• Pnina Motzafi-Haller-

PNINA MOTZAFI-HALLER

  • Professional Activities

(a). Anthropological field research

2005-2008Israel: “Cleaning Labor in Israel” An interdisciplinary research project in collaboration with Bar Ilan Sociologist Dr. Orly Benjamin and Social Historian Haifa University Prof Debbie Bernstein. Interviews and participant observation in Sde Boker, Yeruham, Dimona, Ofakim and Beer Sheva. The three year project is funded by the IsraeliAcademy of Science.

2000-2004Israel: Ethnographic research in the Negev development town of Yeruham exploring gender relations and social change. Research focuses on the process of increasing religiosity in the community. The IsraeliAcademy of Science and the International Research Institute on Jewish Women at BrandeisUniversity funded this project.

1997-2003Burkina Faso: Research coordinator in a collaborative research team that included two Burkinabe and one Dutch scholar. The project entitled: “Farmers’ Participation in Sustainable Development: A Socially Sensitive Model for Intervention” was financed by The Netherlands-Israel Research Program (NIRP). As a research coordinator, I oversaw the ongoing administrative work linking four research institutions in Africa, Holland and Israel. I also engaged in active field research in the Northwestern regions of Burkina Faso, where problems of severe desertification due to soil erosion were the focus of research and sacademically supervised the research work of three Burkinabe graduate students.

1981-2000Botswana: Intensive field research in the Tswapong Region on the links between patterns of control over social space and collective identities. (2 months in 1981, 15 months 1982-1984, summer 1993, summer 2000).

1975-1977Israel: Ethnographic research (with Dr. Yitzhak Elam) among Georgian Jewish immigrants to Israel in the community of Ashkelon.

(b) Positions in academic administration

1999-present Member of the steering committee of the Humphrey Institute for Social Research, BenGurionUniversity.

2004-5 Organizer (with Dr. Daniel de-Malach) the yearly seminar of Humphrey on the topic of “Identities and Social Class”

1997 BGU Faculty host of Prof John Comaroff on a President grant for Distinguished visitors. Organized Prof Comaroff mini-course at BGU and a series of lectures at five Israeli universities.

1998 BGU Faculty host of Prof. Homi Bhabha on a President grant for Distinguished visitors. Organized a series of Prof. Bhabha’s lectures and hosted him and his family during his 10 day first visit in Israel.

(c ) Professional functions outside universities/institutions

2005-6 Head of professional committee that evaluates research submissions for the IsraeliAcademy of Science.

1999-2001 Member of the board of the Israeli Association for Gender and Feminist Studies

1998-2001 Invited member of a professional forum in Social Science at Van Leer Institute, Jerusalem

(d) Editor or Member of editorial boards of scientific journals

  1. Acting co-editor in 2006-7 and co-editor (with Dr. Michael Feige) beginning in summer 2007 of the only Israeli English-language social science journal Hagar: International Social Studies Review.
  2. Member of editorial board ofPolitical and Legal Anthropology Review (U.S.A.) 1993-1995
  3. Member of editorial board of Te’orya Ve’Bikoreth ( Theory and Criticism) (Israel) 1999-2004
  1. Member of editorial board of Hagar: International Social Studies Review (Israel) 1999-present
  1. Member of editorial board of Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power (U.S.A.) 2000-2005

(c) Reviewer

Professional Journals (* indicates more than one review)

  1. Women’s Studies International Forum
  2. *American Ethnologist
  3. *Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power
  4. Social Politics: International Studies of Gender, State and Society.
  5. *Cultural Anthropologist
  6. Political and Legal Anthropology Review
  7. *Te’orya Ve’Bikoreth (Theory and Criticism)
  1. Canadian Bulletin of Medical History
  2. *Megamot
  3. Israeli Sociology
  4. Tarbut Democratit (Democratic Culture)
  5. *Hagar:International Social Studies Review

Book Publishers

  1. CambridgeUniversity Press
  2. The University of Chicago Press
  3. Magness Press, Israel
  4. Bar IlanUniversityPress, Israel

Research Granting Institutions

  1. The Israeli Science Foundation (Ha’Akademya HaYisraelit Le’Madaiim)
  1. RobertSchumanCenter for Advanced Studies, European University Institute
  2. The Ministry of Science (Misrad Hamada)
  3. The Center for Research and Advancement of Women’s Health, BenGurionUniversity.
  4. The Center for Bedouin Studies, BenGurionUniversity.

Scientific publications

* indicates publication since 2003

Books

Authored:

  1. P. Motzafi-Haller (2002)Fragmented Worlds, Coherent Lives: the Politics of Difference in Botswana. (London and Westport, Connecticut: Bergin & Garvey) 215 pages.

