Boundaries in Interaction: The Cultural Fabrication of Social Boundaries in West Jerusalem

Boundaries in Interaction: The Cultural Fabricationof Social Boundaries in West JerusalemNir Gazit∗

Ruppin Academic Center

Boundary work projects are relevant in any social context, but they seem to carryparticular significance in multicultural or multinational and highly contested urbansettings. This study examines how daily artifacts such as local newspapers are usedby various urban social groups in their local boundary work projects. The analysis isbased on the particular case of West Jerusalem, and focuses on how Jewish commu-nities use the popular local Jerusalem newspaper Kol Ha’Ir (“Whole of the City”).The study shows that local newspapers have three functions: (1) they are impor-tant components in the local cultural tool kit that various groups use and relate to;(2) they are cultural objects exploited by communities to redefine and regulatetheir particular identities and to sustain a common ground for local solidarity; and(3) they serve as mechanisms that construct and maintain an ethnonational fronttoward rival communities within their urban space. This study also suggests that inorder to facilitate such a complex task of boundary work, cultural objects must bepolysemous. First, they should produce to some degree a consensus among their var-ious consumers on their content and social significance. Second, they should permita range of interpretations regarding their particular social meaning for each group.

INTRODUCTION

In recent years, the idea of boundaries has come to play a key role in scholarship acrossthe social sciences (Lamont and Molnar, 2002). As part of this tendency, current stud-ies in urban sociology and multiculturalism have called attention to the social and sym-bolic processes that manifest distinction and commonality between class, ethnic, racial,or religious communities that live in proximity to one another (Beal, 2000; Cornell andHartmann, 1998; de Souza Briggs, 2007; Falzon, 2004; Kuppinger, 2004; Pattillo-McCoy,1999). These studies promote the notion of “boundary work” in order to illuminate thestrategies that group members employ and the criteria they draw upon in constructinga symbolic division between their group and outgroup members (Cornell and Hartman,1998). Nevertheless, there is a dearth of theoretical and empirical clarity about how suchprocesses are actually carried out and how individuals and groups exploit available cul-tural resources to create, maintain, and contest their social differences and boundaries(Lamont and Molnar, 2002, p. 168; Somers, 1994; Swidler, 1986).

The process of boundary manifestation is relevant in any social context, but it seemsto carry particular significance in multicultural or multinational social settings, where

∗Correspondence should be addressed to Nir Gazit, Ruppin Academic Center, Department of Behavioral Sci-ences, Emek-Hefer 40250, Israel; [email protected].

City & Community 9:4 December 2010doi: 10.1111/j.1540-6040.2010.01345.xC© 2010 American Sociological Association, 1430 K Street NW, Washington, DC 20005

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the mission of identification and identity management becomes more urgent and chal-lenging. In such complex societies, which are typical to modern metropolises, many so-cial groups conduct their everyday lives in spatial proximity and, as a consequence, facea strong sense of social overload and intense engagement with Other(s) (Karp, Stone,and Yoels, 1991; Simmel, 1971 [1903]; Tonnies, 1955 [1887]). Given these social condi-tions, this dynamic encourages each composite group to segregate itself from its socialsurroundings in an effort to maintain its social boundaries (Berrey, 2005).

At the same time, sharing a common social setting—particularly in the context of livingin the same urban space—also demands a certain degree of local identification amongthe various groups that constitute the social whole (Janowitz, 1967; Larkin, this issue;Park, 1929, 1967 [1929]). The importance of such relative resemblance and solidarity liesin counterbalancing the continuous tendency of differentiation and social segregation.Thus, any effort to achieve a fuller understanding of the process of identity managementin a multicultural and multinational urban setting must begin by dismantling the mis-conceived oppositions between unity and difference and between solidarity and diversity(Hartmann and Gerties, 2005, p. 221).

But how can such “interactive pluralism” or “elusive togetherness” (Lichterman, 2001)be generated? And what kinds of social mechanisms and cultural resources can createsuch a complex social order?

This study examines how daily artifacts, such as local newspapers, are used by vari-ous urban social groups to negotiate their social boundaries, manage their repertoireof identities, and generate symbolic mechanisms that would enable them to maintaintheir complex social relations. It shows that local newspapers are: (1) important compo-nents in the local cultural tool kit (Swidler, 1986) that various groups use and relate to;(2) cultural objects1 that are exploited by neighboring urban communities to redefineand regulate their particular identities and to sustain a common ground for local solidar-ity; and (3) mechanisms that construct and maintain an ethnonational front toward rivalcommunities within their urban space.

The analysis demonstrates that boundary work is not just a performance of social clas-sification through which communities strive to distinguish themselves from one another.Rather, it represents a much more complex and multidimensional praxis of social andcultural regulation that also aims at creating social solidarity and mutual local sentimentsamong the various social groups in the city. I posit that only polysemous cultural objects,characterized by strong cultural power (Griswold, 1987a, b), are capable of maintaininginternal social boundaries and, at the same time, of acting as a mechanism for a symboliccrossing of these boundaries. Such artifacts, rooted in the local social surroundings, gen-erate a relative consensus among their various consumers regarding the main features ofthe local social world. However, they also permit a relative divergence of interpretationsregarding the particular social meaning of these objects to each group. This enables var-ious groups to engage with these objects and use them as cultural tools in their ownboundary work projects.

Empirically, this analysis will concentrate on how Jewish Jerusalemites use the mostpopular local newspaper of Jerusalem, Kol Ha’Ir (“Whole of the City”),2 in their bound-ary work projects with regard to each other and particularly with regard to the Arab-Palestinian sector in the city.3 Yet, I would like to posit that the proposed analysis andtheorization that follow are applicable to other multicultural and heterogeneous urbansocieties that require an effective management of social diversities. The specific social

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context may vary from time to time and from place to place, but the social logic underly-ing this method remains the same: the need to find common ground while maintainingsocial and cultural differences.

In the first part of this article, I present the pertinence of culture to the analysis ofurban communities’ interrelations and boundary work projects in contested urban envi-ronments. In this part, I also present Griswold’s (1987a, 1987b, 1994) analytical model,which offers a methodological and conceptual framework that privileges an analysis ofhow people use daily artifacts and cultural objects in their boundary work projects. Inthe second part, I outline the methodology used in this study. The third section discussesthe readers’ perceptions of their city and portrays Jerusalem as a fragmented society. Thefourth section is dedicated to a thematic analysis of Kol Ha’Ir newspaper and to its poly-semous character. The fifth part concentrates on the role of Kol Ha’Ir in facilitating theinterrelations among the Jewish communities in Jerusalem. The sixth section exploreshow members of the Jewish communities use the newspaper as tool that manifests andreproduces “Otherhood” in Jerusalem and creates an ethnonational front toward thePalestinians in East Jerusalem.

URBAN COMMUNITIES, BOUNDARY WORK, AND CULTURALOBJECTS

In a recent and persuasive article, Michael Borer (2006) stresses the importance of cul-ture to urban sociology. Borer’s culturalist perspective posits that everyday cultural prac-tices have an important role in shaping urban society. From this point of view, “the socialreality of the city is not simply given. It is also constructed and maintained intersubjec-tively in a semi-closed world of communication and shared symbolization” (Lay, 1983,p. 203), and by human praxis.

Local culture is particularly important in this process, as it plays a critical role in theconstruction of a specifically city-based identity (Suttles, 1984). Major American cities(i.e., New York, Boston, and Chicago), for example, use the commemoration of theirhistory and past leaders, as well as physical artifacts that encapsulate their “character,” toportray the entire local community and to distinguish themselves from other Americancities (Ibid.). Similarly, non-American cities also use traditional cultural events (e.g., theCarnival in Rio de Janeiro and the Pamplona Bull Run in Spain) to construct an exclusivelocal identity.

