This article was downloaded by: [Heriot-Watt University]On: 06 October 2014, At: 18:45Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,UK

Ethnic and Racial StudiesPublication details, including instructions for authorsand subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rers20

Arab sounds in a contestedspace: life quality, culturalhierarchies and nationalsilencingOri SchwarzPublished online: 28 May 2013.

To cite this article: Ori Schwarz (2014) Arab sounds in a contested space: life quality,cultural hierarchies and national silencing, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 37:11, 2034-2054,DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2013.786109

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2013.786109

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all theinformation (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform.However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make norepresentations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, orsuitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressedin this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not theviews of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content shouldnot be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions,claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilitieswhatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connectionwith, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes.Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly

forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Her

iot-

Wat

t Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

8:45

06

Oct

ober

201

4

Arab sounds in a contested space:life quality, cultural hierarchies andnational silencing

Ori Schwarz

(Received 17 May 2012; accepted 5 May 2013)

Sounds and sonic norms and regimes characterize both spaces/territories andindividual bodies. This article explores the meanings of and reactions to Arabsounds in Israel – political struggles over muezzins, stereotypical representa-tions of Israeli Palestinians as loud, and so on – in order to offer generalinsights into the role of the sonic (both actual sounds and their discursiverepresentations) in the new ‘cultural’ racism, in the everyday ethnicizedexperience of one’s body, and in shaping relations between ethnic andnational groups.

Keywords: cultural racism; habitus; Israel; mosques; national space; sound

On 6 June 2011, Israeli parliamentarian Anastasia Michaeli submitted abill banning the use of loudspeakers by mosques, classifying it as ‘noisepollution’. The bill sparked a heated public debate. In a press release,Michaeli claimed:

Muslim clerics must find another way to call to prayer or send religious andnational messages, not through defiance and demonstration of ownership [atthe expense of] life quality as they do today, but in a way that doesn’tdisrupt the lives of citizens, and takes into consideration that we live in aWestern and civilized country.

This short extract reveals in a nutshell the Israeli public discourse onmuezzins. First, their sound is conceived of as a weapon in a territorialconflict, a ‘demonstration of ownership’. Second, muezzins allegedlydisrupt the life of Jews and impair their quality of life. Third, their sounddisqualifies Israel as a ‘Western and civilized country’, identifying it aspart of the ‘uncivilized’ Arab Orient.

Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2014Vol. 37, No. 11, 2034–2054, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2013.786109

© 2014 Taylor & Francis

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Her

iot-

Wat

t Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

8:45

06

Oct

ober

201

4

In this article I discuss Arab sounds – religious and secular alike – in thecontested space of Israel. By studying the role of sound in the relationsbetween Israel’s Jewish majority and Palestinian minority,1 I wish todemonstrate that sounds are important for students of ethnicity andnationalism for several reasons, which are analytically independent butoften intertwined in reality.

First, sonic habitus or styles are often racialized. Loudness andengagement in specific sonic practices are ascribed to groups and read asidentifying markers. These perceived differences are constitutive ofhierarchies of civilizedness and worth that justify ethnic domination –classification schemes instrumental of symbolic violence (Bourdieu 2000).Sonic experience also evokes emotional reactions and moral judgements(Schwarz 2012) that inform inter-group relations.

Second, the belief in inter-group differences in sonic habits helps toconstruct ethnic others as life-quality threats, justifying segregation andexclusion. Sonic sensitivities and stereotypes are thus instrumental of the‘new’, cultural racism (Balibar 1991), as in Jacques Chirac’s infamouscomment on the ‘noise and smell’ (‘Le bruit et l’odeur’) of Africanimmigrant families that disturb their working-class French neighbours(Laurence and Vaïsse 2007, 261–262).

Third, since sound spreads over space, it may characterize it and hencehave obvious political meaning. Control over the sound of a given spacesymbolizes its political ownership/domination; hence, the audibility ofnational and ethnic minorities may constitute an arena for struggle ornegotiation over their civic status, cultural saliency and territorial claims.