Edited:

  1. *P. Motzafi-Haller (ed.) (2005)Women in Agriculture in the Middle East. Adlershot, Hampshire, England: Ashgate Press.(English) 177 pages.
  2. * Pnina Motzafi-Haller, (with Abootbool Guy, Lev Greenberg, editors names appear in alphabetic order) (eds.) (2005)Kolot Mizrahiyim: Towards a New Mizrahi Discourse on Israeli Society and Culture. Tel Aviv: Masada Press; (Hebrew). 438 pages.
  3. * P. Motzafi-Haller. (Academic editor). (2004)A Short History of the Zionist Underground Movement in Iraq by Shlomo Sheena, Yaacov Elazar and Emanuel Nahtomi. Jerusalem: Research Institute of the Zionist-pioneer Underground Movement in Iraq; (English).
  4. P. Motzafi-Haller (with Hanan Hever and Yehouda Shenhav) (eds.) (2002)Mizrahim in Israel: A Critical Observation into Israel’s Ethnicity. Tel Aviv: Van Leer Institute and HaKibbutz HaMeuchad Publishing House; (Hebrew) 328 pages.
  5. P. Motzafi-Haller (with A. and J. Barnard) (eds.) (1993)Social Relations in a Changing Southern Africa. Edinburgh: Center of African Studies, Edinburgh University.(English)

