This book examines the changes in many kibbutz factories which have recently transformed from socialist entities, with egalitarian and cooperative relationships, to hierarchical and market-driven structures. Focusing on five case studies from an ethnographic perspective, the book explores the reasons for this organizational change and examines its ideological, social, and economic causes. Ranging from organizational culture as a tool for economic success to the cooperative clan lifestyle and its organizational experience for improving human life and economic production, the author uncovers and investigates various hidden layers of the organizational culture in the kibbutz, revealing that cultural change in the factories was intended as a way of coping with a changing competitive environment. Adding new typologies for familial business types, demonstrating how hybrid organizational structures have promoted economic success, and examining the lesser-studied communal perspective, it shows how social development can be used to provide a deeper analysis of the kibbutz industry as a microcosm of the changes in communal lifestyle that have recently shifted toward materialism and capitalism. As such, The Kibbutz Industry will appeal to scholars and students with interests in the sociology of organization, business studies, human resource management, and organizational behavior.

The Kibbutz: A New Way of Life is an introduction to the Kibbutz Artzi Hashomer Hatzair, the largest of the four national federations of kibbutzim (communal settlements) in Israel. The Kibbutzim are Israel's most effective contribution to the millenary messianic promise of justice and peace. This book is composed of three parts encompassing 13 chapters. Part I focuses on the foundation of the Kibbutz movement. Part II deals first with the interdependence of functions in the Kibbutz society. This part also looks into the socio-economic basis of Kibbutz, and the issues of democracy, equality, incentives, and education. Part III provides a perspective of the Kibbutz movement and its influence in other forms of society. This book will prove useful to historians and researchers.

This book focuses on the kibbutz movement in Israel, and examines communal socialist industry and the consequences of its embeddedness within a national polity and the global market economy. As a consequence, the subject is firmly located within the debates about the internationalization of capitalism and parallel debates about the future of socialism within the global market economy. The text explores the management and organization of kibbutz industry as an essential feature of communal socialism.

One Hundred Years of Kibbutz Life shows that the kibbutz thrives and describes changes that have occurred within Israel's kibbutz community. The kibbutz population has increased in terms of demography and capital, a point frequently overlooked in debates regarding viability. Like the kibbutz founders who established a society grounded in certain principles and meeting certain goals, kibbutz newcomers seek to build an idealistic society with specific social and economic arrangements.The years 1909-2009 marked a century of kibbutz life?one hundred years of achievements, challenges, and creative changes. The impact of kibbutzim on Israeli society has been substantial but is now waning. While kibbutzim have become less relevant in Israeli policy and politics, they are increasingly engaged in questions of environmentalism, education, and profitable industries.Contributors discuss the hopes, goals, frustrations, and disappointments of the kibbutz movement. They also examine reform efforts intended to revitalize the institution and reinforce fading kibbutz ideals. Such solutions are not always popular among kibbutz members, but they demonstrate that the kibbutz is an adaptive and flexible social organization. The various studies presented in this book clarify the dynamism of the kibbutz institution and raises questions about the ways in which residential arrangements throughout the world manage change.

This is the second volume of the publication series of the Israeli Sociological Society, whose object is to identify and clarify the major themes that occupy social research in Israel today. Studies of Israeli Society gathers together the best of Israeli social science investigation, which was previously scattered in a large variety of international jour-nals. Each book in the series is in-troduced by integrative essays. The contents of volume two focus on the sociology of a unique Israeli social institution—the kibbutz. Kib-butz society constitutes an impor-tant laboratory for the investigation of a variety of problems that have been of perennial concern to the social sciences. Topics in this volume include relevant contem-porary issues such as the dynamics of social stratification in a "classless" society, the function and status of the family in a revolutionary society, relations between generations, industrializa-tion in advanced rural communities, and collective economies versus the outside world. The questions of the concept and development of the kib-butz, social differentiation and socialization, and work and produc-tion within the kibbutz possess a significance far beyond their im-mediate social context. Does the kibbutz offer a model for an alter-native, communal lifestyle for the modern world? How has the kibbutz changed over the past decadeswithin the context of a rapidly modernizing Israeli society? Emphasizing the "nonfailure" of the kibbutz experiment and con-trasting it with many socialist, cooperative, and communal ex-periments that clearly did fail, Martin Buber, in his analysis, attributes this success to the kib-but/'s undogmatic character, its ability to adapt structures and in-stitutions to changing conditions, while preserving its essential values and ideals. This volume presents an excellent review of the social research under-taken on the kibbutz in the past decades, and provides an introduc-tion to the growing scientific literature on the kibbutz. Contributors: Melford E. Spiro, Menachem Rosner, Martin Buber, Joseph Ben-David, Daniel Katz, Naftali Golomb, Erik Cohen, Arye Fishman, Michael Saltman, S.N. Eisenstadt, Eva Rosenfeld, Amitai Etzioni, Ephraim Yuchtman, Eliezer Ben-Rafael, Nissim Cohen, Yonina Talmon-Garber, Joseph Shepher, Lionel Tiger, Edward C. Devereux, Reuben Kahane, Ivan Vallier, David Barkin, John W. Bennet, Yehuda Don, Uri Leviatan, Eliette Orchan, Shimon Shur and David Glanz.

‘Accessible . . . As a narrative, it should keep readers intrigued . . . useful for novices and for those moderately familiar with the topic. . . . the perspective and the range of topics addressed are broad . . . the strength of this volume is the way in which it places the trends and conflicts within the kibbutz movement and between the kibbutz movement and the Jewish world into perspective. This is Near's main task, and he does a fine job of it.’ Alan F. Benjamin, H-Judaic ‘Of great importance . . . The most comprehensive history of the kibbutz movement to date.’ Yuval Dror, Zmanim

Kibbutzim have recently gone through far-reaching changes that came up to no less than a metamorphosis. This volume investigates this transformation and what it teaches about developmental communalism, from utopian gemeinschaft-like communities to more gesellschaft-like associations.