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The Social Science Journal 40 (2003) 269-281

SOCIAL SCIENCE JOURNAL

The postmodern state and collective individualism: a comparative look at Israeli society and western consumer culture
Meira Z. Weiss
Department o f Sociology and Anthropology, The Hebrew University o f Jerusalem, Mount Scopus, Jerusalem 91905, Israel

Abstract
The paradigm atic W estern social change from collectivism to individualism is explored in this paper through the discourse o f bodily signification in Israeli society. D escribing how the concepts o f the collective body and the individual body can be theorized and practiced, the study reconstructs the gradual replacem ent o f the form er by the latter in Israeli society as a historical process, w hich was disrupted by the G ulf War. Israeli society is thus used as a case study illustrating a broader perspective on W estern society and questioning the discourse o f individualism in the postm odern. 2003 Published by E lsevier Science Inc.

The collective (state, nation, class, factory, family) underpinned the modernist project, while the individual is the tradem ark o f post modernity. This statement, which can be heard from both professional sociologists (e.g., Giddens, 1984. 1991) and laypersons alike, has to do with two m ajor processes. First, the gradual crystallization of the individual as a social category, which has been constituted to mention only a few m ajor influences through political liberalism (Pizzom o, 1992). capitalism (Abercrombie. Hill, & Turner. 1986) and the philosophical-literary modern tradition (Carrithers, Collins, & Lukes, 1987). Second, if postm odernism is an order o f signification whose definition is not intrinsic but extrinsic, that is, defined as opposed to som ething else (namely modernism ), then the em phasis on individualism should be viewed as an antithesis to m odernist collectivism. Hassan (1985) defines postm odernism as consisting of antiform , play, chance, anarchy, deconstruction, difference, contingency and irony as opposed to the m odernist quest for form, purpose, design, hierarchy, totalization, significance and truth-values. One should add collectivism to the second list and put individualism in the first. Things, however, are evidently not so simple. Postm odernism defies m onolithic definitions because it is m ultifaceted. It em phasizes the legitimacy o f otherness, while at the same time pathologizing. m edicalizing, dem onizing and
0362-3319/03/S - see front m atter 2003 Published by Elsevier Science Inc. doi: 10.1016/S0362-3319(03)00008-9

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crim inalizing "the different (e.g., Schweder. 1993). Postm odernism is an era o f global communities enm eshed in ethnicity, o f dissolving boundaries of space-tim e as well as growing personal anonymity, o f secularization and fundam entalism . In short, an era of contradictions. Postmodem ist Individualism . whatever it may stand for, is no exception. Indeed, postm odernism considered as the culm ination of the m odernist ideology of the individual has also been accused of the death o f the individual (e.g., Foucault. 1970; more recently Ashley, 1990). As in anything postm odern, a disillusioned sociologist can no longer inspire to perform an all-em bracing analysis of the subject at hand; accordingly, this analysis will not venture to encom pass the whole gam ut of postm odernist individualism . but rather to say som ething o f one of its manifestations. My argument in this paper is that postm odernist individualism is to a large extent dominated by collectivism. Collectivism is still the dom inant frame of reference of the discourse of civil society (Alexander, 1992; Alexander & Smith, forthcom ing), in which variegated individualistic practices are expressed. Those pseudoindividualistic practices are in fact built on m echanism s of collectivization, repuritanization and social regulation. I call this brand of postm odernist individualism collective individualism . This argument is not new to postm odernist sociology. In the first part o f the paper, it will be shown to interconnect (consciously or otherw ise) sociological studies o f various cultural activities which characterize the "individualistic side o f contem porary society. The second part will further explore a particular version o f the meaning of collective individualism in Israeli society. The third and concluding part will offer to connect the Israeli case, with its particular socio-historical factors, to the global cultural scene.