Refereed articles in journals and books

  1. *Eva Rathgeber and P. Motzafi-Haller 2006 “Engendering Water in the Middle East” In Clive Lipchin, Eric Pallant, Danielle Saranga, and Allyson Amster(eds.) Integrated Water Resources Management and Security in the Middle East. Springer andAK/Nato Publishing Unit.
  2. * P. Motzafi-Haller 2006 “Reading Bell Hooks in Israel: Radical Feminism, Critical Thinking, and the New Sisterhood” In Yanay, N., El-Or, T. Lubin, O., and Nave, H. (eds).Introduction to Gender Studies. Tel Aviv: Open University (Hebrew).
  3. * P. Motzafi-Haller, Klaus Keuthmann and Rainer Vossen 2006 “Setswana Dialects and Inter-Dialectal Variation in the Republic of Botswana: Setswapong” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft(English) 102:7-42.
  4. *P. Motzafi-Haller 2005“The Politics of Academic Teaching in Israel: How War Affects Our Teaching of Ethnicity, Gender and Social History” Journal of Women’s History 17:4 pp. 170-175.
  5. * P. Motzafi-Haller 2005 “A Critical Assessment of Research on Gender in the Israeli Rural Sector” In Motzafi-Haller (ed.) Women and Agriculture in the Middle East (Adlershot, Hampshire, England Ashgate Press). pp. 95-117
  6. * P. Motzafi-Haller 2005 “Introducing Gender into a Regional Agricultural Development Project in the Middle East: Professional and Political Challenges” In Motzafi-Haller (ed) Women and Agriculture in the Middle East (Adlershot, Hampshire, England: Ashgate Press). pp. 1-13.
  7. * P. Motzafi-Haller 2005 “The Politics of Producing Knowledge in Development: Gender in Rural production.” In Motzafi-Haller (ed.) Women and Agriculture in the Middle East (Adlershot, Hampshire, England Ashgate Press). Pp 167-174.
  8. * P. Motzafi-Haller 2005 “An Outline for a Critical Feminist Historiography in Israel” In Tova Cohen and Shaul Regev Isha MeMizrach, Isha BaMirach (Women of the East, Women in the East) (Ramat Gan: BarIlanUniversity Press) (Hebrew) pp 267-283.
  9. * P. Motzafi-Haller 2005 “New Challenges in Historiographic and Sociological Research of Oriental Jewish Women” in Tova Cohen and Shaul Regev (eds) Isha MeMizrach, Isha BaMirach (Women of the East, Women in the East)pp 9-22.
  10. * P. Motzafi-Haller 2004 “Religiosity, Gender and Class in a DesertTown” in Yossi Yona and Yehuda Goodman (eds) In the Maelstorm of Identities: A Critical Look at Religion and Secularity in Israel. Tel Aviv: The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute and Hakibbutz HaMeuchad Press. (Hebrew) pp. 316-346
  11. * P. Motzafi-Haller 2004 “Crafting Multilayered Identities in Israel” In Erela Shadmi and Chava Frankfort-Nachmias (eds.) Sapho in the Holy Land: Lesbian Existance and Dilemmas in Contemporary Israel. (New York: SUNY Press) (English) pp.135-151.
  12. * P. Motzafi-Haller 2004 “Negotiating Difference in Israeli Scholarship: Towards A New Feminist Discourse” In Adriana Kemp, David Newman, Uri Ram and Oren Yiftachel (eds.) Israelis in Conflict (Portland, Oragon: Sussex Academic Press). (English) pp. 162-188.
  13. P. Motzafi-Haller 2002 “Mizrahi Intellectuals 1946-1951: Ethnic Identity and Its Boundaries.” In Hever H., Shenhav Y., and P. Motzafi-Haller (eds.) in Mizrahim in Israel: A Critical Observation into Israel’s Ethnicity. Tel Aviv: Van Leer Jerusalem Institute and HaKibbutz HaMeuchad Publishing House. (Hebrew) pp. 152-191.
  14. Pnina Motzafi-Haller 2002 (with Hanan Hever and Yehouda Shenhav) “Introduction” in Hever H., Shenhav Y., and P. Motzafi-Haller (eds.) in Mizrahim in Israel: A Critical Observation into Israel’s Ethnicity. Tel Aviv: Van Leer Jerusalem Institute and HaKibbutz HaMeuchad Publishing House. (Hebrew). pp 9-14.
  15. Pnina Motzafi-Haller 2002 (with H. Hever, Y. Yona, A. Khazoom, M. Amor, A. Kemp and Y. Shenhav) “Mizrahi Epistemology in Israel” In Hever H., Shenhav Y., and P. Motzafi-Haller (eds.) in Mizrahim in Israel: A Critical Observation into Israel’s Ethnicity. Tel Aviv: Van Leer Jerusalem Institute and HaKibbutz HaMeuchad Publishing House (Hebrew). pp 15-27.
  16. Pnina Motzafi-Haller 2002 (with H. Hever, Y. Yona, A. Khazoom, M. Amor, A. Kemp and Y. Shenhav) “Mechanisms of Production of the Canonical Knowledge on Mizrahim in Israel”. In Hever H., Shenhav Y., and P. Motzafi-Haller (eds.) in Mizrahim in Israel: A Critical Observation into Israel’s Ethnicity. Tel Aviv: Van Leer Jerusalem Institute and HaKibbutz HaMeuchad Publishing House. (Hebrew) pp 288-306.
  17. P. Motzafi-Haller 2001 “Research on Women in Rural Israel: The Gender Gap.”Journal of Rural Cooperation. (English) 29,1: 3-25.
  18. P. Motzafi-Haller 2001 “Scholarship, Identity and Power: Mizrahi Women in Israel.”Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. 26, 3: 697-734.
  19. P. Motzafi-Haller 2000 “Reading Arab Feminist Discourses: A Postcolonial Challenge to Israeli Feminism” Hagar: International Social Studies Review. 1,2: 63-89.
  20. P. Motzafi-Haller 1998 “Beyond Textual Analysis: Practice, Interacting Discourses and the Experience of Distinction in Botswana.”Cultural Anthropology 13,4: 522-548.
  21. P. Motzafi-Haller 1997 “Native Anthropologists and the Politics of Representation.” In Reed-Danahay D. (ed.) Auto/ethnography: Rewriting the Self and the Social. Oxford: Berg Publishers, pp. 169-195.
  22. P. Motzafi-Haller 1997 “You Have an Authentic Voice: Anthropological Research and the Politics of Representation.”Teoriyah U’bikoret. 11, pp. 81-99. (Hebrew)
  23. P. Motzafi-Haller 1997 “The Politics of Space and Place in East-Central Botswana.”Canadian Journal of African Studies 31, 2, pp. 229-268.
  24. P. Motzafi-Haller 1996 “Power, Identity, and History in Central Botswana.”Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 2, 4. pp. 325-350.
  25. P. Motzafi-Haller 1995 “Liberal Discourses of Cultural Diversity and Hegemonic Constructions of Difference: Basarwa in Contemporary Botswana.”Political and Legal Anthropology Review 18, 2. pp. 91-104.
  26. P. Motzafi-Haller 1994 “When Bushmen are Known as Basarwa: Gender, Ethnicity and Differentiation in Rural Botswana.”American Ethnologist 21, 3, pp. 539-563.
  27. P. Motzafi-Haller 1994 “Historical Narratives as Political Discourses of Identity.”Journal of Southern African Studies 20, 3, pp. 417-433.
  28. P. Motzafi-Haller 1993 Commentary on J. Solway and Richard Lee’s “Foragers, Genuine or Spurious?”Current Anthropology 31, 2, pp. 132-33.