Over the years, numerous students of urban communities have considered the socialmechanisms that make modern community possible (See, e.g., Curtis White and Guest,2003; Greif, 2009; Hipp and Perrin, 2009; Janowitz, 1967; Kasarda and Janowtitz, 1974;Tonnies, 1955 [1887]; Wellman and Leighton, 1979). However, the role of culture andof cultural objects in facilitating community relations in the city has been relatively ne-glected by these studies; and, in cases where it was discussed, culture was viewed as asubordinate arena of social life (Borer, 2006).

In the following, I suggest that we should turn back to Albert Hunter’s (1974, p. 179)proposition that urban communities must also be considered “symbolic variables.” More-over, I suggest that cultural practices are important not only with regard to their rolein giving meaning to a particular urban community, or in creating a mutual city-basedidentity, but also in how they reconstruct internal and external communities’ boundaries

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and facilitate relations with neighboring communities. The emphasis, then, is on socialrelations not only within urban communities but also among them.

The significance of cultural processes is particularly important in multicultural andmultinational cities. Since the modern city has become ever more socially diverse, themission of social regulation among urban communities has also become more demand-ing and urgent. This is particularly the case in “mixed cities” and in multiethnic and mul-ticultural urban environments. In such complex social environments—characterized bystark patterns of social segregation, as well as by social fragmentation within each group(Yiftachel and Yacobi, 2003)—a major challenge is to construct and maintain conspicu-ous social boundaries among the various social groups and, at the same time, to avoidgenerating a total social fragmentation.

Recent studies of urban environments have emphasized the importance of various so-ciospatial mechanisms in constructing and maintaining territorial partition among rivalsocial groups in the city. Countries, cities, neighborhoods, and communities often usewalls, gates, and various enclosures, which are all mechanisms that manifest social dis-tinction and separation (Boel, 2002; Calderia, 1996; Grant and Mittelsteadt, 2004; Klein,2005; Yacobi, 2009). Although powerful in imposing physical segregation between ur-ban communities, such mechanisms only partly shape complex intercommunal relations.Their main power lies in producing territorial isolation and social enclosure between so-cial groups (Rosen and Razin, 2008). However, usually these mechanisms emphasize theexistence of a dichotomous social order, where one social group segregates itself froma particular Other group (i.e., Whites vs. Blacks, rich vs. poor, religious vs. secular). Yet,social reality in the multicultural and multinational city is often more complicated, and,thus more sophisticated mechanisms of boundary work are needed. A complementaryingredient—one that introduces “softer” mechanisms, which not only delineate socialand cultural differences but also produce relative resemblance and coexistence—is there-fore crucial for a holistic analysis of communities’ relations in contested cities.

In this context, local cultural objects are important tools for organizing and regulatingintercommunal relations in the city, particularly when political rivalry intersects with ide-ological and cultural quarrels. Such objects permit a nuanced and continual boundarywork that maintains the social mold without obliterating the social boundaries betweenthe local social groups.

The concept of “boundary work” stresses the interpretive aspect of identity formation:that is, the ways that social actors modify their identity according to their social surround-ings and its unique characteristics. The most prominent theoretical contributions of thisconcept seem to have been the acknowledgment of the symbolic and mediated inter-actions among the various groups that make up the social whole and the emphasis ofthe creative role of social agents in managing (and imagining [Anderson, 1991]) theseinteractions.

Lamont and Molnar’s (2002) distinction between social and symbolic boundaries is es-pecially relevant in this context since it highlights the procedural nature of such bound-ary work projects. Social boundaries are “objectified forms of social differences manifestedin unequal access to and unequal distribution of resources and social opportunities”(p. 2); thus, they represent a more stable facet of social structure. Symbolic boundaries, onthe other hand, are conceptual distinctions made by social actors to categorize objects,people, practices, and even time and space. Therefore, this kind of boundary relates toconceptual distinctions made by social actors that, potentially, transcend geographical

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and social boundaries. Consequently, they seem to be more amenable to social manipu-lation and cultural fabrication in response to the dictates of the social surroundings.

The issue of culture and its role in the process of social classification goes back toa most fundamental sociological query concerning the elusive relationships among cul-ture, social agency, and structure (Archer, 1996; Hays, 1994; Rubinstein, 2001; Sewell,1999). While most research in this domain has focused on the relations between culture,structure, and social power (e.g., Bourdieu, 1984; DiMaggio, 1992, 1996; Gans, 1975),more recently new directions of inquiry concentrate on the connections between cultureand the more processual aspects of social life (Friedland and Mohr, 2004). This maneuverhas shifted scholarly attention to how cultural practices are deployed and collective rep-resentations are used in constructing the social world in a meaningful way (Eliasoph andLichterman, 2003, p. 736; Hays, 1994; Lee, 2000; Zerubavel, 1991). This perspective thusimagines culture as a “tool-kit”—“a set of symbols, stories, rituals, and world views, whichpeople may use in various configurations to solve different kinds of problems” (Swidler,1986, p. 273). From this point of view, culture provides a repertoire of capacities fromwhich varying strategies of action could be constructed (Ibid. 273).

However, an exploration of the role of culture and cultural objects in complex bound-ary work projects should not be limited to investigating how culture affects social action.Rather, it should also consider the polysemous nature of cultural objects and explainhow they can be diversely interpreted in various social contexts and be used by differentgroups (Schudson, 1989; Swidler, 2001).

Two decades ago, Wendy Griswold (1987a, b) offered a methodological and concep-tual framework that privileges such a multidimensional analysis of the cultural process.Her model suggests that in order to understand the meaning and social significance ofa cultural object for a group of people, one needs to investigate both the social and cul-tural perceptions of the group and the ability of the cultural object to carry multiplemessages. While Griswold’s model was originally designed to analyze the social signifi-cance of works-of-art (e.g., novels and paintings)—what for many is perceived as “highculture”—I suggest that it is also applicable in analyzing the role of daily cultural artifactsin generating social meaning and ordering. This model is especially pertinent in analysisof the cultural dimension of boundary work projects, since it emphasizes the dynamicand interactive nature of social boundary management, as fabricated by the interactionsbetween the cultural objects and the various populations who consume and use them.

Griswold’s model employs the criterion of cultural power in estimating the potential of agiven artifact to manifest social meanings to the people who use it. This criterion refers tothe capacity of a particular artifact to elicit relative consensus on the core issues embodiedin this object and yet to sustain a diversity of interpretations by its users (Griswold, 1987a,pp. 1105–1106). Thus, when assessing the value of this premise in relation to the roleof the cultural object in the boundary work domain, one must also evaluate the culturalpower of the object and define how it projects the social order to the social agents so thatthey can construct and reproduce social meanings when using it.

METHODOLOGY

The analysis in this study is based on two complementary methods. First, a thematic analy-sis of the local newspaper content maps the newspaper’s ideological and conceptual axes.

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This analysis reveals how the newspaper reflects and characterizes the local social worldof contemporary Jerusalem. Consequently, it allows us to develop preliminary assump-tions about the potential of the newspaper to weave multiple meanings for its readersregarding their city and composite groups. The data were obtained through an analysisof 35 editions of the local Kol Ha’Ir newspaper (randomly sampled from 1997 to 2000,and 2002 to 2007).