Below I discuss these three aspects while studying the sonic dimensionof nationalized bodies and discourse in contemporary Israel, exploringquestions like: what meanings are ascribed to Arab sounds in Israel, andhow do these meanings inform everyday intergroup interactions? Aresensuous experiences of sonic space and particular sounds within itnationalized, and how? Which discursive resources are available fortalking about sounds of national others and to nationalize/racialize ordenationalize/de-racialize particular sounds or even the very category of‘loudness’? These empirical questions may provide theoretical insightsinto the role of sensuous experience in inter-group relations, and howsociologists of race, ethnicity and nationalism should address it.

Despite much critique on the visualocentrism of the social sciences (e.g.Bailey 1996; Pinch and Bijsterveld 2012), the sonic’s role in theproduction of the social – and in particular, the sonic dimension of ethnicand national identities and inter-group relations – remains unacknow-ledged. As shown below, at least in the Israeli/Palestinian space, sonicpractices are often ethnicized and nationalized, and hence play asignificant role in the constitution of both nationalized space andperformed, embodied national difference in everyday life.

Ethnic and Racial Studies 2035

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Her

iot-

Wat

t Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

8:45

06

Oct

ober

201

4

Data, methods and structure

The research explores the role of perceived sonic difference in intergrouprelations by identifying its cultural meanings, discursive representationsand subjective experience. The analysis draws on three major sources:

(1) News articles on relevant topics such as Michaeli’s bill, localconflicts between Jewish and Arab communities over sound(muezzins, open-air weddings), Arabic announcements in trains,and so on, published on Israel’s three main news websites (Ynet,NRG-Ma’ariv and Haaretz) between 2006 and 2012. These newsarticles inform us about actual political and legal battles overArab sounds, and employed repertoires of political action anddiscursive frameworks.

(2) All 10,933 reader comments on thirty-eight relevant news articlesand op-eds published on these websites during this period. Whilesome articles did not discuss sound in the body text (stories ondiscrimination of Arabs; neighbour relations between Jews andArabs; and the impact of residents’ ethnicity on real estate prices),all of them prompted reader comments (‘talkbacks’) that dis-cussed Arab sounds. While news articles represent officialpolitical discourse produced by parliamentarians, spokespersonsand editors subjected to norms of political correctness andrespectability, online reader comments are written by ordinarypeople (including political activists) and are not edited (althoughillegal incitement is sometimes censured). The reader responsessection beneath online articles is a space where hundreds ofreaders discuss anonymously and often aggressively the article oreach others’ statements. Whereas non-representative, they are agood source for identifying common judgements, assumptionsand stereotypes (for further discussion, see Sella-Sheffy 2006;Shor and Yonay 2011). I analysed both articles and readercomments to map the main logics, lines of argumentation andstereotypes/predication employed by speakers. This strategy istypical of critical discourse analysis (CDA), with which I alsoshare the view of discourse as socially constituted (reflectingsocial structures and power relations) and socially constitutive(reproducing and creating groups, categories and power relations)(Wodak and Meyer 2009). While this view is common amongsociologists of boundary work, my interest lies in the intersectionof the discursive and the somatic.

(3) In-depth semi-structured interviews conducted for a larger study onsound and society with sixty-seven Israelis from five designatedgroups, two of them from nationally mixed living environments(residents of a nationally diverse working-class town; and university

2036 O. Schwarz

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Her

iot-

Wat

t Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

8:45

06

Oct

ober

201

4

students living in an ethnically and nationally heterogeneousdormitory/neighbourhood).2 The sample is non-representative buthighly diverse in terms of nationality, ethnicity, class/status,geography and age. Over-representation of residents of nationallydiverse environments enabled me to study experiences of actualJewish–Arab interactions, which although mediated by prevalentdiscourses represented in the other data sets, cannot be reducedto them.

