Module SGIA3421: ISRAEL: POLITICS AND SOCIETY

Department: Government and International Affairs

SGIA3421: ISRAEL: POLITICS AND SOCIETY

Prerequisites

• Any Level 2 SGIA module

Corequisites

• None.

Excluded Combination of Modules

• None.

Aims

• The module aims to explore the political, religious, ideological, social, economic and security debates that inform the allocation of power and resources across Israel. The module critically examines competing Zionist ideologies that have organised the ideas, arguments and strategies behind the creation of the state, the building of its institutions and the evolution of Israeli citizenship.
• Careful attention will be paid to the ethnic and religious divisions within Israel and the efficiency or otherwise of the constitutional arrangements designed to achieve social cohesion and security.

Content

• Lectures: 1) Interpretations of Zionism and post-Zionism; 2) the party political system; 3) Ethnicity, Class and voter behaviour; 4). Religion and State; 5) The Military and the state; 6) Israel’s Arab/Palestinian citizens; 7) Gender and the Jewish State; 8) The political economy of Israel; 9) Israel’s foreign policy
• Seminars: 1) Understanding Zionism; 2) Democracy and party politics; 3) Ethnicity as primordial politics; 4) Towards the ‘Halakhic state?’; 5) Civil-military relations; 6) civil rights and the Palestinian minority; 7) Feminists critiques of Israel; 8) Israel and the triumph of the free market?; 9) Foreign policy – the missing dimension.

Learning Outcomes

• Students will acquire:
• An understanding of the competing strands of Zionism as well as post-Zionist thought that shape politics and society in Israel
• An appreciation of the complex nature of identity and citizenship in Israel
• An understanding of how the interplay between historical memory, ideological vision, and geographic/demographic asymmetries shapes popular and elite perceptions of Israel’s external environment.

• Throughout this module, students should be able to demonstrate:
• Effectively critique contemporary debates concerning politics and society in Israel.
• Apply, where appropriate, competing models and methods of analysis to issues surrounding identity, ethnicity, religion and state.
• Develop an awareness of the main conceptual approaches to understanding Israeli politics and to be able to place this awareness within both a comparative and historical setting.

• Critical and analytical thinking: the ability to engage with empirical material from a variety of conceptual settings and to draw appropriate conclusions from such critical assessments.
• Active Learning: Students to take an active role in learning and to develop the confidence and ability to study beyond the material provided. This in turn will help nurture individual confidence in lifelong learning.
• Problem Solving: Deal and negotiate intellectual obstacles in pursuit of defined ends and to be able to develop coherent plans/structures for tackling such obstacles.
• Reflective learning: To be able to reflect critically on projects/tasks already undertaken and to use such reflection as a critical means to plan ahead.
• Improving Learning: Ability to manage time and identify priorities in the research and writing of assessed work and to do so under set time constraints.
• Written Communication – Essay Writing: To be able to construct grammatically correct and well written/spelt essays and reports.
• Oral Communication Skills: To be able to distil information from several sources and to present these to an informed audience in a concise fashion. From this, students should develop the confidence to answer questions on such presentations and to defend a case by drawing on the relevant sources.
• Working with others: the ability to co-operate with others and to make informed and constructive contributions, devoid of polemic that can help the group achieve its goals.
• Library Research: Research appropriate periodicals, websites, books and other references to draw together the required information. This includes using material that may not necessarily appear on printed reading lists.
• Numerical data: The ability to manipulate and apply numerical data (voting statistics etc) to a given context.

Modes of Teaching, Learning and Assessment and how these contribute to the learning outcomes of the module

• Teaching will take place in the form of lectures and seminars. The lectures introduce the relevant backround and the seminars allow for concepts introduced in the lectures to be explored in more detail.
• The summative essay will require students to research, prepare and write an analytical assessment which demonstrates the ability to communicate precisely and concisely on a suitable topic. The unseen examination will test the ability to reach informed and reasoned conclusions and to produce well-structured and organised work under time constraints requiring focused application of recalled knowledge.

Teaching Methods and Learning Hours

Summative Assessment

Formative Assessment:

One 1,500 word essay with written feedback. One non-assessed seminar presentation throughout the duration of the module.

■ Attendance at all activities marked with this symbol will be monitored. Students who fail to attend these activities, or to complete the summative or formative assessment specified above, will be subject to the procedures defined in the University's General Regulation V, and may be required to leave the University