidarity.
This article explores the worldview of the ''seduction community'' operating within the homosocia... more This article explores the worldview of the ''seduction community'' operating within the homosocial spaces of North-American ''Guyland.'' This community provides seduction workshops catering mainly to men stereotyped as nerds who are situated at the bottom of the social-sexual hierarchy despite their privileged position in the postindustrial workplace. Based on content analysis of the community's self-help literature, the article argues that the community offers a ''geeky'' solution to the dilemmas of young masculinity and fosters a pickup model based on gaming logic. Courtship is construed as a standardized, rule-governed social skill and is characterized by hyperconsumerism and objectification of women. As part of his self-empowerment, the pickup artist adopts an avatar persona and employs teasing and make-believe techniques. As trainees aim to accomplish control over self and others in compliance with hegemonic masculinity, the strict reliance on gaming logic culminates in the dehumanization of all parties and suspends moral considerations.
Despite scholarly interest in changes in masculinity, no study to date offers quantitative measur... more Despite scholarly interest in changes in masculinity, no study to date offers quantitative measures of nontraditional masculinity ideologies. We identify common denominators of ''new masculinity'' (NM) ideology rooted in therapeutic discourse, which includes themes of authenticity and holistic self-awareness. A theoretical construct of NM was formalized from in-depth interviews and operationalized as the NM Inventory (NMI). The NMI was tested for structural and external validity in two quantitative samples of Israeli men. The inventory demonstrated discriminant validity with traditional and consumer masculinity ideologies, converged with self-labeling as feminist, and was uniquely predicted by lower levels of modern sexism. This suggests stronger associations between NM and feminist attitudes than previously argued. Lay responses confounded between self-labeling as new man and as metrosexual, echoing ambiguities in public rhetoric of NM. As a unique measure of nontraditional masculinity, the NMI can spur more systematic research into variable outcomes of contemporary understandings of masculinity.
Psychological research of the body disproportionately centers on body-appearance concerns. Ground... more Psychological research of the body disproportionately centers on body-appearance concerns. Grounded in women's experience of objectification, it neglects much of men's bodily experience. To address this we introduce Masculine Body Ideologies (MBI), a set of belief systems that prescribe how men should engage with their bodies. Three MBI ideal-types are identified and situated within broader masculinity ideologies: unattended, functional body ideology associated with traditional masculinity rooted in modern industrial society; metrosexual body ideology associated with post-industrial, consumer masculinity and reemploying signifiers of body functionality to form an objectified body esthetics; and holistic body ideology emphasizing inner-harmony, authenticity and expressivity, manifesting post-industrial trends of self-aware masculinity. As a normative framework, MBI underscores how similar body practices may be motivated by different body concerns associated with alternative body ideologies. This framework can clarify conceptual and empirical inconsistencies in studies of male body-appearance concerns and inform emerging research and mental-health considerations.
Whereas theorists of nationalism often consider mass solidarity to be an abstract relation betwee... more Whereas theorists of nationalism often consider mass solidarity to be an abstract relation between strangers, this essay presents a new theoretical approach for studying national solidarity through the prism of friendship and sociability. Building on Simmel's relational approach and Neo-Durkheimian accounts of intermediate associations, it is argued that modern institutions operate as social clubs of sorts where unaffiliated strangers can transform into friends. Drawing on a range of examples ranging from the mass army and Masonic lodges to interactive media, it is shown how social club sociability engenders a form of ''public intimacy'' that extends feelings of familiarity, exclusivity, and loyalty to wider society. The growing segmentation and differentiation of institutional life place increasing demands on individuals to successfully transform strangers into friends. This competence carries symbolic meanings and is part of what enables a mass society to be continuingly imagined as a nation. Full copy available upon request
This study examines the reconstruction of a virtual Israeli male fraternity in Israel’s only men’... more This study examines the reconstruction of a virtual Israeli male fraternity in Israel’s only men’s lifestyle magazine, Blazer. Modeled after the global “new lad” magazine format, the Blazer text engages its readers by forging a homosocial joking relationship. Focusing on a satire dedicated to Israel’s Independence Day, the study delineates a series of parodic discursive techniques employed by the narrators to deconstruct and appropriate traditional Zionist myths on which the Israeli state was founded. The Blazer text thus mobilizes a key cultural trope known as the anti-freier frame (i.e., avoiding being a “sucker”) implemented as a series of combina, a cunning manipulation to outsmart the system. The Blazer text rearticulates the relationship between self and society based on a local version of “Yuppie” value system. We argue that this frame, while ostensibly rejecting collectivist values, serves as a critical lens for connecting Yuppie masculinity with its Sabra predecessor and consolidating a revised form of national solidarity.