Interviewees were asked about their experience and judgement of varioussounds (music, silence, noises) in various contexts (e.g. to describe thesounds of their neighbourhood; sounds they like; or situations of encounterwith sounds they considered inappropriate),and about their familiarity withsonic stereotypes. Interview data tell us how the sonic dimension shapesboth actual interactions between Jews and Arabs, and the ways in whichJews and Arabs imagine and discursively construct each other andthemselves.

The article moves from the most obviously political public discoursetoward the private politics of the individual body. The first sectiondiscusses the political symbolism of sonic presence as an ownership claim.The second discusses the discursive structure behind cultural hierarchies,stereotypes and ethnicized cognition. The third discusses national habitusand the challenges that racialized discourses and stereotypes pose tominorities while conducting their bodies and negotiating identification.Finally, I discuss the interrelation of these dimensions and their accumu-lative effect.

Struggling over the sound of the land

Israeli Jews and Palestinians are engaged in an ongoing struggle overterritory. Since shaping the soundscape may be interpreted as appropri-ation act, contested territories are often sites of struggle over ‘sonicsupremacy’ (Oosterbaan 2009). Even in the minor local conflict thatOosterbaan studied in a Brazilian favela, sounds operated as weapons in apolitics of presence: the Pentecostal church used electronically amplifiedprayers and gospel music to define the favela as a neighbourhood of hard-working believers, and to outdo the ‘funk’ music associated with criminalgangs.

My data clearly indicate that the ‘Mosque Bill’ and other conflicts overPalestinian audibility in Israel are interpreted by Jews and Palestiniansalike as struggles over both Palestinian’s place in Israel – their civic status,cultural saliency and claims over the land – and Israel’s cultural character(Arab sounds like the calls of muezzins challenge the Western secularimage of Israel fostered by its liberal elites). Political and legal battles

Ethnic and Racial Studies 2037

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Her

iot-

Wat

t Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

8:45

06

Oct

ober

201

4

against muezzins are thus carried out by an unusual coalition of affluentliberals protecting their ‘life quality’ and ‘Western culture’ and (oftenworking-class) ultranationalists defending their national pride and theland’s ‘Jewish character’. However, even when residents endeavour toframe their struggle in nationally and culturally neutral terms of ‘lawenforcement’ or ‘life quality’, multiple other actors (supporters andopponents, Jews and Arabs) re-nationalize their claims, reintroducing thenational dimension. This dynamics was not only reported in news articles,but also demonstrated in the reader comments.

Israeli political discourse and public policy are often preoccupied withdemography and maintaining the ‘Jewish majority’ in Israel and in specificlocalities within it (Yiftachel and Yacobi 2003; Yiftachel 2006); however,opposition to Arab residents in mainly Jewish neighbourhoods or villagesis often justified in cultural terms of ‘retaining the Jewish character’. Thislanguage of cultural ‘character’ is also used to exclude ultra-orthodoxMizrahi Jews, or refugees. Thus, whereas Israeli citizenship is based on iussanguini, policies towards minorities are cast in ius cultus terms closer toGermany’s Leitkultur discourse (Pautz 2005) and may be defended againstracism allegations. (Arabs should be excluded, the argument goes, not forbeing Arabs, but for behaving as such, thus taking over the locality’scultural character.) My data contain many references to the alleged uniquesonic habits of Arabs that render their presence in mainly Jewishresidential and leisure spaces undesired.

For now, I wish to stress that sounds ‘colour’ spaces, shaping theirperceived ‘character’: in Israel, shouts over windows and loud lowbrowmusic are enough to mark a neighbourhood as Mizrahi and poor (Schwarz2012). This also applies to religious sounds, such as the addhan, a loudcall to prayer cantillated by muezzins five times daily. This tradition –allegedly dating back to Muhammad’s time, although modified byrecording and amplification technologies – is a significant component ofIslamic observance and Islamic soundscape. In some European townsaddhan has lately provided Islam with the same public audibility thatChristianity has had since medieval times. Hence, for some ChristianBritons and Germans, muezzins symbolize the Islamic takeover of Europe(Langer et al. 2011); in comparison, in Hamtramck, Michigan, publicdebate and referendum over the muezzins have been interpreted as achoice of collective identity, between the suburb’s ‘Catholic character’ andits ‘tolerant character’ (Weiner 2009).