A second and complementary procedure consisted of in-depth interviews (con-ducted between April 2002 and July 2002, and on March 2007) with 60 readersof Kol Ha’Ir belonging to four different social sectors of the Jewish population ofJerusalem: (1) the secular, 16 interviewees; (2) the traditional (Masorti’yim),4 17 in-terviewees; (3) the national-religious,5 15 interviewees; and (4) the ultra-orthodox, 12interviewees. The interviewees were located in two ways: half were chosen from sam-ples of the newspaper’s subscribers list and half were chosen randomly at variouspoints of sale (such as kiosks and grocery stores) in the western Jewish side of thecity. The logic underlying this procedure was to derive a representative sampling ofthe readership. As mentioned, Kol Ha’Ir is the foremost popular local newspaper inWestern Jerusalem. According to a 2003 Target Group Index (TGI) Consumer andCommunication Survey (Telesker, 2003), 47 percent of the secular and more than25 percent of the other Jewish sectors in Jerusalem (including the ultra-orthodox) reg-ularly read this local newspaper. The newspaper is also well acknowledged in the Arabneighborhoods, and even though it is written in Hebrew and most of its journalists areJews it is sold regularly in some Arab grocery stores and kiosks. While only 9 percent ofthe Arab population of Jerusalem actually buy and read the newspaper on a regular basis,its exposure among the Arab residents of Jerusalem is significantly higher—reaching al-most 18 percent. Thus, even those who do not read it regularly acknowledge its centralityin Jerusalem’s local culture and are exposed to its materials.6

The interviews were transcribed in full and analyzed using the methods of coding andcomparison. The purpose of the complementary analysis was to identify interrelationsbetween the newspaper’s themes and content and the readers’ perceptions. More impor-tantly, the interviews served as a vital source of information on how the readers practicetheir repertoire of social identities while using the local newspaper in their local bound-ary work projects.

I acknowledge that the story told here is necessarily partial and contingent on themethodological choices made. Moreover, it is limited to the Jewish population who livein Western Jerusalem that is recognized by the international community as part of Israel.This population makes up 64 percent of the total population in the “unified” city (an-nexed by Israel in 1967 and challenged by the Palestinians who view East Jerusalem as anintegral part of Palestine).

A more comprehensive analysis of the interrelations among the various social groups inJerusalem and the role of cultural objects in manifesting them would have necessitatedinterviewing Palestinian readers of the local newspaper and analyzing Arabic culturalobjects produced and consumed in Eastern Jerusalem. Due to language barriers, however(I do not speak and read Arabic), this was impossible. Although the analysis is limitedto the Jewish population, it emphasizes the multidimensional character of the analyzedcultural process by showing the sociocultural role of the newspaper among the Jewishcommunities in Jerusalem and toward the Arab sector. Whereas the analysis focuses solelyon West Jerusalem, it is sufficient to generate broad conclusions about the role of local

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newspapers in facilitating complex social relations in Jerusalem. Furthermore, the lack ofsuch research means that this study will open up critical avenues for further large-scaleinvestigations.7

JERUSALEM: A FRAGMENTED SOCIAL WORLD

The constitution of local identities and local boundaries is a delicate project, affected bythe tensions and conditions of the social world in which this project takes place. Sincewe conduct a major part of our lives within particular social settings and specific socialworlds, these settings and their characteristics constitute a most fundamental force in theeveryday construction and management of identities.

Hence, when dealing with the issue of boundary work in the city from a socioculturalperspective, we may ask to what extent the urban social whole is perceived as integratedor as fragmented. We also may ask how people describe their social relations with oneanother, how they perceive the more abstract facets of their social environment, andwhether they identify these in the cultural objects they consume and use. Answering thesequestions will serve as a primary means of understanding what sort of boundary work isrequired in a specific urban setting.

Jerusalem is a unique city. Its social, ethnic, and cultural composition makes it a raremetropolis. A complex interaction of historical, religious, cultural, and political factorshas over the ages produced an unusual city of enormous significance—not just for thosewho live within the city but for people and powers outside of it (Friedland and Hecht,1996). But apart from its symbolic significance, Jerusalem is also a living city and a placewhere people must make do. It is a place composed of countless communities, factions,and social groups: Israeli and Palestinian, Jewish and Arab (Muslim and Christian), secu-lar and religious, as well as many subcultures.

Jerusalem might serve as a prototype for a mixed city, an urban “situation” in whichtwo rival national communities occupy the same urban jurisdiction (Yiftachel and Yacobi,2003). It is also an ethnocratic city (Ibid.). Between 1948 and 1967, the city was dividedbetween Israel and Jordan. After the Six-Day War (1967), Jerusalem was reunified underIsraeli sovereignty and its Palestinian inhabitants received the status of local residents,even though they did not acquire an Israeli citizenship. According to this ambiguousstatus, the Palestinians in Jerusalem are allowed to vote and be elected to the municipalcouncil, but not to the Israeli parliament.

Most of the Palestinian Jerusalemites reside in the old city and in its eastern neighbor-hoods, while the Jewish population is concentrated in areas considered to be the westernside of the city. Being a frontier city that is not only geographically sandwiched betweenthe Israeli-Jewish and the Palestinian-Arab national spaces but also symbolizes the con-flict between these two ethnonational collectives, Jerusalem is one of the most significantterritories in dispute between Israelis and the Palestinians.

Moreover, spatial segregation is not limited to a Jewish-Arab divide, but also existswithin the Jewish districts of the city. First, most ultra-orthodox live in segregated so-cial enclaves and in distinct neighborhoods (e.g., Mea Shearim, Kiryat Moshe, and BaitVa’Gan) (Gonen, 1995; Rosen and Razin, 2008). This protective strategy ensures a tradi-tional lifestyle and limited exposure of members of the community to Western secularsociety (Hasson, 2001). At the same time, the secular groups in Jerusalem also live in

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distinct neighborhoods (e.g., Rechavia, Beit Ha’Kerem, and Talbia) and seek to minimizethe influence of the religious groups on their liberal lifestyle.

Consequently, Jerusalem is a city in which symbolic and real political qualities are con-stantly engaged in everyday life. All interviewees in this study have portrayed Jerusalemas a scattered and fragmented city. A grocery owner and a resident of one of Jerusalem’smore religious neighborhoods stated,

Jerusalem is a city of neighborhoods. Each neighborhood has its own people andits own way of life. It’s not a formal thing, but everyone acknowledges it. I, for ex-ample, will never go to Rechavia [an upper-middle class and relatively secular Jewishneighborhood—author] . . . I prefer to do my stuff in my own little bubble.

Another interviewee from one of Jerusalem secular neighborhoods expressed similarviews in a comment on social cliques:

You won’t find here someone that is not classified into a group or into a clique. . .

In Jerusalem, one must find his own social niche.

The acknowledged boundaries between the districts of residence and social cliquesidentify Jerusalem as a fragmented society in which the dynamics of collective identifi-cation and social separatism are described as one of its most significant features. But itseems that the tendency to emphasize the social and cultural differences is much moreexplicit in how the Jewish residents describe the relations between the communities inthe city. All of the residents interviewed, without exception, described Jerusalem as a citycharacterized by multiple and vigorous social and ethnonational conflicts. Within thisprevailing view, two cleavages were described as the most prominent: (1) between Jewsand the Arabs over the national and religious character of the city and (2) within theJewish sector between the secular and the ultra-orthodox over the cultural character ofthe city.

The interviews revealed that the attitude of the Jewish residents toward their non-Jewishneighbors is dual and ambivalent. On the one hand, Jewish residents in Jerusalem acceptthe Arabs as legitimate residents of the city; but on the other, they do not consider themto be an integral part of the local social whole, which is perceived as exclusively Jewish.Thus, Arabs in East Jerusalem have remained outside the collective boundary line (Klein,2004). This predisposition is not surprising considering the dominance of the Jewishethnonationalist discourse in Israeli society (Yiftachel, 1999), which also percolates to thelocal level.8 While most Jewish citizens of Jerusalem, secular and religious alike, acceptas legitimate the religious rights of Muslims and Christians in the city, the common fearamong them is that the realization of these rights might undermine Jewish ethnonationaldominance, as suggested by one of the religious interviewees:

We must preserve Jerusalem as a Jewish city. I know it is a holy city for all three greatmonotheistic religions, but it is the capital of the Jewish people; the Arabs can livehere, but they must acknowledge this status quo.

