Abstract:

This study examines the use of the derogatory term mishtamtim (literally, 'shirkers') for Israeli citizens who do not serve in the military, as employed in a variety of widely circulating cultural texts and in several focus group discussions. I suggest that in addition to revealing and reflecting Israeli society's dominant views and opinions on military service and its relation to civil society, the inherent ambiguity of the mishtamtim label enables interlocutors to construct different notions of the Israeli collective, which are then translated into different patterns of inclusion and exclusion, hierarchies of citizenship, and disciplinary meas ures. In addition, the discursive construction of non-service as avoidance of participation in a symbolic, non-violent, civilianized, and benevolent contribution to the collective conceals the military's own tendency to discharge conscripts, as well as its inherently violent nature and the role that violence plays in providing the glue that keeps society together.

Abstract:

This paper describes research on 2 normative concepts thought to impact health behaviors: injunctive and descriptive norms. The study tests whether the extent to which the same health behavior is enacted in an observable or non-observable setting will lead to variation in normative influence on parent intention. In online experiments conducted in Winter 2009, participants were randomized to a behavioral scenario in which the health behavior was described as occurring in an observable or non-observable setting. For sun-protection behaviors, observability primed the influence of descriptive norms on intention. For nutrition behaviors, observability primed the influence of injunctive norms on intention. Across both conditions, observability of the behavioral scenario increased the strength of the association between norms and intention.