1. Postmodern practices of collective individualism

In a recent anthology about the body (Featherstone. Hep worth, & Turner, 1991), two papers concerning diet and consum erism are notable examples of what I call collective individualism. Both deal with social practices, which are both markedly individualistic as well as postm odern. Dietary practices are part of individual conduct and. furthermore, bear a close relation to the individuals body. However, when Turner (1991) scrutinizes the discourse of diet, he considers it from a Foucauldian viewpoint, as part o f the constitution of the disciplined body in postm odern society. Religious asceticism and medical diets, writes Turner (1991, p. 160), are both governments o f the body. Just as the Church, according to Foucault (1980), provided the believer with a powerful technology of subjugation the confession so the new governm ent of the body, according to Turner, provides its believers with diet. The confessional anim al and the dietary anim al are thus both examples o f a hom o docilis who regards his/her duties as an inner demand, and not the effect o f an external power, which constrains him. Diet is the confession, the punishm ent and the indulgence, all in one piece. Moreover, both the ideal it strives to reach (the beautiful body) and the means o f achieving it (the dietetic m ethod) are collectively shared. The ideal body is part of the media. Hollywood, glam orous m odels and other idols of collective worshiping; the dieting body consists of fixed prescriptions, socially exchanged and collectively obeyed. The government of the body, writes Turner (1991, p. 160), is couched in a series of instructions and com m and-

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ments. nam ely the dietary table, the manual of exercise and the food chart. Dietary com pendia thus represent an interesting illustration o f the rationalization o f behavior. Furtherm ore, it is the collective nature of the ideal body' that explains the popularity o f dietary groups. Since the ideal body is a collective symbol, different individuals can w ork together in order to attain it. Dietary m anagem ent is thus also a collective perform ance. Collective perform ance is noticeable in yet another postm odern discipline o f the body, nam ely body building. This is also an example o f a pseudoindividualistic practice, which in fact conceals a regulative, collective ideal. A French sociologist. Jean-Jacques Courtine (1993. p. 245), analyzed that practice (which he considers as characteristically A m erican)1as reflecting what he calls the narcissist m om ent o f the culture o f the body in the U . S . . . . which corresponds not to a laissez-faire hedonism , but to a regulative discipline, an intensified control. It is a form o f repuritanization. a collective tyranny of the anatom ic detail. Not only bodybuilding, but also its more m odest relative, fitness, is conducted as a public and collective ritualized perform ance (see also Glassner. 1988: Lasch, 1979; Grover, 1989). It is a fast-growing business, with its collective shrines the health clubs making more than USS 5 billions in 1987 (diet foods, by the way, grossed USS 74 billion that year, see Brand. 1988). Frequently throughout the 1980s. exercise videocassettes have appeared on weekly billboard lists of the 10 top selling home video products (Morse, 1987/1988), and m agazines such as Am erican Health. Prevention and S e lf each report circulation in excess of one million. Barry Glassner. discussing fitness and the postm odern self (Glassner, 1989, p. 183). writes that even when fitness is pursued privately, in ones hom e, the body is com m only experienced by way of conceptual looking glasses by how it is interpreted in com parison to im ages o f bodies in the media, and how it is com m ented upon by others. In post modernity, the person experiences his or her own body within the collective context o f a m edia environm ent o f repeating im ages (see Baudrillard, 1987). Staying in shape is not an individualist conviction, but a collective mantra, and its justifications are accordingly taken from the collective sphere: Staying in shape, reads the headline of the lead article in Self, Novem ber 1987. can help keep your relationship in shape too. Another example o f a so-called individualist practice that revolves around the body is, o f course, fashion.2 Since Blumer (1969) developed his seminal theory of fashion as collective ' selection, there have been structural changes in the apparel marketplace. These changes can be examined as yet another illustration of the shift from m odernist collectivism to postmodem ist collective individualism . W hat do these changes consist of? The pace of fashion has increased Most fundamentally, the increasingly com plex range and nature o f simultaneously fashionable styles o f clothing and personal appearance point to the possibility that collective selection is not as straightforw ard as it was once. The postm odern cultural context allows for (and perhaps dem ands) a kind o f stylistic eclecticism (Kaiser, Nagasawa. & Hutton. 1991, p. 167). Does this imply that fashion is now an individualist choice? No. Our cultural, collective relationship with fashion have merely shifted from serial m onogam y to serial polygam y. (Kaiser. Nagasawa. & Hutton 1991. p. 167). Fashion (see also Barthes, 1983: W ilson. 1985) as well as the fan culture o f pop music and the various body-tending practices are all channels o f desire (Stuart & Ewen, 1982) pseudoindividualistic practices collectively perform ed under the guise of mass images and in pursuit of some shared ideal. M usic is my last addition to this short list of collective