This article explores correspondences between the ideals of “civic nationalism” (hereafter CN) an... more This article explores correspondences between the ideals of “civic nationalism” (hereafter CN) and the practices of Freemasonry, a worldwide male fraternity. Freemasons practice an elitist stance of civilizing the self, translated into a collective mission of society-building. Though not a national movement, Freemasonry shares conceptual similarities with CN and was implicated in civic-national revolutions in the Americas and the Middle East. Drawing on ethnographic research on Israeli Freemasonry, the study explores Masonic sociability as a playgound for practicing civic friendship and negotiating the inherent tensions of CN. Freemasons straddle between particularist and universalist understandings of fraternity, virtue, and charity which carry over to questions of citizenship, patriotism, and nationalism. This boundary work over collective attachments represents a pragmatic attempt, not to resolve universalist and particularist preferences, but to contain and incorporate both within exclusivist Masonic practices. Far from marking the failure of CN, Masonic sociability illustrates its political significance, envisioning the nation as a social club of chosen friends.
Despite a growing recognition that interpersonal friendship informs wider forms of solidarity, th... more Despite a growing recognition that interpersonal friendship informs wider forms of solidarity, there is little systematic analysis as to how community members extend the logic of friendship and intimacy to broader organizational and societal context. Masonic organizational practices provide a useful model for this inquiry. Drawing on an ethnographic study of contemporary Israeli Freemasonry, I examine the intersections of interpersonal, public, and collective intimacy in members’ ritual activities and everyday life. The juxtaposition of mundane sociability and Masonic sacred rituals serves to rescale the distance between interpersonal friendship and communal solidarity. As members take on the roles of citizen, bureaucrat, priest, and president concomitantly, they partly collapse the distinctions between personal and collective ties, between the familiar and the revered. These intersections of intimacy are offered as a programmatic research strategy to study how institutionalized patterns of sociability inform civic and national attachments.
When strangers meet in social clubs, watch reality television, or interact on Facebook, they cont... more When strangers meet in social clubs, watch reality television, or interact on Facebook, they contribute to the social glue of mass society—not because they promote civic engagement or democracy, but because they enact the sacred promise of friendship. Where most theories of nationalism focus on issues of collective identity formation, Kaplan’s novel framework turns attention to compatriots’ experience of solidarity and how it builds on interpersonal ties and performances of public intimacy. Combining critical analyses of contemporary theories of nationalism, civil society, and politics of friendship with in-depth empirical case studies of social club sociability, Kaplan ultimately shows that strangers-turned-friends acquire symbolic, male-centered meaning and generate feelings of national solidarity.
This book explores the interrelations between male friendship in everyday life and national senti... more This book explores the interrelations between male friendship in everyday life and national sentiments in Israeli culture. The author follows stories of friendship ranging over early childhood, school, the workplace, and some unique war experiences. Some semi-public, exclusive male settings, most noticeably in the military, encourage the production of intimacy and desire. Yet, whereas in most instances this desire is displaced through humor and aggressive gestures, it becomes acknowledged and outright declared once associated with sites of heroic death. The symbolism of friendship is revealed in rituals for the fallen soldiers, the commemoration of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and the national infatuation with recovering bodies of missing soldiers. The book concludes that the Israeli case offers an extreme instance of a much broader cultural phenomenon: declaring the friendship for the dead epitomizes the political "blood pact" between men, taking precedence over the traditional blood ties of kinship and heterosexual unions. The book underscores nationalism as a homosocial-based emotion of commemorative desire.
This book explores Israeli military culture focusing on the intersection between combat, masculin... more This book explores Israeli military culture focusing on the intersection between combat, masculinity and male-to-male desire. The first part of the book presents in-depth interviews with gay combat veterans. In the midst of their combat training and war experiences these men reflect on their sexual adventuring and the negotiation of their evolving identity. In the second part of the book the author analyzes the cultural and sexual underpinnings of the Israeli military, unveiling the thin line between brothers in arms and brothers in bed. How does sexuality reinforce the combat thrill and the “sexual targeting” of the enemy? How do individual soldiers manage their unique identity and at the same time identify with hegemonic heterosexist values and national ideals? The author discusses the implications of the current findings for gay recruitment policies, comparing the Israeli case with the American one.