In Singapore, where accelerated urbanization has created multireligiousurban spaces, the government has imposed restrictions of muezzins’volume while introducing radio broadcast of the addhan, despite Muslimresistance (Lee 1999). This move represents extreme individuation of theaddhan, which still acoustic unite the believers community, but no longeridentifies spaces as Muslim, thus significantly reducing Islam’s publicsalience. Whereas Lee lauds this use of technology to solve religious

2038 O. Schwarz

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Her

iot-

Wat

t Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

8:45

06

Oct

ober

201

4

conflicts, it may be considered a project of silencing or dispossession frompublic presence, justified by neoliberal sanctification of private space andthe modern middle-class concept of freedom from sonic intrusion (Sennett1977; Schwarz 2012) – for loud sounds do not only colour public space,they also permeate into the most private space: the home.

Unlike most European countries, in Israel it is not Islam’s visibility (newminarets: Cesari 2005) but its audibility that sparks public debate. Readercommentators often framed the discussion on muezzins as an issue ofpolitical domination and land ownership, claiming that muezzins were outof place in Israel since it is ‘the state of the Jews’, not an ‘Arab country’(all quotes are excerpts from the reader comments data). Arabs weredescribed as those who ‘take over the country’ and its ‘public space’, or as‘guests’ who do not know their place and behave like homeowners.

Some readers suggested that amplified addhans were a politicalstatement, an attempt ‘to show they are here’, ‘show Islam is present’ or‘occupy territories’. Some claimed that addhans are directed at Jewishrather than Muslim villages, as a ‘political-environmental weapon againstthe Jewish population’ in a ‘psychological warfare’, aimed at making Jewssuffer and encouraging their emigration. Although common in the readercomments data, these arguments are generally absent from official politicaldiscourse, although they echo the ‘Zionist premise that Israel is a territoryand a state that ‘‘belongs’’ to, and only to, the Jewish people’ (Yiftacheland Yacobi 2003, 679).

Secular Arabic music, just like addhans, is similarly interpreted as anattempt to ‘demonstrate national ownership’ or ‘drive Jews away fromplaces’: whether it be an Arab record played by swimming pool patrons orlive music by the Arab scouts’ orchestra, some reader commentatorswould perceive it as a demonstration of Arabs’ ‘habit of spreading theirsounds out of religious territorialism’, since ‘the noise Arabs produce is asubstitute for physical sovereignty’.

Israeli Palestinians, both politicians/activists cited in the press andordinary reader commentators, also framed noise conflicts as a nationalissue of rights over the land: when residents of an affluent Jewish gatedcommunity in nationally mixed Jaffa filed complaints against mosques anddemanded to silence Arab churches and the scouts’ orchestra, Arabresidents and politicians interpreted silencing as another instrument of thedispossession of Arabs by national and gentrification dynamics. Demon-strators against the silencing waved Palestinian flags and stated that they‘would not be moved from our sacred land’, challenging complainants’attempts to denationalize the conflict. Similarly, a common Arab reactionto the ‘Mosque Bill’ was that ‘Islam was here before Michaeli [whoimmigrated to Israel in 1997; in another version: ‘before the state ofIsrael’], and will stay many years after her’ – framing the conflict throughthe Palestinian national ethos of sumud (steadfastness).

Ethnic and Racial Studies 2039

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Her

iot-

Wat

t Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

8:45

06

Oct

ober

201

4

Against this unusual Jewish–Arab alliance in nationalization work,liberal-secular reader commentators and politicians attempt to neutralizethe national/religious dimension by framing muezzins as ‘religiouscoercion’, and symmetrically calling for a ban on noise nuisances causedby orthodox Jews (loud music from Hassidic vans or ‘Shabbat sirens’ onFriday evenings).

