פרסומים

 What is the impact of uncommon but notable violent acts on conflict dynamics? We analyze the impact of the murder of a Palestinian child on the broader dynamics of Israeli-Palestinian violence in Jerusalem. By using novel micro-level event data and utilizing Discrete Furrier Transform and Bayesian Poisson Change Point Analysis, we compare the impact of the murder to that of two other lethal but more typical Israeli-Palestinian events. We demonstrate that the murder had a large and durable effect that altered the broader conflict dynamics, whereas the other events caused smaller, short-term effects. We demonstrate that scholars should devote more attention to the analysis of atypical violent acts and present a set of tools for conducting such analysis. 

The year 1989 saw the publication of Jakob Lothe’s Conrad’s Narrative Method. Its multiple areas of investigation include an exhaustive study of Conrad’s narrative inconsistencies,  an analysis that has rendered the attempt to identify uncharted curiosities in the work almost futile. My return to these infractions stems from the need to reconsider them in light of radical discursive shifts that have upset classical narratology’s assumptions about narrative voice. The way we read, interpret and unpack Conrad’s narration and point of view has changed in response to the emergence of new directions in literary theory, philosophy, culture and aesthetics. I will pick up Lothe’s and Watts’s discussion of narration in Nostromo and bring it to bear on current methods of assessing authority and legitimacy. My reading will be framed by the planetary turn in critical thought, a theoretical direction that values connection and engagement over separation and disinterest. This changed emphasis raises important questions about which narrators we trust and which we suspect, questions that have become urgent in popular culture and academic debates both. In A Preface to Conrad Cedric Watts ties Conrad’s eloquence to the donning of a mask. Current critical thinking shows no narrative gesture could be more alienating to a contemporary audience. The legitimacy to speak is seen as a product of lived experience, a fact of engagement that runs counter to neutrality and distance, traditional markers of authority in fiction. Conrad’s narrative gestures need to be thought anew to accommodate the implications of such a changed slant in reader response.

Road Traffic Injuries (RTIs) have imposed a great global burden on public health. Motorcyclists and pedestrians comprise the most significant proportion of this burden. Several studies have demonstrated a link between helmet wearing and a decline in the impact of RTIs in motorcyclists. In this study, we aimed to review the barriers to helmet utilization by motorcyclists. This scoping review has been conducted in accordance with the guidelines for the systematic review of observational studies and the PRISMA Checklist. The search was conducted by using related keywords in EMBASE, PubMed, Scopus, and Cochrane Library. Four independent reviewers carried out the screening. The main outcomes of interest were barriers to helmet usage among motorcyclists, drawn from the finally included studies. Fifty-three records were selected for data extraction. According to these reports, the barriers and factors associated with helmet usage among motorcyclists were categorized into five entities as: legislations/enforcement strategies, helmet disadvantages (discomfort, visual/auditory blockage, and thermal dysregulation), risky behaviors (riding while drunk or high on drugs), sex and/or age factors, and the location and time of the injury event (rural vs. urban locations, day vs. night riding). From the perspective of policymakers, the findings of this review are of utmost importance and could be used in addressing the challenge of inadequate compliance with helmet use.

The planetary turn signals a change of perspective, a reconfiguration of the way we view and relate to the world. Min Hyoung Song sees this as an attempt to entertain “a different order of connection,” one that cancels out the “royal epistemology” of globalization, a nomos that divides, restricts, hierarchalizes, and criminalizes” (“Becoming Planetary” 568). In The Planetary Turn, Amy Elias and Christian Moraru suggest that such a “reorientation” would bring about a significant change of perspective, one that should lead “to notably different outcomes in and for the world” (xvi). They explain that “to comprehend the planetary must entail grasping the relationality embedded in it. Consequently, relatedness, dialogue, and interactivity are central to major aesthetic initiatives stirring at this stage in world history” (xii). Literature is instrumental in bringing about such a change of perspective. It allows us to imagine ways of being there and being with that might be unlike our existing modes of engagement and orientation. It is in the work of the imagination that Gayatri Spivak anchors her definition of the ethical imperative underlying a transition to the planetary. She writes: “If we imagine ourselves as planetary accidents rather than global agents, planetary creatures rather than global entities, alterity remains underived from us, it is not our dialectical negation, it contains us as much as it flings us away” (An Aesthetic Education 339). If we need to call on the imagination as a path to alterity it is because, unlike the global, the planetary is not the instantiation of the same everywhere. The planetary is an awareness of difference that does not demand that it conform to what we know. To be planetary is to recognize, to acknowledge and to allow for difference. It is a method of living with difference rather than eradicating it. Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo is poised between these two cultural moments: between the global and the planetary, between the different and the same, between flights of the imagination and the reassertion of the known. Though the novel launches a critique against the brutality and indifference entailed in neocolonial imperialism, it remains committed to a globalist ethos when it gestures toward the abject quality of the different. My reading will show where the novel insists on the same and where it stages an encounter with alterity that can be read with the moral imperative announced in the ...