Another interviewee—this time a secular resident—put it the following way:

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The Arabs can live here, they can pray at their mosques . . . but they should knowtheir place. . . . It is our city not theirs.

Second in magnitude only to the national cleavage between Jews and Arabs is the cul-tural cleavage in the Jewish sector between the secular and the ultra-orthodox commu-nities. On the one side, the religious community—and particularly the ultra-orthodox—strives to preserve Jerusalem’s image as a holy city and to translate this image into a formalcode of behavior, at least in the public sphere, in accordance with Jewish law [Halacha].This code, for example, forbids the opening of stores, industrial plants, and cinemas onSaturday [Shabbat] and the operation of public transportation on holidays, and in gen-eral seeks to preserve Jerusalem’s conservative character. On the other hand, the secularcommunity seeks to prevent the ultra-orthodox from dictating their daily habits. More-over, they express growing concern that they are already losing this cultural battle, as aresident of the one of Jerusalem’s secular neighborhoods acknowledges:

I am afraid of what my eyes see: The way Jerusalem has become more and more reli-gious . . .They still don’t dare to enter our [emphasis in original] homes, but that daywill come and Beit-Ha’Kerem, like other secular neighborhoods in Jerusalem, mightbecome an ultra-orthodox neighborhood. When that day comes, we, the secular,will become a social reservation . . . Maybe we already are . . .

The cultural conflict between the two communities often leads to aggressive demonstra-tions and violent clashes between the ultra-orthodox and the local police.

The social world of Jerusalem, then, is portrayed by the readers of Kol Ha’Ir as avery complex and dense social setting, driven by various and contradictory social forcesthat constantly draw divisions among its social segments. For Jewish Jerusalemites, thecombination of these sociocultural and social-political realities creates a difficult chal-lenge of balancing their distinct local identities and their more general ethnonationalidentity.

In such a complex and contested urban setting, social agents are required to employboundary work sophisticated enough to enable them to reproduce social boundaries andyet allow them an imagined and symbolic crossing of these boundaries—as long as itdoes not endanger their ethnonational harmony. Such boundary work projects can beaccomplished only by exploiting local cultural objects that represent these contradictionsand make them manageable.

KOL-HA’IR : A POLYSEMOUS CULTURAL OBJECT

As suggested by Gerald Suttles (1984), a fuller account of urban life requires more directattention to the cumulative texture of local culture. Generally speaking, local newspa-pers are only one of a wide range of collective representations available in a city. The citysoccer team, monuments and statues, local heroes and past leaders—all are potential lo-cal representations that symbolize the city, express its uniqueness, and provide a sense ofaffinity among its residents (Suttles, 1984; Zukin, 1995). Hence, artifacts located through-out the city can all become symbolic markers (Wohl and Strauss, 1958), and some actuallybecome synonymous with the city itself (Borer, 2006, p. 183).

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However, unlike other collective representations, local newspapers are inevitably linkedto place and anchored in the daily life of city. They provide a sensible version of urbanliving for city dwellers, a map or a menu of the city’s rhythms and spaces (Moore, 2005).Consequently, they have the potential to convey a sense of the place and the communitybeyond the readers’ immediate experience (Parisi and Holcomb, 1994, p. 377; Stamm,1985).

“Community,” particularly in multicultural and multiethnic urban environments, is notfixed and impervious but flexible, multiple, and hybrid. It is constituted and reproducedthrough social relations (Cloke, Goodwin, and Milbourne, 1997; Finney and Robinson,2008). Hence, while the local newspaper provides daily information and offers a reper-toire of images of the city and of the local society, in order to define the external andinternal boundaries of the local communities it also has to address their social cleavagesand quarrels. This potentially transforms the local newspaper into a cultural object thatnot only reflects the local social world but also reproduces and confirms it for the partic-ular social groups who use it (Carey, 1988).

Kol Ha’Ir is a colorful newspaper that covers almost every aspect of daily life inJerusalem: leisure, local scandals and gossip, and advertisements, as well as hard-core na-tional and local political news. Content analysis of the newspaper reveals that it revolvesaround two thematic axes that at first glance seem contradictory. The first relates to aninherent tension in the newspaper between its tendency to cover national affairs and itsobligation to ground itself within the particular local context of Jerusalem. While KolHa’Ir is sold only in Jerusalem, it also deals with issues and affairs far beyond its local baseof distribution—about 40 percent of the newspaper’s articles and reports are dedicatedto nonmunicipal issues, such as national politics, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and evenforeign popular culture. As a result, Kol Ha’Ir’s content constantly fluctuates between theparticular and the universal and between the local and the super local. This tendencycharacterizes the local newspaper as a hybrid medium that does not conform to its genrecharacteristics. But more importantly, it enables the newspaper to reflect and reproducethe social and political cleavages in the city, which are not restricted to Jerusalem’s bor-ders.

This tendency is even more explicit in Kol Ha’Ir ’s second thematic axis and the mannerin which it covers Jerusalem. On the one hand, Kol Ha’Ir presents itself as the local news-paper of Jerusalem and of all Jerusalemites (as mentioned above, in Hebrew Kol Ha’Irmeans “Whole of the City”). It cultivates local public spirit and solidarity by covering lo-cal sports teams and celebrating their achievements, giving voice to local art and publiclife, and, most importantly, recognizing and acknowledging the various social segmentsof the city. On the other hand, the newspaper does cover social and political cleavages inthe city—but from a subjective perspective. It favors the Jewish side, particularly the secu-lar sector, politically and culturally. For example, the newspaper nurtures secular culturalactivity and criticizes any attempts at coercion on the part of ultra-orthodox.9

Similarly, while the newspaper uncovers and criticizes acts of municipal discriminationagainst Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, it emphasizes the ethnonational bound-ary between them and the Jewish population. The newspaper is published only in Hebrewand has no edition in Arabic. Moreover, most of the newspaper’s articles deal with JewishJerusalem while coverage of the Arab population is mainly restricted to a specific and sep-arate section. In this, the local newspaper reproduces the internal social, ethnonational,and ideological distinctions and thus, symbolically maintains and reflects categorical

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inequality between Israelis and Palestinians (see also Shlay and Rosen, this issue). Never-theless, Kol Ha’Ir tries to have it both ways, and maintain its commitment to the society ofJerusalem as a whole.

As Griswold suggests (1987a), cultural objects vary in their symbolic capacities; theircultural power and social significance derive from their ability to elicit relative consen-sus on what they are about plus their ability to sustain a relative divergence of inter-pretations (Ibid., 1106). Being a polysemous cultural object that is anchored in the lo-cal social realm, Kol Ha’Ir offers enough interpretive space for different audiences tomanage, imagine, and reconstruct their social relations via the newspaper. Hence, thenewspaper’s multiple and contradictory ideological stances permit complex boundarywork that erases and magnifies internal divisions at the same time.

KOL HA’IR AS A SOCIAL MIRROR OF JEWISH JERUSALEM

Cultural and social meanings depend on interactions between the cultural object andthe human beings who experience it at the time of its reception (Griswold, 1987a, p.1080). The fact that so many people in Jerusalem read and relate to the same newspaperand the ways the newspaper reflects the city makes Kol Ha’Ir a rare cultural object withsignificant potential to facilitate the interrelations among various segments of the city.Hence, the local newspaper functions both as a collective representation and as a socialmirror on two social levels: the communal and the segmental, at least among the Jewishpopulation.