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individualist practices just mentioned. It is a collective cerem onial among young individuals, com plete with its own set o f magical com pendia (i.e., posters, albums, clothes), ritualized activities and public worshipping, which constitute fan culture (Whiteley. 1992). Furtherm ore, these practices are all m ajor items on the list o f postm odem consum erism . M ass consum ption obviously denotes the existence of many individuals, who consum e a sim ilar line of productions in a shared sym bolic m arketplace (see Tomlinson, 1992; Shields, 1992). The dem ocratization o f the leisure market (which was once a privilege of the upper classes) yielded the spread o f advertising, which now constitute the main venue to our collective channels o f desire. Consum er culture, though focusing on the individual as its prim ary unit (of consumption), has nevertheless collectivized it through the process of com m odification and reification (in the neo-M arxist sense, see Lukacs, 1971; Adorno. 1991; for more recent interpretation of the classic neo-M arxist outlook, see Jam eson. 1983). In what follows, I turn to the Israeli case to illustrate a different brand o f collective individualism. which is not the result of a consum er culture. The above list of consum erist practices will hence be replaced with other practices, while the com m on them e o f collective individualism will be taken again in the conclusion, in an attem pt to discuss it as an almost inevitable consequence of the rising o f the m odem state vis-a-vis the crystallization of the individual through the practices o f citizenship.

2. The Israeli case: collective individualism in the interrupted system

2.1. Historical background Sociologists studying Israeli society have suggested that it has gone through a two-stage transition: from collectivism to individualism. The stage of collectivism , characterizing the intensive period of nation building, is argued to have gradually changed, approxim ately since 1973, to a new ambience of individualism (see Lissak & Hurowitz. 1989; Eisenstadt. 1985). N ineteen hundred and seventy three, with its O ctober War. was the antithesis to the Six Days War (1967); Israel m anaged to rebut its enemies, but the war had long-lasting effects in terms o f devaluing the m ilitaristic ethos and the disappointm ent with the Labor governm ent (see Kim m erling. 1985). The descent of militarism, one o f the cornerstones o f Israeli collectivism, was added, after 1973, to the rise o f a capitalistic free market and election econom ics employed by the new Likud government since 1977. The abundance of new com m odities and the rise in living conditions further took Israeli society into its new phase of consum er culture and individualism. Form er consensus and univocal elite dom inance were replaced by conflicts (regarding the occupied territories, the peace process, etc.) and a plurality o f political power bases. W hile collectivism is connected to nation-building, Zionism, idealism, integration and the melting pot doctrine, m odernization and the mortification of the flesh, individualism is related to hedonism, anti-ideology, realism, pluralism, postm odernism and body tending. However, these two ideal types are interwoven in contem porary Israeli society. Collectivism is still the larger frame o f reference in which variegated, and perhaps short-lived, cases of individualism are expressed (see. for parallel arguments from different perspectives. Zerubavel. 1980; Katriel,

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1991; Katz & Gurevitch. 1976). One o f the main reasons for IsraeFs collective individualism is that Israeli society has faced a m ilitary threat on a daily basis, whether through terrorism, war or Intifada. The stronghold of collectivism thus seems to be the necessary price of a crisis-cum -routine. Israel's relatively small size, the shared heritage and religion of its Jewish population, and the feeling of being besieged by num erically superior enem ies what has been called the M asada com plex (Schwartz. Zerubavel. & Barnett. 1986) create the sense that Israel com prises a single, cohesive collectivity. This is further intensified by the "m elting pot ideology, which was dom inant in the 1950s and continues to be influential today. This ideology proclaim s the relinquishm ent of particular ethnic identities and the formation o f an overall Israeli character, and represents an attem pt to convert a heterogeneous conglom erate o f separate im migrant subgroups into a hom ogeneous nation (Etzioni-Halevi & Shapira, 1977). Like any m odem collective m aster-narrative. Zionist ideology sought the formation o f a new person (see Zerubavel. 1990). For Zionism, this new person was em bodied in the symbolic type (see Handelman. 1986, 1992) of the pioneer (halutz), which was later transform ed into the Sabra (tscibar). These types, according to Roniger and Feige (1992. p. 280),
Reflect the connection betw een individuals and their com m unity, a central issue for any society but an especially thorny one for a society such as the Israeli one. w hich has been grounded on a com m unitarian ideology and has faced serious m ilitary confrontations. In such a context, the term s used to refer to the com m itm ents and obligations of the individual to a society at large ( pioneer', 'S a b ra ') have acquired high sym bolic significance and political im port, especially as they concern the w illingness of individuals to contribute personal resources to their com m unity w ithout the guarantees o f substantial return.