Non-refereed chapters in books

(1)* P. Motzafi-Haller 2006 “Judaism as Culture: An Anthropological Perspective” In Teaching Judaism as Culture in Israeli Universities (Tel Aviv; The YitzhakRabinCenter) pp 31-37.

(2)* P. Motzafi-Haller 2005 “Introduction”In Pnina Motzafi-Haller, (with Abootbool Guy, Lev Greenberg) (eds.) Kolot Mizrahiyim: Towards a New Mizrahi Discourse on Israeli Society and Culture. (Tel Aviv: Masada Press)pp 1-15.

(3)* P. Motzafi-Haller 2005 “Mizrahi Intellectuals”In Pnina Motzafi-Haller, (with Abootbool Guy, Lev Greenberg) (eds.) Kolot Mizrahiyim: Towards a New Mizrahi Discourse on Israeli Society and Culture. (Tel Aviv: Masada Press)pp70-79.

(4)P. Motzafi-Haller 2000 “Mizrahi Women in Israel: The Double Erasure” In Helen Epstein (ed.) Jewish Women 2000. Waltham, MA: Research Institute on Jewish Women, BrandeisUniversity, pp. 79-97.

(5)P. Motzafi-Haller 1993 “Social Space and the Politics of Difference in Central Botswana.” In A. Barnard, J. Barnard and P. Motzafi-Haller (eds.) Social Relations in a Changing Southern Africa. Center of African Studies, EdinburghUniversity. pp. 4-29.

Non-refereed articles in Journals

(1)*P. Motzafi-Haller September 2004 “Forging New Research and Academic Links with Chinese Social Scientists” A Voice from the DesertBen-GurionUniversity.

(2)*P. Motzafi-Haller December 2004 “Tibet for the Independent-minded Traveler” National Geographic (Hebrew edition). pp.44-53.

(3)*P. Motzafi-Haller 2004 “Canadian Feminist Scholarship and the Question of Difference” Heker Migdar BaAretz (The Newsletter of the Israel Association for Feminist and Gender Studies)

(4)P. Motzafi-Haller 2001 “From the Position of the Other: Towards an Alternative Feminist Discourse in Israel” Heker Migdar BaAretz (The Newsletter of the Israel Association for Feminist and Gender Studies- IAFGS) 8:21-23.

(5)P. Motzafi-Haller February 2001 “The Bushmen of the Kalahari” National Geographic (Hebrew edition). pp. 132-134.

(6)P. Motzafi-Haller 1998 “A Mizrahi Call for a More Democratic Israel” In a Special Issue: “Israel At Fifty” of Tikkun :A Bimonthly Jewish Critique of Politics, Culture and Society. March 1998, pp. 50-53.

(7)P. Motzafi-Haller 1998 “Reflections of a Mizrahi Intellectual Woman.”Noga: The Israeli Feminist Magazine33,pp. 20-23.

(8)P. Motzafi-Haller 1993 “The Duiker and the Hare: Tswapong Subjects and Ngwato Rulers in Pre-colonial Botswana.”Botswana Notes and Records, 25, pp. 59-71.

(9)P. Motzafi-Haller 1986 “Whither the ‘True Bushman’: The Dynamics of Perpetual Marginality.”Sugia 7, 1, pp.295-328.

(10) P. Motzafi-Haller 1998 “The Future of Israeli Society” Svivot 41, December. (Hebrew)

Invited book reviews

(1) P. Motzafi-Haller 2000 Review of Eleanor Abdella Doumato “Getting God’s Ear: Women, Islam and Healing in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf” International Women Studies Forum.

(2)P. Motzafi-Haller 1997 Review of Annelies Zoomers (ed.) “Supporting Small-Scale Enterprise: Case Studies in SME Interventions.”Journal of Rural Cooperation 25,1, pp. 50-52.

(3) P. Motzafi-Haller 1994 “The Last Romantic of the Kalahari.” A review essay of Valiente-Noailles “The Kua: Life and Soul of the Central Kalahari Bushmen.”Journal of Religion in Africa.