Because a significant part of Jerusalem’s population regularly purchases and reads thenewspaper on a weekly basis, it is socially institutionalized as part of the local social world,thereby representing the continuity and stability of the total local Jewish community.Moreover, reading Kol Ha’Ir is an intersubjective ritual that manifests the city and allowsits readers to imagine and explore their community (Newcomb and Hirch, 1984). This isachieved in two complementary ways.

First, most readers described Kol Ha’Ir as their primary and vital source of informationon local public events. A middle-aged religious woman, a devoted reader of the newspa-per, explains,

In order to know things [in the city], I must read Kol Ha’Ir. National newspapersdon’t give you that. Although Jerusalem is a capital city, the national media doesnot cover it on a daily basis. Only local newspapers can update you about what is thelatest scandal in the municipality and when the strike of the garbage men is goingto be over.

This social function renders Kol Ha’Ir a mechanism of social surveillance that enablesresidents to monitor and control their immediate social surroundings (Janowitz, 1967;Katz, Blumler, and Gurevitch, 1974; Park, 1929; Stamm, 1985).

But the local newspaper is more than just a channel for daily information and so-cial control. An analysis of the perceptions and attitudes of the readers reveals that KolHa’Ir becomes a symbolic kaleidoscope (Hazan, 1990) through which people constructand reproduce their local knowledge of and sentiments toward their city. People recog-nize their place of living in the newspaper and actually treat it as a cultural, metonymic

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representation of the city: one that reflects the unique mind set of (Jewish) Jerusalemites.As one of the interviewees, a housewife from one of Jerusalem’s traditional neighbor-hoods, describes,

Kol Ha’Ir brings you old and new Jerusalem. The way it tells stories about Jerusalem’sneighborhoods and nostalgic stories about the past of Jerusalem, and even the wayit writes about people and places I’m personally familiar with . . . I feel it is morekind of “my own” newspaper . . .

Many interviewees expressed similar views. About half of them, interestingly from bothsecular and religious sectors, explained their identification with the newspaper’s contentby contrasting the Jerusalemite state of mind, as identified by them in the newspaper,with the state of mind of Tel-Aviv (Israel’s second major metropolis). While the state ofmind in Tel-Aviv is recognized by those readers as liberal, permissive, and even hedonistic,the Jerusalemite state of mind is perceived as conservative and austere. A secular readerdescribed the difference between these two states of mind and its manifestation in thenewspaper:

When I read Kol Ha’Ir , I feel [my emphasis—author] it is a Jerusalemite newspa-per. . . . There is a very delicate and restrictive tone of conservativeness and asceti-cism in the newspaper that you won’t find in Tel-Aviv or elsewhere. You won’t findthat big fuss that is so typical to Tel Aviv; neither in Jerusalem nor in Kol Ha’Ir .

An ultra-orthodox reader expressed similar views:

Kol Ha’Ir is one of those rare newspapers that I can actually bring into my home.I’m Haredi [an ultra-orthodox] and I can’t allow my children to be exposed to thetrash you find in other secular newspapers. Kol Ha’Ir doesn’t publish lust materials.I think they [the newspaper’s publishers] are well aware that they cannot publishsuch stuff in Jerusalem.

Similarly, about 40 percent of the interviewees mentioned that, despite its everyday con-tent and secular inclination (which will be discussed shortly), Kol Ha’Ir avoids publishingabhorrent materials and ostentatious photographs that might be considered by its reli-gious readers as immoral and inappropriate.

Although readers acknowledge the ideological bias of their local newspaper, its“Jerusalemite” image portrays an optimistic vision of Jerusalem that many readers canimmediately identify with. Consequently, it succeeds in drawing an inclusive bound-ary that encompasses the Jewish population as a social whole. This fabricated and ma-nipulative vision of Jerusalem mirrors the city in a way that conforms to the expecta-tions and desires of its residents for local integration. In this, reading the newspaperworks as an intersubjective practice that compensates the territorial and social dividebetween the communities. This is particularly important given the quarrel between thesecular and the ultra-orthodox populations over the cultural character of the city as awhole.

At the same time, however, Kol Ha’Ir also provides a social mirror for secular views.Although the newspaper articulates a shared vision of Jerusalem, there is a strong echo

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of the secular agenda in the way the newspaper takes a hard line on the ultra-orthodoxcommunity and in its promotion of liberalism and liberal conduct in the public sphere,despite its restricted tone and self-censorship. For example, the newspaper has a spe-cial section, called “The Bonnet Carriers,” that publishes juicy gossip about the ultra-orthodox and its leaders, and almost always the story telling is ethnocentric and arro-gant. Furthermore, Kol Ha’Ir nurtures and gives voice to the fear of secular Jerusalemitesregarding the growing influence of the ultra-orthodox in the city. For example, the news-paper constantly monitors new construction projects in ultra-orthodox neighborhoodsand emphasizes the growing number of secular residents who choose to leave the city. Inone edition of the newspaper’s real estate supplement, the newspaper used the headline“The Great Escape” to describe the wave of out-migration of mainly young secular peo-ple from Jerusalem.10 These biases make the secular community feel that Kol Ha’Ir is acultural representation of their own particular community, in spite of its pan-Jerusalemimage. One of the secular interviewees commented,

I feel comfortable with it. On this level, of the secular-religious conflict, I think itis important that the newspaper has a clear political favoritism. There is no othermedia that can represent the secular in Jerusalem and give voice to their needs andinterests; this is what makes Kol Ha’Ir a “Jerusalemite” newspaper that is tailored tomy [his emphasis—author] views . . .

Another secular interviewee said,

It is important to me that there is more in Jerusalem besides religion, religion,and more religion. I like to read [in the newspaper] about new art exhibitions,concerts, and cultural festivals. It softens the austere character of this city andmakes the secular feel they belong here too. It brings back a wind of normalcy toJerusalem.

From this perspective, reading the newspaper constitutes a cultural praxis that con-structs internal boundaries that exclude the religious. But this is not entirely praxis ofsocial separatism, since those readers also use the newspaper to feel attached to the Jew-ish society in the city in general.

Thus, the local newspaper operates as a cultural object whose utilization representsa sophisticated mechanism that comes to fulfill two complementary social needs at thesame time: those of inclusion and exclusion. The newspaper constructs imagined andsolid social spaces—the communal and the segmental—that various readers feel they be-long to. While the two spaces are perceived as distinct, the limits of both are drawn by thesame interactions between the readers’ presuppositions about their social surroundingsand the way the newspaper articulates these presuppositions.

In a similar manner, but the other way around, this praxis of constructing symbolicboundaries is also achieved through the fact that the local newspaper acts as a channelthat frames the Other for the people and groups who read it. This dynamic also operatesin two corresponding levels: first, with regard to the cultural cleavage within the Jew-ish community, and second, on the international level with regard to the ethnonationalcleavage between Jews and Arabs in Jerusalem.

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READING THE OTHER, REACHING THE OTHER

The opportunity to observe other groups through the newspaper also provides an oppor-tunity for mediated and imagined interactions with them, so the perceived boundariesbetween them could be, at least virtually and in a mediated fashion, transcended and yetmaintained.

While the general Jewish population in Jerusalem uses the local newspaper as a culturalrepresentation of the city and of the local social whole, and as the secular residents alsoconsider it a mirror image of their social agenda and aspirations, various readers alsouse Kol Ha’Ir as a channel through which they can observe Other(s): as a mechanismthat frames the Other in the Goffmanian (Goffman, 1974) sense. In this way, reading thelocal newspaper works as a mechanism to reproduce the internal boundaries within thegeneral local society.