This chapter unravels the symbolic cultural level of national solidarity discourse. National rhet... more This chapter unravels the symbolic cultural level of national solidarity discourse. National rhetoric reconciles two distinct tropes for close-knit ties, family and friendship, by invoking the figure of the “brother.” The magic of the national imagination lies not only in the transformation of strangers into friends but also in imagining these new friends as rediscovered brothers (and, only obliquely, sisters) of the same primordial tribe. Epitomizing the continuing demand for salvation in modern social life, this meta-narrative gives sacred meaning to mundane performances of sociability, operating as a set of binary codes that transform abstract, anonymous, inclusive, indifferent, and interest-based relations between strangers into concrete, familiar, intimately exclusive, loyal, and passionate relations between friends.
This study presents a novel analysis of social media as a staged performance of interpersonal tie... more This study presents a novel analysis of social media as a staged performance of interpersonal ties in front of a third party, here defined as public intimacy. This concept moves away from the current focus on the presentation of self in social media to the performance of relationships. Users of social media are compared to an interactive audience in a round theater. As inner-circle network members display their exclusive ties in front of other users they may also tease them into joining the conversation. Building on studies of Simmelian ties, interactive exchange, and phatic communication the study presents six characteristics of public intimacy along with brief examples drawn from users’ experiences on Facebook and Twitter. It is concluded that by mediating the shift from dyad to triad and from triad to mass community social media do not necessarily entail a reduction in intimacy but rather a concretization of social relations. The recursive relationship between interpersonal ties and mass solidarity is sustained and reaffirmed thanks to triadic interactions of public intimacy.
Despite the growing impact of the therapeutic discourse on family life there is limited research ... more Despite the growing impact of the therapeutic discourse on family life there is limited research on how it affects lay understanding of parenthood, beyond concerns with gender roles. Drawing on a case-study of caregiving fathers in new family forms we delineate an emerging folk model of parenthood as engineering. It construes parental caregiving as lay expertise in emotion management, which includes active planning and vision, pursuit of information, time management, and emotional engagement. The cultural shift toward parenting as expertise is reinforced by fathers increased participation in childcare, as men are often viewed as lacking " natural " maternal competence and more dependent on deliberate acquisition of expertise. Notions of engineering may not be as salient among heteronormative parents who are less compelled to actively reconstruct established familial structures. While this folk model underscores a gender-neutral ideal nested in liberal ideology, the actual shift raises renewed questions about gendered power relations. Acknowledgments We are indebted to our friends and colleagues Galit Ailon, Orly Benjamin, Sylvie Fogiel Bijaoui, Kathleen Gerson, Limor Gabay-Egozi, Shira Klimor Maman, Shira Offer, amd Zvi Triger for their careful reading and thoughts on previous drafts of this article. Their insightful comments have greatly improved the quality of our argument. Thanks, too, to Oran Moked for his help in translation and style editing. We thank the editor Constance Shehan and anonymous reviewers of Journal of Family Issues for their generous and most constructive suggestions on the finals versions of this manuscript.
published in Journal of Communication 67(5), 758-780 :
Scholarship on media events has rarely co... more published in Journal of Communication 67(5), 758-780 : Scholarship on media events has rarely considered how interpersonal interactions between participants mobilize collective feelings of solidarity. Drawing on a study of Big Brother Israel, we demonstrate how several structural-interactional features of the show encourage viewers to shift from a position of bystanders to one of confidants and companions of the contestants. We analyze this shift through the lens of mediated “public intimacy”—the staging of exclusive interactions in front of a third party. The emergent sense of collective complicity affects everyday interactions between viewers and public discourse on social media. We conclude that beyond the public staging of self, it is the staging and concretization of social relations in media events that serves to reaffirm the collective's solidarity.
This article explores the worldview of the ''seduction community'' operating within the homosocia... more This article explores the worldview of the ''seduction community'' operating within the homosocial spaces of North-American ''Guyland.'' This community provides seduction workshops catering mainly to men stereotyped as nerds who are situated at the bottom of the social-sexual hierarchy despite their privileged position in the postindustrial workplace. Based on content analysis of the community's self-help literature, the article argues that the community offers a ''geeky'' solution to the dilemmas of young masculinity and fosters a pickup model based on gaming logic. Courtship is construed as a standardized, rule-governed social skill and is characterized by hyperconsumerism and objectification of women. As part of his self-empowerment, the pickup artist adopts an avatar persona and employs teasing and make-believe techniques. As trainees aim to accomplish control over self and others in compliance with hegemonic masculinity, the strict reliance on gaming logic culminates in the dehumanization of all parties and suspends moral considerations.