RESEARCH GRANTS

  1. * (2004-2007) P Motzafi-Haller, Deborah Bernstein and Orly Benjamin. HaAkademya HaYisraelit LeMadaiim. The IsraeliAcademy of Science. “Cleaning Labor in Israel”.
  2. (2002-2003) P. Motzafi-Haller. Israeli Association for Canadian Studies. Faculty Enrichment Award.
  3. (2002-2003) P. Motzafi-Haller “A Postcolonial Reading of Canadian Feminist Scholarship” Faculty Research Award by the Israel Association of Canadian Studies.
  4. (2001-2004) P. Motzafi-Haller, The IsraeliAcademy of Science. “Religiosity and the Construction of Self in a DesertTown”.
  5. (2001-2002) P. Motzafi-Haller, International Research Institute on Jewish Women, for ongoing ethnographic work carried out in Yeruham.
  6. (1998-2003) P. Motzafi-Haller, Netherlands-Israel Research Program (NIRP). “Farmers’ Participation in Sustainable Development: A Socially-sensitive Model for Intervention”
  7. (1999-2004) P. Motzafi-Haller, Abdul hamid Musa, Zienab Al Tobshy, Laith Rowsan. DANIDA (The Danish International Development Association). Research grant for a regional project on “Women in Agriculture”
  8. (1995-1997) P. Motzafi-Haller and Alex Weingrod. Israeli Ministry of Science. A two year grant for research on Israeli ethnicity in historical perspectives
  9. (1984) P. Motzafi-Haller American Association for University Women, International Fellowship.
  10. (1983) P. Motzafi-Haller Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society, a grant-in-aid for research in Botswana
  11. (1982) P. Motzafi-Haller Sachar International Fellowship, BrandeisUniversity. Support for field research
  12. (1982-1984) P. Motzafi-Haller National Science Foundation, Anthropology section. Dissertation research grant
  13. (1981) P. Motzafi-Haller American Philosophical Society, research grant for fieldwork in Botswana.

SYNOPSIS OF CURRENT RESEARCH & SCIENTIFIC ACTIVITIES

Pnina Motzafi-Haller

February 2007

My research interests include: international development, gender in cross-cultural perspectives, African societies, Middle-East and North-African feminist scholarship, feminist theories, and Israeli ethnography among marginalized populations (mainly Mizrahim, but also Bedouins). A key concern linking these diverse areas of research and expertise is the study of social inequality.

After almost two decades of professional work (I earned my PhD in 1988), I had developed a comparative framework for such exploration of social inequality. My research work includes ethnographic work in Botswana (1982-2000), in Burkina Faso (1999-2003), The Middle East (Egypt, Jordan, PA, 1999-2004) and Israel (2000-2004). In each of these research settings I looked at several axes of such reality of inequality: along class, gender, nationality and ethnic identity. This extensive empirical research work has been the basis for my more theoretical work on the issues of global feminist theory and on the intersections of ethnicity and class.

By the summer of 2002, when I began my sabbatical year in Canada, this empirical and theoretical work in Africa and the Middle Easthas resulted in the publication of three books (one single authored and two co-edited volumes) and 16 refereed essays. Since October 2003,when I was officially promoted to Senior Lecturer status, I had completed the work on three more edited volumes(one single edited and two co-edited) and 13 new refereed articles (7 among which were already published, three are in press at the time of this report, and three more are being revised following journal referees comments in order to be resubmitted).

In October 2005, I began a new collaborative research project (together with Prof Deborah Bernstein of Haifa Univ and Dr. Orly Benjamin of Bar Ilan). The project will examine cleaning labor in Israel as a focal site for exploring the formation of class of powerless workers, mostly women of minority background.The new project is supported by a research grant provided by the IsraeliAcademy of Science for the next three years.

My work in the Middle East involved collaborative work with Egyptian, Jordanian and Palestinian scholars and focused on the role of women in agricultural production. The project begun as a consultation to DANIDA, the Danish International Development Agency. It evolved into a full academic project that spanned four years. In the book I edited based on the results of the collaborative work produced by the four Middle eastern scholars, I explored the challenges of working as an academic in development, of inserting gender into the development agenda, and of collaboration in a turbulent time in the Middle East. The book titled Women and Agriculture in the Middle East was published by Ashgate Press in 2005.

In the summer of 2006, I was invited to India to BITSUniversity in Rajastan to give a keynote address at a conference of Safe Motherhood. My academic host, Prof Prakash is invited to Sde Boker to work with me on a collaborative research project that will link our two institutes and will introduce gender into the larger agenda of desert research.

Finally, I am working these days on completing my manuscript tentatively titled Al Olaman shel Nashim BaPeripherya HaYisraelit (On the Lifeworld of Women in the Israeli Periphery) based on my three years of ethnographic field research in the Negev town Yeruham. The research examines processes of social change in the community due to increasing religiosity observed in the town. The IsraeliAcademy of Science and the International Jewish Women Research Center at BrandeisUniversity granted research funds. Initial research results were presented in severalacademic and public forums in Israel. Four articles, based on this research, were published to date.