Beliefs of Israeli undergraduate students of social work about wife-beating were examined, based on a combination of two theoretical frameworks, i.e., patriarchal ideology (as reflected in participants’ attitudes toward women and marital role expectations) and social learning theory (as reflected in their exposure to family violence during childhood). Self-administered questionnaires were filled out by a convenience sample of 542 students, from all three years of undergraduate studies in social work in seven academic institutions in Israel. The majority of participants were female (90.7%); 91.5% were Jews, and the remaining 8.5% were Arabs. The majority of participants expressed opposition to negative beliefs about wife-beating (e.g., opposed justifying wife-beating, expressed opposition for blaming battered women for husbands’ violence), and expressed willingness to help battered women. In addition, high percentages of the participants expressed willingness to hold violent husbands responsible for their behavior. Students’ liberal attitudes toward women and egalitarian expectations of marriage correlated significantly with most non-lenient beliefs about battered women and violent husbands. Nevertheless, participants’ exposure to family violence did not correlate significantly with these beliefs. The predictability of these beliefs by participants’ patriarchal ideology and exposure to family violence has been examined. The implications of the results for future research and theory development as well as for professional socialization are discussed.

A major reason why some people oppose the COVID-19 vaccine is the influence of misinformation. This study suggests that the cognitive paradox of simultaneously believing known facts less and new, “alternative facts” more is the outcome of a distrust mindset, characterized by spontaneous consideration of alternatives, including misinformation. We captured this paradox and its correlates in a scale that measures individuals' ability to distinguish between the truth value of well-established facts (“Earth rotates eastward around its own axis, completing a full rotation once in about 24 h”) and baseless “alternative facts” (“Earth can change its rotation direction and flip its axis, and we will never notice it”). Assuming that an anti-COVID-19 vaccine attitude arises from a chronically distrusting mindset, we sampled participants on Prolific who were pre-screened for their COVID-19 vaccine attitude based on earlier responses. We found that people who rejected COVID-19 vaccines believed well-established facts less, and “alternative facts” more, compared to supporters of the vaccine. Less discernment between truths and falsehoods was correlated with less intellectual humility, more distrust and greater reliance on one's intuition. This observed thought pattern offers insights into theoretical understanding of the antecedents of belief in “alternative facts” and conspiracy theories.

AbstractThis study examined parental coping with grief and identified protective factors for better coping among parents who suffered the loss of a child during military service in Israel. Coping indicators included complicated grief, functioning in life tasks, succeeding in living meaningful lives, and personal growth. Participants were 164 parents who had lost children 5?16?years previously. We found strong associations between parents? decision to continue life despite traumatic loss and several indicators of coping. Meaning-making was associated with better functioning and greater personal growth. Practitioners should explore with parents the internal struggles about deciding whether to continue in life.

Background: Following the convention on the rights of persons with disabilities (CRPD), various countries have recently amended their legal capacity laws with the aim of restricting the use of guardianship and increasing the use of other, less restrictive practices, mainly supported decision making. As social workers have a key role in carrying out these reforms, this study examines how Israeli social workers make legal capacity-related decisions. Method: Semi-structured interviews with 27 Israeli social workers. Results: Thematic analysis identified three factors driving social workers' recommendations regarding guardianship and supported decision-making: the person's diagnosis and functioning level, and the presence of a supportive family. A fourth factor, the person's preferences, played a complex and more limited role. Conclusions: Many changes have yet to be made to fully apply the support paradigm in Israel, since social workers still tend to base their recommendations on factors not fully aligned with the CRPD.

Background: Following the convention on the rights of persons with disabilities (CRPD), various countries have recently amended their legal capacity laws with the aim of restricting the use of guardianship and increasing the use of other, less restrictive practices, mainly supported decision making. As social workers have a key role in carrying out these reforms, this study examines how Israeli social workers make legal capacity-related decisions. Method: Semi-structured interviews with 27 Israeli social workers. Results: Thematic analysis identified three factors driving social workers' recommendations regarding guardianship and supported decision-making: the person's diagnosis and functioning level, and the presence of a supportive family. A fourth factor, the person's preferences, played a complex and more limited role. Conclusions: Many changes have yet to be made to fully apply the support paradigm in Israel, since social workers still tend to base their recommendations on factors not fully aligned with the CRPD.