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Critical anthropological research on citizenship and civil society has produced a rich body of literature that emphasizes their complexity and manifold dimensions. Addressing the multiple intersections of ethnicity, gender, and other so-called "primordial" components, anthropologists and critical sociologists have pressed for reassessment of the classical notion of a neutral arena, which is allegedly dictated by purely individualistic interests (e.g., Shils 1992). In contrast to Eurocentric ideals, civil society is shown to thrive also where communal ties are central to the political process (Hann and Dunn 1996; Weller 1999; Comaroff and Comaroff 1999; Hearn 2001; Lewis 2002; and see Norton 1996; Joseph 1996; White 1996; Rabo 1996; Gole 1997 for Middle Eastern cases). Critical scholars (e.g., Singerman 1996; Mohanty 1999) have also questioned the assumption that civil society is necessarily a middle-class construct by showing the contribution of the lower classes, particularly the urban poor, to the operation of civil life and to the very construct of citizenship. A revised understanding of the relations between civil society and the state sees them as mutually informing arenas, rather than static entities locked in a top-down model of domination (Ben-Eliezer 1998). Last but not least, citizenship is increasingly seen as a process rather than a fixed attribute. Concomitantly, a notion of a continuum of positions replaces the stiff dichotomy of citizens and non-citizens (Sassen 2002).
Significantly, the revisionist approach discerns a broad range of participatory patterns and identifies democratic elements in cultures that were hitherto classified as essentially non-democratic (e.g., Lindholm 1996; Paley 2002), yet it too has its biases. In its emphasis on cultural and ethnic/racial elements, critical research of civil society tends to focus on domination, collusion and resistance (e.g., Rosaldo 1994; Ong 1996) and to undermine aspects of cooperation across class and ethnic lines. In the Israeli context, critical, political-economic analysis of the Jewish-Arab dialogue tends to highlight its essentializing outcomes (e.g., Helman 2002), or at least its limited potential to overcome the objective inequalities (Halabi 2000). As a result of their eagerness to debase the optimistic conclusions of modernistic studies, regarding the potential of cross-ethnic dialogue to overcome entrenched racist positions, many such post-modernist studies tend to miss some of the complexity. Cautiously aware of this limitation, this paper on Jewish-Arab activism in Jaffa tackles the complex possibilities of cross-class, cross-ethnic dialogue in the midst of structural and political inequalities.
In the late 1990s, a wide array of grassroots activities of Jewish and Arab residents took place in Jaffa, in the south of the Tel Aviv-Jaffa metropolis. Small groups of people organized to address a range of urban concerns, among them survival in the face of gentrification, improving social ecology, and creating neighborly relations in a multiethnic environment. Anthropological analysis of several of these activities allows a glance at localized articulations of civil society and the ongoing processes of claiming and maintaining citizenship, in a deeply ethnicized and classed setting.
Following brief background information on Jaffa, I present ethnographic descriptions of three groups and highlight the odd mixture of aggressive factionalism alongside firm appreciation of ethnic diversity, which characterized their activities. I then identify in these groups' discussions some recurring discursive motifs, in the form of pairs of conceptual contradictions, and interpret them as at once projections and a processing mechanism of the local political-economic structural tensions. The endless debates among activists over what projects to take on and how to implement them typically slipped into mutual disparaging, as participants would dismiss opinions they did not like as mere talk, as too political, or as irrational and inefficient (accusations which the receiving parties usually rebuffed with similar zeal). Through their shared binary semantic structure, the conceptual oppositions of doer vs. talker, apolitical vs. political, or rationalist-pragmatist vs. traditionalist-romanticist reinforced a notion of a split and antagonistic local reality. At the same time, they also shared particular gender undertones, namely uncompromising claims to masculinity, albeit of different types, which cultivated common cultural grounds for the otherwise opposing camps that operated in the local scene. This dual aspect of division and communality was characteristic of local activism, which combined a typically aggressive style alongside persistent will to work across class and ethno-national divisions. The masculine schemata that underlay local attempts to engage power therefore counterbalanced the divisive atmosphere by providing an important (though by no means an only) unifying conceptual tool. In the clearly conflictive atmosphere that created competing images of smart and/or morally justified ways of doing citizenship, masculinity was a subtle but powerful common language, which facilitated cooperation.