Obviously, using the newspaper as a channel of observation depends on the social po-sition of the spectator; its role in identifying the socially different is influenced by thesocial background and the social identity of the seeker. In a sense, the cultural andthe political cleavages within the Jewish population intersect in the newspaper. Thishas an effect on the symbolic boundaries fabricated between the Jewish communitiesand on the ethnonational front they maintain toward the non-Jewish population inJerusalem.

OTHER AND OTHERHOOD AMONG THE JEWISH COMMUNITIESIN JERUSALEM

Not surprisingly, the very same images that cause the secular to consider the newspapera social mirror are seized upon by the traditional, the religious, and especially the ultra-orthodox as representations of Otherhood. Although most religious readers of Kol Ha’Irperceive it as a pan-Jerusalemite cultural object, they certainly acknowledge its secularcharacter. This does not discourage them from reading it. On the contrary, many religiousinterviewees explained that the secular inclination of the newspaper is what makes it sointeresting. For example, a national-religious reader noted:

I like to see what those secular people do and how they live. I don’t identify with thenewspaper—no one that I know does—but it is good to read it. It brings me bothworlds and challenges my views. . . . I could say Kol Ha’Ir reminds me of who I amand who I am not.

In the eyes of religious and right-wing supporters, the political stance of the newspa-per on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict also makes it a representation of Otherhood. Whilemost secular Jews in Jerusalem hold dovish political views that encourage political rec-onciliation with the Arabs, Jewish religious populations are much more hawkish in theirapproach to the conflict and refuse to tolerate almost any compromise with the Arab side(Ilan, 1988; Peres, 1995; Yiftachel, 1999). The thematic analysis revealed that Kol Ha’Irindeed has a significant inclination toward the dovish political camp in the city. For ex-ample, the newspaper constantly monitors and criticizes the establishment of new Jewishsettlements in East Jerusalem and condemns harassment of Arab residents in those areas

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by Israeli security forces and Jewish settlers. Consequently, the political disagreements inthe newspaper among the Jewish communities become a powerful mechanism of sym-bolic social and political partition, but also of social observation of the Other.

Recognizing the cultural and ideological biases of the newspaper does not discouragethe religious and the ultra-orthodox, who are mostly right-wing supporters, from read-ing it; on the contrary, these biases enable Kol Ha’Ir to deliver the unfamiliar voices ofJerusalem. The following account of an ultra-orthodox subscriber of the newspaper re-flects this perception and also provides an explanation for its social significance:

It is a left-wing newspaper, there is no doubt about that. . . . Neither a right-wingnewspaper nor an objective newspaper would favor the Arabs [residents] likethat. . . . Yes, it pisses me off . . . this newspaper is really outrageous sometimes, butstill, I read it quite often. Why? Because it is important to me to keep an open mindand get familiar with other views too.

Correspondingly, the secular residents use the local newspaper to transcend their com-munity’s limits. From their perspective, Kol Ha’Ir , and especially the parts that cover theultra-orthodox sector, reveals the unfamiliar facets of the city and of groups that, althoughspatially proximate, are considered socially and culturally distinct. A secular reader ex-plains:

When I read Kol Ha’Ir , it’s important to me to see there are other people inJerusalem too—they are also part of my city. I see them every day at my work atthe hospital, but I get the feeling that I don’t really know them at all. I need andI want to know more and to get more familiar with their way of thinking and theirdifficulties. It would be nice to know that they [the ultra-orthodox] also read thenewspaper and learn a thing or two about me as well . . .

The varied visions of Otherhood that the newspaper cultivates are, of course, not ob-jective. They are woven by the ideological biases that are implanted in the newspaper’scontent and, more importantly, (re)constructed by the readers’ diverse presuppositionsand subjective interpretations. Similarly, the newspaper also serves as an important cul-tural tool in outlining the symbolic boundaries between the Jewish and Arab communitiesin Jerusalem.

THE PALESTINIANS AS THE “OTHER” IN JERUSALEM

For the Jewish residents of Jerusalem, one particular “Other” is different from all therest—the Palestinian resident of the city. Palestinian Jerusalemites differ from Jewishresidents in ethnic identity, culture, history, language, and national affiliation (Klein,2004). Although unified under Israeli rule in 1967, the city of Jerusalem is still very mucha divided city (Kliot and Mansfeld, 1999). West Jerusalem has remained almost exclu-sively Jewish while East Jerusalem has kept its Arab character.11 The ethnonational seg-regation of the two collectives was exacerbated during the second Palestinian uprisingagainst Israel (al-Intifada, 2000–2005) and the construction of the Separation Wall in thecity.

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The Separation Wall that constructed as an operational mechanism to reduce the num-ber of terrorist attacks originating in the Palestinian territories (Gelbman and Keinan,2007; Kliot and Charney, 2006) has divided Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bankand cut through Arab neighborhoods and villages in East Jerusalem. Along with the se-rious consequences of the Wall on the local Arab population’s daily life, it has furtherlimited social interaction between Jews and Arab Jerusalemites and constrained their so-cial and economic relations. The Separation Wall has restricted the access of Palestinianlaborers to work in the western neighborhoods of the city. In addition, since the first andthe second Palestinian uprisings against Israel (the Intifada and al-Aqsa Intifada), JewishJerusalemites have significantly reduced their business activities in East Jerusalem (Klein,2008, p. 61) and Palestinian neighborhoods became no-go zones for many Israelis (Shlayand Rosen, this issue).

Consequently, in today’s Jerusalem, few opportunities exist for direct social contactand interaction between the Jewish and the Arab inhabitants, even though they sharethe same city. A secular middle-aged woman explained to me how she views the relationsbetween the two communities:

[In Jerusalem] the two populations live side by side but they do not really mingle. . . .In the past, I used to fix my car in a garage in East Jerusalem, it was cheaper, youknow. . . . Today, I feel it is too risky and have stopped doing it. In a way, it is sad thatwe [the Jews and the Arabs] do not get to know each other better. I know that thatArab garage-owner, I used to go to, just wants to do keep his business running. Yet,this is the reality we are living in, as sad as it is.

As a result, since direct social interaction between Jews and Arabs is very limited, sym-bolic and mediating mechanisms are key to facilitating interrelations between the two eth-nonational communities. The following account by a national-religious reader explainsthe function of the newspaper as a substitute for a direct social interaction between thetwo ethnonational collectives in the city:

I never met an Arab. . . . Well, of course, I did . . . but I never talked with one. I knowthey are here. Some of them still work in the western side of the city . . . but thereare no relationships with them whatsoever. I must admit that it is interesting forme to read about what is going on in the east side of Jerusalem. I don’t agree thatJerusalem should be redivided; but except the Western Wall, I never visited in any ofthe Arab neighborhoods [in East Jerusalem]. In a way, [by] reading the newspaperI’m kind of doing it. You know, “visiting there.” . . . At least I know something aboutwhat is going on over there.

Hence, similar to its function among the Jewish communities, the newspaper mitigatesthe social detachment imposed by the spatial segregation between Jews and Arabs. Yet,at the same time it also magnifies and reproduces the ethnonational divide between thetwo groups, as it reproduces the perception of the Arab resident as “Other.”