The trope of the pioneer, therefore, was cleverly tailored so as to appear individualistic, while in fact being a collective practice. In America, the pioneer ethos stressed individuality, daring, go-gettism ; in m odern Hebrew, pioneering is above all service to an abstract idea, to a political movem ent and to the com m unity (see Elon, 1979, p. 112). Israels collectivist ideology in the formative years can be related to the com m unal utopia of socialist Zionism (Even-Zohar. 1981; Libm an & Don-Yehia. 1983; Shapira. 1989). The ongoing cultural hegem ony of collectivism since the pre-state years, as well as the more recent collective individualism , can be traced back to the continuing m ilitary conflict Israel faces. This state o f "interrupted system , according to Kim m erling (1985. p. 3) is A social system in the rare situation o f a sudden but tem porary interruption o f m any social
processes. (In the face o f war) the system changes from one faced with m any goals that generally conflict w ith each other as in every open and m odem society to a system having only two m ain goals. M ost o f the social resources (m anpow er and m aterial) are m obilized (to the front). The second and com plem entary goal is to 'm ain tain ' the system so that it w ill be able to return to its previous state as quickly and inexpensively as possible.

This constant phase variation is caused by the fact that in Israel, war is perceived as threatening both the physical and socio-political existence of the collectivity as a whole. Defeat in war would not only m ean a loss of prestige or territory or a blow to national interests, but the total annihilation o f Israeli society (Kim m erling, 1985. p. 5; see also Kim m erling. 1974).

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Despite the events of the last decade especially the war in Lebanon for most Israeli men participation in the army is still considered to be a reward in itself, which defines the extent to which an individual is in the social-evaluate system of Israel (Horowitz & Kimmerling. 1974; Gal, 1986; Ben Ari, 1989). The significance o f m ilitary service as a collective practice is furtherm ore dem onstrated by the fact that Israeli-Arabs do not serve; this is one of the most prom inent practices differentiating them from the Jewish collective in Israel. The Israeli army, therefore, is more like a kinship system, around which revolve many aspects of social life in Israel. Perhaps one of the m ost prom inent expressions o f individualism in contem porary Israel is the increasing num ber o f cases of conscientious objection to military service in the occupied territories (see Helman, 1993). Objection to m ilitary service can be interpreted as an activity through which individuals express their resentm ent from the acts of governm ents (Rawls, 1971; see also Lynn. 1989). It can also express the cum ulative fatigue o f Israeli citizens from their military involvement. W hile objection to military service is certainly an example of the loosening of the collectivity's hegemony, still it should be stated that the most radical objectionist m ovem ent during the Lebanon War never went out of the established practice of "critical com pliance (Ben Eliezer, 1991), a practice allowing for criticism but not for defying the collectives goals. ,Critical com pliance. and its m anifested expression in the form o f conscientious objection to military service, should hence be seen as yet another illustration o f collective individualism in Israel. 2.2. Interrupting the system: the G u lf War In what follows, I present a brief analysis of body drawings made by students in the last 10 years. The drawings made during the 8 years before the G ulf War (1983-1991) present a relatively unchanging pattern: this cluster is representative o f the individualistic stage Israeli society has entered while preserving many of its collectivist features. The pattern is disrupted in the drawings made a few days before the G ulf War. during its course, and some weeks afterwards. The pattern is resum ed about 6 m onths after the war had ended. My argum ent is that the drawings o f the G ulf War period present collectivist features that they will articulate more o f the public body than of the private. Overall, the drawings serve as the perfect illustration o f the "interrupted system . They are em bodim ents of these interruptions. The drawings were collected by me. throughout the 10 years period, from students who took courses and sem inars in medical anthropology. These students were asked to produce several drawings of their body: normal, with regards to AIDS, cancer and heart attack, the internal body and (when relevant) with regard to the G ulf War (a m ore thorough analysis of the drawings is offered elsewhere). A fter making the drawings in class, students were asked to look at the drawings and reflect on what they see. U nstructured conversations after class with some of the students also accom panied research. A few words should be said here on analyzing drawings, especially drawings of ones body. The psychological literature on the subject, including the established "tests like Draw-A-Person or Kinetic Family drawing, is of course abundant (see Klepsch & Logie. 1982). Drawings are interpreted as projections, in which the drawn figure is in a sense the one who drew it. In the sam e vein. I consider the drawings as allusions to som ething not in the picture, but something