Tracing the complex character of cleavages and togetherness that informed local activities to local political-economic conditions, I characterize their action-pattern as a form of "cooperative conflict" (Sen 1990). This concept, drawn from the realm of household economy and gender relations, adds to the element of bargaining, which is familiar in civil society discourse, an aspect of subjective and identity-bound interests, which is necessary considering the embedded and culturally specific character of civic experiences. Finally, tying together the cooperative-conflict action pattern and the symbolic language of essentialist oppositions that nevertheless share a conceptual schema, I conclude with a comment on the potential and limitations of critical versions of civil society to challenge the hegemonic ideology of civil entitlements.
Background: Gentrification
In the first half of the 20th century, and particularly during the British mandate, Jaffa was the big city on the coastal plain and an important Palestinian cultural center. In stark contradistinction, Jaffa of the post-1948 era is economically and socially marginal, the neglected backyard of the Tel Aviv metropolis. It is also predominantly Jewish, but with a significant Arab minority, which is concentrated in the western quarters of Adjami, Jabaliyya, the Flea Market, and the Heart of Jaffa. These neighborhoods, which are the focus of my paper (hereafter "the neighborhoods" or "the mixed quarters"), are largely poor and rundown. However, since they are situated right on or near the coast, their land is potentially very valuable. Therefore, they have been undergoing a slow process of gentrification, which for more than 40 years included various twists and turns. Processes of demolition-renewal-conservation were halted and resumed more than once, as a result of residents' resistance, conflicting policies, internal contradictions within the planning schemes, and a clash between market forces and social dynamics (Ja'fary et al. 1992; Mazawi and Khouri-Makhoul 1989; Israel 1995; Menahem 1994; Menahem and Shapiro 1994). The incomplete gentrification yielded diverse and polarized class and demographic composition in the mixed neighborhoods. Alongside a largely poor though diverse Arab community, which in the late 1990s numbered somewhere between 13,000 and 20,000 people, the Jewish community, too, was diverse. It included poor and lower-class migrants who had settled in Jaffa through the 1950s and 1960s, as well as upper-middle class professionals, recent newcomers with a bohemian lifestyle, who were raising the price of housing and changing the architectural landscape. Finally, there were non-Arab non-Jewish foreign nationals, among them migrant workers, diplomats, and others.
Notwithstanding the pockets of severe poverty in its midst, as a result of privatization and the economic boom in the years following the Oslo accords, big money was flowing into Jaffa at the end of the 1990s on a fairly steady basis. The sources were partly state and municipal, but mainly private investors and a variety of foreign donors (Jewish, and on a much smaller scale, Palestinian as well). In response to this blend of extreme differences, local political culture was similarly antagonistic. A large number of groups, associations, and committees testified to a strong propensity of residents to become involved in community affairs. To an outside observer, such busy activism created an impression of healthy democratic culture, although many local people, despaired by the ongoing stagnation, tended to relate it instead to endemic factionalism.
Ethnography
The Action Committee (1)
During the 1990s, public housing in Jaffa was privatized. Management of the property was reassigned from two successive public companies that had been managing it since the 1950s to a private company. The responsibilities of the private company, named Gadish, included renovating the old houses, building new apartments on the roofs of existing buildings or constructing new buildings on empty plots, investing in neighborhood infrastructure, and tending to the maintenance of the apartments of existing protected tenants. The latter could retain their rights for a life-long tenancy with low rent, and potentially also buy out their apartments on good terms and become homeowners. In principle this was to become a self-contained economy, whereby the private company that operated for profit would earn from selling newly constructed apartments and in return develop the neighborhood, attract new residents, and gentrify the area. In practice the tenants complained bitterly that Gadish was excploiting them, forcibly applying expensive renovations to their buildings and then sending them exaggerated bills that they could not pay. Frequently, they claimed, the ostentatious external renovations did not include essential repairs inside the apartments. People pointed out a variety of damages to apartments' infrastructure, some as glaring as holes in the walls or exposed electricity wires, or told of absurd results, such as two cases in which the entrance to apartments had been sold out, turning the tenants into daily trespassers. The general feeling among the protected tenants, as it was conveyed in local public discourse, was that they were facing potential loss of their homes.
The Action Committee was a group of about 15-20 activists, who regarded themselves as direct victims of Gadish, since every one of them had a legal quarrel with it. During the year that I escorted them, the group was clearly dominated by Jews. Only one of the eight...
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