Academic Capital or Scientific Progress? A Critique of Studies of Kibbutz Stratification

Abstract

Why did six decades of kibbutz studies not discover the existence of complex social stratification? This curious blindness is explained by the dominance of a coalition in the study of this complex social field, which includes both kibbutzim and federative organizations. The uniqueness of kibbutzim enabled this coalition to perpetuate a series of partial truisms, including a supposed lack of stratification. Critics have exposed some degree of status differentiation but ignored the primary evidence of stratification and missed its true extent. The author's desire to address his own society's problems led him to engage in a "long effort applied to oneself which [converted]... one's whole view of... the social world" (Bourdieu 1990:16), and this view exposed the true extent of stratification in this social field. Thus, the motivation to reform the kibbutz led to a level of understanding which traditional academic research had not achieved, supporting Whyte's (1992) assertion that social scientists must seek social theories for action, not for pure knowledge, and Wallerstein's (2004) thesis that division of the social sciences and humanities into separate disciplines hinders scientific progress.

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