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else, or at least som ething im plied but not said ( . . . ) fragm ented elem ents of a figurative script that presents obliquely what, perhaps, cannot be represented otherw ise." (Pandolfo, 1989. p. 7). As the drawings are too num erous to be fully listed here. I will sum m arize their com m on features and use only few representative figures for illustration. The list of com m on features I am interested in consists of the signs of private/public bodies: these signs can then be com pared to the respective list o f the symbols o f individualism /collectivism . Following is such a com parison. One of the astonishing findings was the overall sim ilarities in the principles underlying the bulk of figure drawings made from 1983 to 1991 and from 1992 to 1993. The drawings made in the period of the G ulf War. in contrast, were altogether different; still intergroup sim ilarities persisted. Thus, figure drawing in the first category was done always from the front: the body was depicted as strong, standing, with closed contours, hair, no gaps or internal organs; gender distinctions were depicted; there were no additional signs of body tending, i.e., lipstick, clothes, long hair, earrings. Older w om an drew younger bodies. There was an em phasis on proper proportions: narrow shoulders and waist (in the case of females), wide shoulders in the case of m ales (see figures 7. 13, 17 and 18). This category. I argue, was drawn during the period of individualism, which is related to hedonism, anti-ideology, realism, pluralism , postm odernism and body tending. These m anifest them selves in the drawings m ainly through the artistic principles of plural forms, items o f body tending, realistic depiction and an attempt to portray ones self-identity. The fact that many drawing present a com m on ideal body is evidence of the collective conception of that bodily ideal which is found behind so many pseudoindividualist practices of body tending. Drawings in the second category, made during the G ulf War, were com pletely different. Bodies were fragm ented, distorted, porous, with internal organs, gaps and opened contours. No faces were portrayed. Sometim es the faces were concealed behind a gas mask, and som etimes they were altogether missing. The body was fram ed by the contours of the sealed room, which could sym bolize a womb (and/or very likely, a tomb; see also Synnott. 1992). Interestingly, these portrayals crossed ethnic borders and characterized both Israeli and lsraeli-A rab populations. This category, drawn during the G ulf War period, is in effect part of a rising collectivism. Symbols of the collective, as I argued before, include nation-building, Zionism, idealism, integration and the m elting pot" doctrine, m odernization and m ortification of the flesh. These m anifest them selves in the drawings mainly through the artistic principles o f standardization, sam eness o f form, faceless features, the b ody's dependence on external frames and its state of ordeal (see figures 7a. 8a and 39: note that these drawings were made by the same persons, only in different periods). Interestingly, the same collectivist pattern o f drawing the body which appeared in the context o f the G ulf War. has ensued even well after the war has ended. A m onths time after the war, when people reported to me that they now forgot their fears and that Sadam s biochem ical missiles did not exist, still they drew the same bodies which accom panied the war. It hence seems that the mode of collectivism , invoked by states o f war, is too powerful a conditioning to easily evaporate im mediately after the threat is gone. The G ulf War, it should be said, was not a regular war. It did not entail the m obilization of forces, army reserves, etc. but rather the dem obilization o f Israeli society, which was put into the sealed room and waited there for instructions a passive situation, unfam iliar to Israeli society before. The G ulf War was later known as the war. which turned "the rear into the front ;