Despite scholarly interest in changes in masculinity, no study to date offers quantitative measur... more Despite scholarly interest in changes in masculinity, no study to date offers quantitative measures of nontraditional masculinity ideologies. We identify common denominators of ''new masculinity'' (NM) ideology rooted in therapeutic discourse, which includes themes of authenticity and holistic self-awareness. A theoretical construct of NM was formalized from in-depth interviews and operationalized as the NM Inventory (NMI). The NMI was tested for structural and external validity in two quantitative samples of Israeli men. The inventory demonstrated discriminant validity with traditional and consumer masculinity ideologies, converged with self-labeling as feminist, and was uniquely predicted by lower levels of modern sexism. This suggests stronger associations between NM and feminist attitudes than previously argued. Lay responses confounded between self-labeling as new man and as metrosexual, echoing ambiguities in public rhetoric of NM. As a unique measure of nontraditional masculinity, the NMI can spur more systematic research into variable outcomes of contemporary understandings of masculinity.
Psychological research of the body disproportionately centers on body-appearance concerns. Ground... more Psychological research of the body disproportionately centers on body-appearance concerns. Grounded in women's experience of objectification, it neglects much of men's bodily experience. To address this we introduce Masculine Body Ideologies (MBI), a set of belief systems that prescribe how men should engage with their bodies. Three MBI ideal-types are identified and situated within broader masculinity ideologies: unattended, functional body ideology associated with traditional masculinity rooted in modern industrial society; metrosexual body ideology associated with post-industrial, consumer masculinity and reemploying signifiers of body functionality to form an objectified body esthetics; and holistic body ideology emphasizing inner-harmony, authenticity and expressivity, manifesting post-industrial trends of self-aware masculinity. As a normative framework, MBI underscores how similar body practices may be motivated by different body concerns associated with alternative body ideologies. This framework can clarify conceptual and empirical inconsistencies in studies of male body-appearance concerns and inform emerging research and mental-health considerations.
Whereas theorists of nationalism often consider mass solidarity to be an abstract relation betwee... more Whereas theorists of nationalism often consider mass solidarity to be an abstract relation between strangers, this essay presents a new theoretical approach for studying national solidarity through the prism of friendship and sociability. Building on Simmel's relational approach and Neo-Durkheimian accounts of intermediate associations, it is argued that modern institutions operate as social clubs of sorts where unaffiliated strangers can transform into friends. Drawing on a range of examples ranging from the mass army and Masonic lodges to interactive media, it is shown how social club sociability engenders a form of ''public intimacy'' that extends feelings of familiarity, exclusivity, and loyalty to wider society. The growing segmentation and differentiation of institutional life place increasing demands on individuals to successfully transform strangers into friends. This competence carries symbolic meanings and is part of what enables a mass society to be continuingly imagined as a nation. Full copy available upon request
This study examines the reconstruction of a virtual Israeli male fraternity in Israel’s only men’... more This study examines the reconstruction of a virtual Israeli male fraternity in Israel’s only men’s lifestyle magazine, Blazer. Modeled after the global “new lad” magazine format, the Blazer text engages its readers by forging a homosocial joking relationship. Focusing on a satire dedicated to Israel’s Independence Day, the study delineates a series of parodic discursive techniques employed by the narrators to deconstruct and appropriate traditional Zionist myths on which the Israeli state was founded. The Blazer text thus mobilizes a key cultural trope known as the anti-freier frame (i.e., avoiding being a “sucker”) implemented as a series of combina, a cunning manipulation to outsmart the system. The Blazer text rearticulates the relationship between self and society based on a local version of “Yuppie” value system. We argue that this frame, while ostensibly rejecting collectivist values, serves as a critical lens for connecting Yuppie masculinity with its Sabra predecessor and consolidating a revised form of national solidarity.