This is achieved in several ways. First of all, and as mentioned above, the newspa-per is written only in Hebrew and has no editions in Arabic. Although the newspaperconstantly covers East Jerusalem, most of the articles about the Arab population are re-stricted to a specific and separate section, called “the Eastern City.” In addition, when the

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newspaper relates to the Arab residents, even when discussing municipal issues that arenot directly related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it usually refers to them as “Pales-tinian residents.” This habit emphasizes that the Arab locals belong to a distinct ethnona-tional community and stresses their ambivalent status in Jerusalem. Last, to date, only oneArab journalist, Sayed Kashua, worked at the newspaper. Between 2000 and 2003, Kashua,who lived in the Arab neighborhood of Beit Safafa in East Jerusalem, published a satiricweekly column called “The Popular Barrel” in which he shared his personal experiencesbeing an Arab resident in Jerusalem. Many of the interviewees in this study admitted thatSayed Kashua’s column was one of their favorite parts in the newspaper. Some of themalso praised the author for his fluent and modernized Hebrew. Yet, although this columnoffered the Jewish readers of Kol Ha’Ir a unique opportunity to learn about the daily lifeof their Arab neighbors, it also gave emphasis to their Otherhood.

Thus, while Kol Ha’Ir advocates a strong liberal political agenda and does not ignorethe Arab population and its problems, when the newspaper covers the local Arab com-munity, it usually relates to it from a Jewish point of view and portrays it as distinct.

In this context, the newspaper enables its Jewish readers both to ratify the legiti-macy of the Arab presence in the urban space and even to accept them as legitimate“Jerusalemites,” but to avoid fully incorporating the Arab residents into the general localcommunity, which is considered exclusively Jewish. The Jewish readers of the newspapercan read about their Arab neighbors, and even learn about the discrimination that theirfellow Arab residents experience by the Jewish-controlled municipality. At the same time,however, the Arabs, as covered by newspaper, are secluded and treated separately fromthe Jewish population. This reproduces the ethnonational and spatial segregation thatexists in the real world and reinforces the ethnocratic character of Jerusalem (Yiftachel,1999; Yiftachel and Yacobi, 2003).

Both secular and religious Jewish readers acknowledge this trait of the newspaper, yeteach group interprets it from its own particular ideological stance. One of the secularinterviewees expressed the thought of many of his community members in Jerusalem:

It is horrible to read about all the discriminations the Arab residents have to suffer.It constantly reminds me there are two Jerusalems, a Jewish Jerusalem and an ArabJerusalem. This city may be was reunified in 1967, but this is only a mere fiction. Weare not the same city and we’ll never be. At least Kol Ha’Ir has the guts to put it onthe table.

An ultra-orthodox woman interviewed reached a similar conclusion—but from the oppo-site political direction. Her view was stimulated by the way she interpreted the newspa-per’s political attitude toward the Arab population in Jerusalem:

Sometime the newspaper is “overlarge” with the Arabs. They are too liberal, too“leftist.”. . . They should remember we [the Jews] are on the same side. There areJewish people in this city and there are Arabs. They can write about the Arabs aslong as they want, but it only emphasizes the differences [between the populations].Jerusalem is a Jewish city and it will remain Jewish.

At this point, the newspaper returns to facilitating boundary work projects not onlybetween Jews and Arabs, but also among Jewish communities. Its ideological stance on the

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Israeli-Palestinian conflict reproduces the ideological boundary between religious andright-wing supporters and the secular Jews who hold more conciliatory political views.In this regard, the Jewish-Palestinian conflict does not diminish the tensions within theJewish community—in fact, quite the contrary. Relating to the domestic intranationalstrain, the wider conflict between Israel and the Palestinians also exacerbates the political-cultural divide among the Jews in the local sphere. Yet again, while the various Jewishsubcultures differ in their political orientation regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflictin general, the local newspaper brings them together and maintains the ethnonationalfrontier that divides the city.

This analysis reveals that one of the defining characteristics of an ethnocratic city is thelack of social identification across ethnonational boundaries. As demonstrated, the news-paper mainly cultivates Jewish solidarity that crosses the cultural and even, to some extent,the ideological boundaries between the Jewish communities. However, the ethnonationalboundary delineated by the newspaper is more than just an act of social exclusion. Dueto the political and cultural barriers, Kol Ha’Ir ’s Jewish readers use it as a symbolic mech-anism that enables a mediated (and biased) interaction with the Other(s)—the Arab res-idents of the city. This transforms the local newspaper into an imagined social realm inwhich local social relations can take place, be negotiated, and even be contested withoutundermining the fragile local social fabric.

Although it was beyond the scope of this research and although it certainly requiresfurther empirical verification, we can assume that the same logic explains the relativepopularity of Kol Ha’Ir in the Arab sector of Jerusalem. The Jewish Otherhood that thenewspaper may represent from an Arab point of view, along with its local color, may fulfilla similar sociocultural and sociopolitical function for the Arab population toward theJewish community in the city. This is, of course, without ruling out the potential existenceof local Arab cultural objects that may be used for similar boundary work projects withinthe Arab communities (Muslim and Christian) and toward the Jewish sector.

CONCLUSION

Living in a multicultural and multinational modern metropolis entails social pressuresand constraints that result from the potential for immediate and intensive interactionwith the Other. In reaction, social partition often becomes part of urban life. This isparticularly true in highly contested urban environments, characterized by social-spatialpartition, as well as by social fragmentation within each group. At the same time, shar-ing the same social space also demands a certain degree of social cohesion and solidarityamong the various groups that constitute the social whole (Janowitz, 1967; Larkin, thisissue; Park, 1929, 1967 [1929]). Given the extreme segregation and limited daily inter-action across social and political boundaries, developing a unifying and inclusive localidentity becomes a real challenge. Yet, particularly under such circumstances symbolicboundary work mechanisms become very important.

This study used the term “boundary work” to identify the multidimensional processesin which social agents and groups exercise their identities and social relations in multi-cultural and multi-ethnonational urban environments. This is salient in situations whenexisting institutionalized social and physical boundaries are not sufficient to fulfill thistask. While symbolic boundaries are mere artifacts that have little basis in reality, they

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help us separate one entity from another. It is we ourselves who create them, and the en-tities they delineate are, therefore, figments of our own mind (Zerubavel, 1991). Socialboundaries are normally taken for granted (Witkin, 1962). Thus, in order to make themmore “visible,” we must suspend our usual concern with what they separate and focus in-stead on the processes through which we cut up the world and create meaningful entities(Zerubavel, 1991, pp. 2–3).

In multicultural urban settings, and even more so in multinational ones, such processesmay give rise to sophisticated social and cultural practices that sustain and reproducethe social differentiations and, at the same time, subtly regulate them in order to createcommon ground for partial social affinity and social cohesion. In order to meet thesetwo contradictory needs, social groups must acquire social and cultural mechanisms forgenerating such a complicated and mediated network of social relations.

Drawing on the particular case of the Jewish society in Jerusalem and its socioculturaluse of its local newspaper, the analysis demonstrated that readily accessible cultural ob-jects, rooted in the local social surroundings and anchored in the most trivial, commonaspects of daily life, might well serve as invaluable tools in accomplishing such a socialendeavor. First, the Jewish readers use Kol Ha’Ir to reconstruct their social presupposi-tions about themselves and about their neighbor communities. This way, they manage tomaintain their specific identities and yet symbolically transcend these imagined bound-aries, so that a mutual sense of local Jewish-Jerusalemite solidarity would be generated.Simultaneously, various readers also use the newspaper as a cultural tool (Swidler, 1986)that reproduces an ethnonational front toward the Arab minority in the city. This cultur-ally fabricated sociopolitical front reinforces an all-Jewish cohesion that encompasses thevarious Jewish subcommunities and, at the same time, continues the dual ethnonationalcharacter of the city.

As demonstrated, these two corresponding facets of Jewish boundary work in Jerusalemmatch the presuppositions of these communities toward their city. Thus, besides the factthat the newspaper supplies its readers with a repertoire of images of the city and of itscomplex social composition, it functions as a virtual public sphere in which residentsdefine themselves against others, construct and reproduce their internal and externalboundaries. In Jerusalem, where actual social relations between the various local commu-nities, particularly between Jews and Arabs, are limited, the local newspaper is recognizedas an important empirical mediator between individuals and their communities, and alsobetween neighboring social groups.