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meaning that the country itself becam e the battleground on which Sadam H usseins missiles could and did land. Notice also the significant bodily character o f that saying, as rear' (oref) is literally the back o f the neck." In an article entitled reflections on the G ulf War, a famous Israeli psychiatrist wrote that:
This w ar has changed everything. Instead of being in the front, we were in the rear. Instead o f being conducted som ew here in the front lines, your city and your hom e becom e the front. You are stuck in your own hom e and you m ust wait, w a it. . . suddenly you recall experiences you have long m anaged to forget, experiences belonging to our personal and collective past in Europe in the 4 0 s. (Stern. 1992, p. 53)

Though lacking the dynam ics of m ilitary mobilization, and perhaps even more so because o f it, the G ulf War elicited as much collectivism as any of the other wars that Israel had come through. In a war where no soldier was called to the flag, it was a citizen whose hom e was dem olished by a direct SCUD hit. who put the Israeli flag on top of the wracks. This symbolic act was televised and shown repeatedly on the news. Consequently, politicians and others called to the people to wave up their flags. H abim a, Tel Avivs national theatre, was wrapped with a huge flag, as if it were a coffin" (Doner, 1991. p. 5). A sim ilar ambience was conveyed through other practices (for an overview, see Werman. 1993). Ben-David and Lavee (1992) exam ined the behavior patterns o f families in the sealed rooms during SCUD m issile attacks, finding that they were quite uniform. Danet. Loshitzky, and Behar-Israeli (1993) describe the association made between the gas masks Israelis had to put on during SCUD attacks and the Holocaust, which served as a powerful trigger of the collective Jewish memory. And yet all citizens had abidingly put on the masks, even after their value was publicly debated. The masks, as portrayed in the drawings, made everyone wearing them look alike. Collectivity was also evident in the public condem nation of politicians and others (most notably, the m ayor o f Tel Aviv) with regard to those citizens who fled from the city during the war. Indeed, the popular w ar slogan was I stayed in Tel Aviv.4

3. Conclusion: collective individualism and the vicissitudes of postmodernism

In his m ost recent study. Baudrillard (1992) argued that the G ulf War did not. literally, take place ( ,a pas eu lieu). It existed, for its audience as well as its Am erican Generals, on TV screens and through CNN reports. The G ulf War. according to Baudrillard. brought to extreme the substitution of reality by m edia-projected sim ulacra (cf. Baudrillard. 1983, 1988). He should have been sealed in a room in Israel at the time of a SCUD attack. Like the rest of the world. Israelis saw the bom bs over Baghdad on CNN and "Patriot m issiles intercepting (if successful, which they usually were not) SCUD missiles. But unlike the rest of the world, Israelis were those under the (very real) threat o f the m issile attack. War was taking place. People died, were injured, and their hom es were dem olished. The reality o f war as well as its com plem entary sim ulations in the m edia interrupted the Israeli system, bringing with it social cohesion and a collective we-feeling. Israeli collective individualism, then, can be accounted for by the ongoing m ilitary conflict Israel faces. Israel experiences a continuous phase variation between warfare and truce. But the basic fram ework is provided by war. Norm al living is framed by the war potential. The

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analysis o f the drawings that was presented in this study shows how students expressed this fram ing in normal time and during the G ulf War. During norm al times, the drawings presented the "norm al body. whose shared contours reflected collective individualism . It was during the War that the "body in war re-em erged along with collectivism. The experience of continuously living under a military threat is not normal neither regular, and Israels brand of collectivism or w e-feeling, which re-em erges in times like the G ulf War. is indeed unique. Yet my analysis shows that Israel's collective individualism , arguably the result of a m ilitary crisis-cum -routine, is not unique. Collective individualism exists as a normal part of postm odernism , without any connection to military conflicts. I suggest that collective individualism " is also, to a large extent, the by-product of postmodem ism . Israeli collective individualism is, therefore, only one brand o f postm odern collective individualism. De Tocqueville (1969) was perhaps the first to observe, 150 years ago. one of the central am biguities in m odernist Am erican individualism, nam ely that it was strangely com patible with conformity:
A m ericans o f all ages, all stations in life and all types of dispositions are forever form ing associations. There are not only com m ercial and industrial associations in w hich all take part, but others o f a thousand different types religious, moral, serious, futile, very general and very lim ited, im m ensely large and very m in u te . . . In every case, at the head o f any new undertaking, w here in France you w ould find the governm ent or in England some territorial m agnate, in the US you are sure to find an association. (1969. p. 523)