This article explores correspondences between the ideals of “civic nationalism” (hereafter CN) an... more This article explores correspondences between the ideals of “civic nationalism” (hereafter CN) and the practices of Freemasonry, a worldwide male fraternity. Freemasons practice an elitist stance of civilizing the self, translated into a collective mission of society-building. Though not a national movement, Freemasonry shares conceptual similarities with CN and was implicated in civic-national revolutions in the Americas and the Middle East. Drawing on ethnographic research on Israeli Freemasonry, the study explores Masonic sociability as a playgound for practicing civic friendship and negotiating the inherent tensions of CN. Freemasons straddle between particularist and universalist understandings of fraternity, virtue, and charity which carry over to questions of citizenship, patriotism, and nationalism. This boundary work over collective attachments represents a pragmatic attempt, not to resolve universalist and particularist preferences, but to contain and incorporate both within exclusivist Masonic practices. Far from marking the failure of CN, Masonic sociability illustrates its political significance, envisioning the nation as a social club of chosen friends.
Despite a growing recognition that interpersonal friendship informs wider forms of solidarity, th... more Despite a growing recognition that interpersonal friendship informs wider forms of solidarity, there is little systematic analysis as to how community members extend the logic of friendship and intimacy to broader organizational and societal context. Masonic organizational practices provide a useful model for this inquiry. Drawing on an ethnographic study of contemporary Israeli Freemasonry, I examine the intersections of interpersonal, public, and collective intimacy in members’ ritual activities and everyday life. The juxtaposition of mundane sociability and Masonic sacred rituals serves to rescale the distance between interpersonal friendship and communal solidarity. As members take on the roles of citizen, bureaucrat, priest, and president concomitantly, they partly collapse the distinctions between personal and collective ties, between the familiar and the revered. These intersections of intimacy are offered as a programmatic research strategy to study how institutionalized patterns of sociability inform civic and national attachments.
This study applies a neo-institutional approach to explore how musical genres acquire national me... more This study applies a neo-institutional approach to explore how musical genres acquire national meanings even as they are adopted from exogenous global models. Drawing upon world society paradigm and glocal translation studies, it is argued that current theorizing has yet to address how a sense of national uniqueness emerges in local organizational fields despite their dependence on global isomorphism. A research strategy is offered to explore this paradox of isomorphic national uniqueness, suggesting that global structures acquire national meanings through subtle processes of institutionalized erasures in the adopting field. Drawing on a case-study of Israeli radio during privatization reforms, I analyze the emergence of a “light” version of Mizrahi music (of Middle Eastern background) and its crossover to mainstream Israeli playlists, following a market repositioning as “Mediterranean pop.” It is shown how exogenous models of US commercial format radio, as well as Arab popular music styles, were reassigned national meanings by various mechanisms of active or oblivious erasure. Correspondences with Turkish Arabesk and American rock’n’roll are discussed. It is suggested that national meanings should be studied as systematic erasures intrinsically coupled to the very spread of isomorphic global models.
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It is concluded that by mediating the shift from dyad to triad and from triad to mass community social media do not necessarily entail a reduction in intimacy but rather a concretization of social relations. The recursive relationship between interpersonal ties and mass solidarity is sustained and reaffirmed thanks to triadic interactions of public intimacy.
Scholarship on media events has rarely considered how interpersonal interactions between participants mobilize collective feelings of solidarity. Drawing on a study of Big Brother Israel, we demonstrate how several structural-interactional features of the show encourage viewers to shift from a position of bystanders to one of confidants and companions of the contestants. We analyze this shift through the lens of mediated “public intimacy”—the staging of exclusive interactions in front of a third party. The emergent sense of collective complicity affects everyday interactions between viewers and public discourse on social media. We conclude that beyond the public staging of self, it is the staging and concretization of social relations in media events that serves to reaffirm the collective's solidarity.
It is concluded that by mediating the shift from dyad to triad and from triad to mass community social media do not necessarily entail a reduction in intimacy but rather a concretization of social relations. The recursive relationship between interpersonal ties and mass solidarity is sustained and reaffirmed thanks to triadic interactions of public intimacy.
Scholarship on media events has rarely considered how interpersonal interactions between participants mobilize collective feelings of solidarity. Drawing on a study of Big Brother Israel, we demonstrate how several structural-interactional features of the show encourage viewers to shift from a position of bystanders to one of confidants and companions of the contestants. We analyze this shift through the lens of mediated “public intimacy”—the staging of exclusive interactions in front of a third party. The emergent sense of collective complicity affects everyday interactions between viewers and public discourse on social media. We conclude that beyond the public staging of self, it is the staging and concretization of social relations in media events that serves to reaffirm the collective's solidarity.