In order to facilitate such a complex task of boundary work, the cultural objects mustmeet certain criteria. First, they should produce a relative consensus among their variousconsumers regarding their content and their social significance. Such cultural artifices,ordinary and common as they may be, should be widely recognized and acknowledged bythe various groups composing the social whole with regard to their centrality within thelocal culture. Second, the cultural objects should permit a relative divergence of inter-pretations of their particular social meaning for each group. This would enable variousgroups to use it as a cultural tool in their own boundary work.

The presence of these criteria would characterize the object in cultural power(Griswold, 1987a) in terms of the precise degree of social power necessary for diminish-ing the social distinctions within society and for serving as an instrument that regulatessocial relations. The extent of this continuum of interpretations, allowable by the cultural

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object, is crucial in the context of the management of social boundaries. As demon-strated, if this continuum is too wide it would lose its ability to represent the social dif-ferences and complexities within the social whole. On the other hand, if it is too narrow,it would appeal only to marginal groups and, as a consequence, serve as a signing toolof social demarcation for these groups only—and not as mechanism that softens andregulates the social distinctions within the social whole, and especially toward distinctcommunities.

Following Lamont and Molnar (2002), this article calls for a more integrative study ofsocial and symbolic boundaries in the city. It suggests that a focus on the cultural aspectsof boundary formation and of social distinctions would provide a more holistic investiga-tion of boundary work in the urban realm: not only of how people classify and distinguishthemselves from one another or, alternatively, find similarities and resemblance with oneanother, but rather of how both are conducted as complementary aspects of the same so-cial project in which various groups take part. It would also provide a useful and comple-mentary direction for analyzing the phenomenon of multiculturalism, as it is manifestedin everyday life and daily social conduct.

While this case study concentrated specifically on the Jewish populations in Jerusalem,it may well serve as an exemplar for further analysis in this direction. Other multicultural,multinational, or multiracial urban settings (e.g., Toronto, Belfast, and Johannesburg)may certainly summon similar challenges and might generate similar cultural mecha-nisms to meet them. In this regard, any cultural objects that fulfill the above-mentionedcriteria might well inspire similar sociocultural dynamics.

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by The Shaine Center for Research in the Social Sciencesat the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. I thank Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi, Gillad Rosen,Anat Rosenthal, Anthony Orum, the editor of City & Community Hilary Silver, and theanonymous reviewers for constructive insights and suggestions on earlier drafts.

Notes

1 The notion of “cultural object” refers here to any shared significance that is embodied in form or an arti-fact manufactured and used by social agents. An artifact to which no meaning can be attached would not beincluded under this definition (see also Griswold, 1987b).

2 Kol Ha’Ir , (“Whole of the City”; also pronounced in Hebrew as “The Voice of the City”) is a weekly localnewspaper published in Jerusalem, Israel, since 1979. It is part of the Schocken Group publishing network. Kol

Ha’Ir is the foremost popular local newspaper in Jerusalem, but it is not the only one. While Kol Ha’Ir was thefirst local newspaper in Jerusalem, during the 1990s, other local newspapers have begun to flourish in the cityas well (e.g., Kol Ha’zman and Yerushalim). However, according to TGI Consumer and Communication Survey(Telesker, 2003) in 2003, 35 percent of the Jewish population in Jerusalem regularly reads the newspaper andits public exposure was even higher. Moreover, Kol Ha’Ir is more popular than any of its competitors, secondonly to Yedioth Aharonoth national daily (47 percent consumption rate in Jerusalem).

3 According to Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies (Choshen, 2006), at the end of 2004 the population ofJerusalem stood at 706,300, with the Jewish population numbering 469,200 (66 percent) and the Arab popula-tion numbering 237,000 (34 percent).

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4 In Israel, the social category of “traditional” [Masorti’yim] refers to oriental Jews [Mizra’chim], who keepsome of the Jewish religious commandments but do not consider themselves as religious people.

5 The national-religious sector in Israeli society relates to Zionist orthodox Jews who are rightist in theirpolitical orientation regarding the Israeli-Arab conflict. For example, most of them believe in the idea of Greater

Israel and oppose any territorial compromise with the Arabs in exchange for peace. For more reading on thesocial groups in Jerusalem, see Friedland and Hecht (1996).

6 By public exposure, I refer to the indirect social influence of the newspaper. This notion suggests that peopledo not actually have to buy and read the newspaper on a regular basis in order to know its content (Katz,Blumler, and Gurevitch, 1974). People also talk about what is in the newspaper in their social interactions,briefly scan the newspaper’s headlines while passing by kiosks, and are exposed to the buzz that surrounds thenewspaper’s reports.

7 Also note that the Ashkenazi/Mizrahi divide among Jewish Jerusalemites was not analyzed since the in-terviewees themselves considered this divide as secondary and peripheral to the ethnonational and cultural(secular/religious) divides.

8 In 1948, Israel was formulated as a Jewish national state in which the status of citizenship derives primarilyfrom one’s membership in the dominant homogenous descent group (Peled and Shafir, 1998). Yiftachel (1999)characterizes Israel as an “ethnocracy.” An ethnocracy is a regime built on two key principles: first, ethnicity,and not citizenship, is the main logic around which the state allocates its resources; and second, the interests ofa dominant ethnic group shape most public policies. The combination of these two principles typically createsan ethnoclass type of stratification and segregation, particularly between Jewish and Arab citizens.

9 This tendency of the newspaper is not surprising given the fact that its publisher also publishes Ha’aretz

newspaper, which is considered the most liberal daily in Israel.10 See Kol Ha’Ir , June 3, 2005.11 It is important to note that since 1967 Israel has established numerous Jewish neighborhoods and settle-

ments on the eastern side of the city, yet most of these settlements are not located within Arab neighborhoods(see also Shlay and Rosen, this issue).

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Fronteras en interaccion: la fabricacion cultural de las fronteras sociales en JerusalenOeste (Nir Gazit)

ResumenLos proyectos de delimitacion de fronteras resultan relevantes en cualquier contexto so-cial pero parecen tener un significado particular en contextos urbanos multiculturales omultinacionales altamente conflictivos. Este estudio analiza como artefactos de uso diario–tales como los periodicos locales- son utilizados por parte de diversos grupos sociales ur-banos en sus proyectos de construccion de fronteras sociales a nivel local. El analisis sebasa en el caso particular de Jerusalen Oeste con un enfasis en como las comunidadesjudıas hacen uso del popular periodico local Kol Ha’Ir (Toda la Ciudad). La investi-gacion muestra que los periodicos locales tienen tres funciones: 1) son componentesimportantes del repertorio de la cultura local con el que diferentes grupos se sientenidentificados y utilizan a su favor; 2) constituyen objetos culturales explotados por lascomunidades para redefinir y regular sus identidades particulares y sostener un frentecomun de solidaridad local y 3) sirven como mecanismos para construir y mantener unfrente etno-nacional de cara a las comunidades rivales en su espacio urbano. Este estu-dio tambien sugiere que para poder llevar a cabo esta compleja labor de delimitacionde fronteras, estos objetos culturales precisan ser polisemicos. En primer lugar, debenproducir algun nivel de consenso entre sus diferentes consumidores con respecto a sucontenido y significado social. En segundo lugar, deben permitir un rango de interpreta-ciones posibles en terminos de su significado social particular para cada grupo.

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Boundaries in Interaction: The Cultural Fabrication of Social Boundaries in West Jerusalem

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