M acIntyre (1981, p. 33) has written on bureaucratic individualism , in which we spend much of our tim e navigating through im mense bureaucratic structures, manipulating and being m anipulated by others, while our freedom to make private decisions is bought at the cost of turning over most public decisions to bureaucratic m anagers and experts. A bureaucratic individualism in which the consent of the governed, the first dem and of m odem enlightened individualism , has been abandoned in all but form, illustrates the tendency of individualism to destroy its own conditions, he writes. That destruction, for Bellah, M adsen. Sullivan. Swidler, and Tipton (1985), is one of postm odernism 's predicam ents. "There is a w idespread feeling. they write in their concluding remarks (1985, p. 277),
That the prom ise of the m odem era is slipping away from us. A m ovem ent o f enlightenm ent and liberation that w as to have freed us from superstition and tyranny has led us to a world in w hich ideological fanaticism and political oppression have reached extrem es unknow n in previous history___ In the liberal' world, the state w hich was supposed to be a neutral night-w atchm an that w ould m aintain order w hile individuals pursued their various interests, has becom e so overgrow n and m ilitarized that it threatens to becom e a universal policem an.

The m odem State and the m odem individual were born together, and the bond between them sanctified in the form of m odem citizenship. However. State (or collective) and individual are basically different, and this opposition generates a basic paradox in the study of citizenship. On the one hand, theories of citizenship assume that rights and duties are granted to individuals: on the other hand, the institutional criteria and practices granting such rights and duties of citizenship are perceived as contributing to a standardization and (ultim ately) nullification of the individual. This is. indeed, the essential problem of dem ocracy as identified by Benjam in (1969). It is this problem atic that drove Turner (1986) to coin the term

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individuation (see also Alexander. 1987) in order to describe how. through collective practices o f the State, individualism becom es an institutional code, constituting the self-awareness of individuals and the social construction o f political reality. Individuation refers to the process and apparatus which unify individuals while uniquely identifying them (as a political category) (Turner. 1986. p. 119). As the m odem individual is dialectically interwoven with the practice of the modern state, it is bound to be collectively defined and constituted. In cases where state hegem ony is necessary for confronting m ilitary conflicts, as in Israel, the collectivity is the by-product of external forces. However, it is also the unique postm odernist internal practices o f consum ption, self-m anagem ent, lifestyles and mass m edia which further establish the collective individualism of postm odern society. Israel's declared quest for peace with its neighbors, then, if and when it is achieved, will not have such an all-em bracing impact on its social character and structure, as some are willing to imagine. W hether a vicissitude, a predicam ent or a necessary outcom e o f State power, collective individualism is here to stay.

Notes
1. Interestingly. Courtine has difficulties in translating the term to French (his paper appears in a well known French journal. Communications, in a special edition entitled Lc7 G ouvem am ent du Corps. All translations are mine. The activity known in the US as bodybuilding, writes Courtine (1993. p. 245) could not be translated by the French term culturism e or culture physique. The French term lacks the connotation that it is possible to build (construire) ones corporality, to be the sculpture of ones body. For Courtine. then, the term body-building denotes, paradoxically, the sense of American individualism as opposed to the French culturism e. Cultural viewpoints, then, are once more proven to be o f critical importance. 2. Fashion is one of the spectacles o f postm odern society. The m anufacture of the present, where fashion itself, from clothes to music, has come to a halt, which wants to forget the past and no longer seems to believe in future, is achieved by a ceaseless circularity of inform ation, always returning to the same short list of trivialities (Debord, 1990. p. 55). Collective recycling (of fashion, music, lifestyles, images) can thus be seen as yet another illustration of the postm odern flight from history. 3. The turn from collectivism to individualism has not left the kibbutzim unaffected. Along with the shift to fam ily accom m odations, the economic crisis and the internal debate with regard to differentiated and privatized budgets, the kibbutz has also come, with the whole o f Israeli society, to the borderline o f collective individualism (see Cohen. 1983). 4. However, when huge signposts with the collectivist-patriotic text I stayed in Tel Aviv were erected in the city, an invisible hand added to it the word freier, so that the result looked like: I (freier) stayed in Tel Aviv (see Doner, 1991) which can be taken as yet another illustration of Roniger & F eige's (1992) thesis.

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