perspective sees collective action as an end in itself. Collective action enables individuals who lack the resources to independently improve their well-being to work together to achieve this end. This perspective defines CED as an endogenous process. The main participants are the members of marginalized groups who undertake collective action. In practice, though, as Mathie and Cunningham observe, all three perspectives are often present in initiatives of economic development. This has also been the case in the Israeli version documented in this book. CED then is initially a hybrid approach, and its implementations in effect condition it to retain this quality, since they invariably bring together groups, individuals, and stakeholders with very diverse subject positions. As we shall see later in the chapter, this characteristic is of central importance to understanding the cultural production that occurs through and around CED initiatives.
Another prominent characteristic of CED programs, besides their inherent hybridity, is their openness to feminist discourse and action, an openness that owes to their strong egalitarian, localized, and hands-on emphases. Since feminist approaches to women’s economic empowerment are central also to the Israeli case, I have chosen to borrow, for the purpose of this brief outline of CED, the definitions of Canadian feminist activists. In their study of young women in two inner-city Winnipeg neighborhoods, Molly McCracken and her partners (McCracken et al. 2005) define CED as follows: Community Economic Development is a bottom-up rather than top-down route to economic development that takes a capacity-building approach to poverty, and considers individual and community assets as starting places for building local communities’ capacity and economy. Community economic development aims to go beyond problem solving and build healthy and economically viable communities. It is an alternative to conventional approaches to economic development, founded on the belief that problems before communities—unemployment, poverty, job loss, environmental degradation, and loss of community control—need to be addressed in a holistic and participatory way. It can be defined as action by people locally to create economic opportunities and enhance social conditions in their communities on a sustainable and inclusive basis, particularly for those who are most disadvantaged. Along similar lines, with a slightly more focused emphasis on employment, the Canadian Women’s Foundation (2010) defines women’s economic development and sustainable livelihood as enhancing their employability, exploring and consolidating their economic possibilities, and facilitating their gradual passage from survival to asset building.
Community economic development then, proffers a very contemporary for-mulation of development that aims to combine growth with justice, through applying both socialist and capitalist ideas. While many CED initiatives are an evident continuation of the mid-twentieth-century movements against urban poverty, the close collaboration between grassroots activists, private businesses, and state agencies inevitably imbues them with pragmatic and mainstream political-economic ideas. Unlike the older social democratic emphases on the state as a benevolent redistributor of welfare, CED gives more credit to poor people’s economic agency by replacing their depiction as endemically needy and highlighting their “assets” and “capacities.” But—and this point will recur throughout the book—reorienting the discourse on economic justice to poor people’s assets is a potentially thorny move. While such focus celebrates their ingenuity, recognizes the value of their cultural knowledge, and ultimately underscores their humanity, at the same time it serves as a convenient token for drawing them straight into the neoliberal logics of self-sufficiency. One of the most widely discussed examples, to which I return in my discussion of empowerment later in the book, is the co-optation of traditional women’s saving circles by microlending conglomerates. Still, despite the emphasis on paid work as a major, if not the major source of dignified livelihood, the discourse of community economic development rejects extreme versions of neoliberal individualism. As indicated by its name, it aims to shift responsibility for poor people’s well-being back to the community. Also in contrast to the unilateral emphasis on growth, as appears in more extreme versions of neoliberalism, this discourse emphasizes balance among the diverse components of human communities, and between economic and environmental development. Lastly, despite its immersion in global webs of discourses, re-sources, and powers, it aims to cushion the crushing effects of globalization by taking a decisive stand against unlimited economic growth in favor of more balanced local economies.
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
