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Arab Soccer in a Jewish State

The Integrative Enclave

Tamir Sorek author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Cambridge University Press

Published:21st Jun '07

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Arab Soccer in a Jewish State cover

This book analyses the political significance of soccer for Arab-Jewish relations.

The growing success of Arab soccer teams and players in Israel highlights fundamental tensions and contradictions in Israeli collective identity and in Arab-Jewish relations. This book analyses the political significance of sport in ethno-national conflicts and argues that equality in the soccer sphere legitimises contemporary inequality between Jews and Arabs.Over the last two decades soccer has become a major institution within the popular culture of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel. They have attained disproportionate success in this field. Given their marginalisation from many areas of Israeli society as well as the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, such a prominent Arab presence highlights the tension between their Israeli citizenship and their belonging to the Palestinian people. Bringing together sociological, anthropological and historical approaches, Sorek examines how soccer can potentially be utilised by ethnic and national minorities as a field of social protest, a stage for demonstrating distinctive identity, or as a channel for social and political integration. Relying on a rich combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, he argues that equality in the soccer sphere legitimises contemporary inequality between Jews and Arabs in Israel and pursues wider arguments about the role of sport in ethno-national conflicts. Ideal for researchers and graduate students.

Review of the hardback: 'This is a surprising story of the only sphere in which Arab-Israeli relations do not seem to be in crisis. Sorek has written a subtle and apparently non-partisan account of the place of Arabs in the Jewish state. Thanks to its refreshingly clear prose, this book should have an appeal beyond specialists in the field.' Simon Kuper, author of Football Against the Enemy
Review of the hardback: 'Sorek demonstrates considerable skill in capturing the complexity of the topic and drawing together the intricate social and political context.' British Journal of Sociology
Review of the hardback: '… acute and poignant survey of Arab football in Israel.' The Times Literary Supplement
Review of the hardback: 'The precarious, unequal place of the Palestinian in Israel, and in Israeli football ('soccer') more specifically, is the subject of Tamir Sorek's sociological tract, Arab Soccer in a Jewish State: The Integrative Enclave. Mapping loosely, the history of Arab Palestinian 'disenfranchisement' … Arab Soccer endeavours to understand the place of football within Israel's Arab community …[the book] is adept, even illuminating, at explicating how football functions for the Arab minority in Israel.' Journal of Palestine Studies
Review of the hardback: 'The book's nine chapters provide fascinating accounts of how soccer is inextricably linked to Israel's broader social, cultural and political conflicts. Sorek explicitly discusses these relationships often starting or ending chapters with events that run concurrently in Israeli politics and Israeli soccer. His writing refuses to shy away from how sport and politics merge and the accounts provide students and academics with vivid past and present examples of the imbrications.' Managing Leisure

ISBN: 9780521870481

Dimensions: 229mm x 152mm x 17mm

Weight: 530g

242 pages