Social Economy: The Israeli Version of Community Economic Development
In Israel too the structural changes that accompanied economic liberalization have created a need for a new discourse on social justice. Against surging social and economic inequalities, worsening job insecurity, shrinking state welfare, and continuous stalemate in the peace process, ideas of sustainable economic growth and a more balanced approach to social, ethnic, and environmental forces are gaining in popularity. The term “community economic development” itself, however, has not entered the local discourse. Instead, ideas generally associated with CED in other parts of the world are more commonly identified with the Hebrew term “social economy” (kalkala hevratit) (Levy 2004; Ilany 2005).
The appearance of “social” in the Hebrew version of CED is not coincidental. As I show in my previous work (Sa’ar 1998, 2006a), in Israeli public discourse attempts to tackle contentious issues, primarily those related to ethnic, national, or class relations, almost invariably spark quarrels on whether the issue at hand is “political” or “social.” Labeling an issue “political” is generally regarded locally as highlighting its conflictive components. By calling controversial issues political, speakers habitually communicate their belief that efficient civil action must acknowledge issues of power and domination. The counter-argument is usually that anything “political” is tainted with interests, and that a constructive approach to touchy subjects must frame them as “social” or “apolitical,” so as to create consensus rather than deepen divisions (see also Simchai 2009).
Two implied meanings in particular are often associated with “the social.” First, “social” is a common euphemistic reference to tensions involving lower-class Mizrahi Jews. As mentioned earlier, despite their numerical majority Mizrahi Jews have been a sociological minority for several decades, and are still overrepresented in the lower socioeconomic echelons. The fact that many Mizrahim are highly educated, that they figure in the different elite groups, and that interethnic (but intra-Jewish) marriages have become commonplace, has not eliminated old grudges against the deep-rooted and practically institutionalized Ashkenazi racism. Quite the reverse: these resentments have been politicized—in parliamentary politics, in intellectual production, or in the actions of civil society groups working to resurrect Mizrahi cultural production and quick to make loud protests at the periodic racist slippages of public figures. Then again, this kind of Mizrahi identity politics has itself caused substantial resentment. Many Israeli Jews, Ashkenazi and Mizrahi alike, reckon that it aggravates historical injustices unnecessarily and unjustifiably because, as noted, things have improved significantly for large numbers of Mizrahim. In this touchy discursive terrain, those wishing to skirt ethnic tensions tend to replace explicit mention of the topic by talking about “the social issue.”
The other common implied meaning of “social” concerns intra-Israeli Jewish-Arab relations. Here the major tension revolves around the dual Jewish-cum-democratic definition of the state, two components that the Palestinian citizens generally regard as irreconcilable while the Jewish citizens generally consider as reasonably compatible, even if not perfectly so (see, e.g., Smooha 2002).8 Under the democratic heading, the Arab citizens are entitled to certain important individual civil rights but their exclusion from the Jewish national component means that their collective rights, notably the right to identify as Palestinians, to exercise cultural autonomy, or to have collective land ownership, are severely curtailed. Moreover, as I explained earlier, even rights that are seemingly not controversial, such as access to education, healthcare, police protection, or defense against discrimination in the workforce, are very poorly fulfilled. This multifaceted exclusion provokes civil society groups to protest, litigate, and organize in order to claim the rights of the Arab citizens. Among the Jews, responses to such actions and discourses range from meek justification through ambiguity and suspicion to outright hostility, depending on how these acts are interpreted. If they are considered “political” they are all too likely to generate suspicion and hostility. But if they are successfully framed as “social,” then tolerance is claimed under the justification that these are legitimate democratic practices/discourses (see also Al-Haj 1995).
Given this semantic resonance, one may understand why the local version of community economic development is called social economy. As I show in the following sections, the incorporation of CED-related ideas into the Israeli context has been filtered through the intricate intersections of ethnic, national, class, and gender hierarchies. The attempts to mainstream potentially radical ideas about social justice and better integration of marginalized populations have required delicate packaging and sophisticated negotiation. Against this background, the calming timbre of “the social” is a good indication of the shape this new discourse of civic entitlement and economic justice is taking.
The Israeli Field of Social Economy
Social economy, then, can be said to stand for bottom-up poverty-reducing efforts that offer an alternative to routine state-centered approaches to economic development. Contrary to the old socialism, the discourse taking shape around social economy can accommodate collective ideas of social justice with individual desires for well-being. It sees enterprise and business development as a lever for growth, not as an inevitable source of social malfunction. It fosters work with and not against the economic sector, with and not against the government. It contains ideas of success, happiness, and wealth for everyone. It also gives greater weight than the old socialism to individuals’ agency, wishes, and responsibility.
Projects and the People Who Operate Them
Since the late 1990s and increasingly in the 2000s, Israel started to fill up with semiprivatized, NGO-led programs aiming to better the economic situation of groups in the social and geographical periphery, with particular, though not exclusive, emphasis on women.9 The projects commonly target women from marked populations, notably Arab, Jewish ultra-Orthodox, migrants from Ethiopia or the former USSR, as well as Mizrahi women from poor neighborhoods. Far fewer projects target men (primarily Jewish ultra-Orthodox, Arab, or new immigrants) and youth. The overarching aim of most projects is to enhance the economic situation of members of these groups, by giving them occupational training, either specific or general, boosting their self-confidence, and increasing their overall ability to negotiate their way in the workforce. By my estimate, in 2015 economic empowerment projects across Israel number several hundreds. They range from very localized and small-scale courses to well-oiled and heavily financed projects that train hundreds and even thousands of participants yearly and operate in several locations simultaneously. Some programs are sectorial, targeting women from particular ethnic, religious, or language groups, while others are more inclusive. Adriana Kemp and Nitza Berkovitch (2013) estimate the number of low-income women who participated in the various projects in the field so far at 17,000.
Training courses are by far the most popular form of action in these projects. Themes usually include computer skills, marketing, product development, writing CVs, and Hebrew. These may then be supplemented by more specific branch-related topics, such as training as an assistant in tender-age education or as a secretary at insurance agencies, acquiring particular technical skills, or marketing and business management (in microentrepreneurship projects). Along with this teaching component all the programs without exception have a component called “dynamic” (short for group dynamics). This is moderated group discussion, in which the trainees are invited to reveal their feelings, fears, and innermost dreams, as they stand at the threshold of becoming income-generating, “productive” members of society. As I discuss at length in Chapter 3, this effort to boost the participants’ self-esteem, generally referred to as “empowerment,” is at once a key scenario in the social-economy field and