Alternatively, they framed Arab sounds as ‘noise’ in value-neutral terms(decibels). Reader commentators and politicians who employed thisstrategy, including environment minister Gilad Erdan, often mentiontechnological solutions à la Singapore (replacing muezzins with radiobroadcast, text messages or mobile phone apps) that would retain Muslimritual while eliminating its public sonic presence.

However, for some Jews this presence was not merely a nuisance but asource of shame. Thus, an (alleged Jewish-immigrant) reader commentatorcalled to ‘make them shut up’, since ‘foreign tourists who hear it thinkthey have mistakenly arrived at Egypt or Jordan’: the sound of mosquesdefames his beloved country in front of outsiders (possibly including hisown friends or relatives) by presenting it as Oriental/Arab. Similarly, aninterviewee (immigrant from Ukraine) experienced muezzins as anuisance, while enjoying church bells: both disturbed her sleep, but thelatter also coloured the space as Oriental, which for her clearly meantculturally inferior. Anti-muezzin campaigns are also campaigns for thepurification of space from its shameful Arabness.

Arab secular sounds similarly challenge the space’s Westernness, andJews often frame their demand for quiet as defence of Western values inthe clash of civilizations. Thus, when the municipality of the Jewishmiddle-class, mainly Ashkenazi3 village of Kfar-Vradim protested againstloud, open-air weddings in nearby Arab villages, they did so by playing totheir neighbours classical music (Mozart, Beethoven and Puccini, a choicethey admitted was not incidental). By doing this (and publicizing it) theypresented themselves as the incarnation of Western civilization vis-à-visthe Levant (just as suggestions to replace muezzins with iPhoneapplications contrast ‘primitive’ Islam and ‘progressive’ high technology,evoking wellentrenched dichotomies; Richardson 2004).

Whereas some reader commentators criticized this move as ‘arrogant’and ‘racist’, others professed having used this tactic themselves againstMizrahi Jewish neighbours. This tactic tries not only to eliminate Arabsounds from the public space, but also to employ and validate existingcultural hierarchies. Those who play music too loud in unregulated sitesare presented as uncivilized Levantines, whereas middle-class Jewsdemand quiet on behalf of Western civilization.

Not just Arab wedding music and addhans but even Arabic speech maybe considered ‘sound out of place’. When a non-governmental organiza-tion (NGO) urged Israel Railways to announce stations in Arabic (Israel’ssecond official language), the management declined, claiming that it

2040 O. Schwarz

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Her

iot-

Wat

t Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

8:45

06

Oct

ober

201

4

‘would make the train ride noisy’, thus causing a nuisance (Khoury 2012).Whereas (as demonstrated below) Arabs are often believed to be loud,there is nothing intrinsically loud about their language. However, vocalannouncements demand all passengers’ attention in a given moment,reminding them of the existence of Arabs co-passengers in this non-Arabspace.

Similarly, a Jewish student interviewee told me that ‘among Jews, Arabssitting in groups are perceived as noisy; probably because they talk Arabicit’s perceived as ‘‘noisy’’, not as a speech, I hear that often.’ Anotherstudent from the same dormitory said that the security guards no longerallow Arabs to seat outside, talk loud and smoke water pipes. In theirstudy of nationally mixed dormitories in Jerusalem, Erdreich and Rapoport(2006) documented how by filling the dorms’ common areas with theiromniscient auditory presence – yelling to one another across commonspaces, laughing, chatting and singing – female Israeli Palestinian studentsclaimed the space as Palestinian. Jewish Israeli students could find thisauditory salience unpleasant, as demonstrated by this message left on astudent online discussion forum: ‘the dorms turned into a Palestinianrefugee camp, Muslim Arab smoke water-pipe everywhere, scream, gowild, and all that with Umm Kulthum [an Egyptian singer] at hundreds ofdecibels in the background.’ The dormitory where my interviewees livedbanned such claim making through its strict policy.

While amplified sounds colour wide spaces, sonic regulation ofnationalized space also applies to interpersonal conversations. An Arabinterviewee told me that she used to feel embarrassed by the looks thatpeople gave her when she spoke Arabic on public transport. However,over the years she learned to overcome her anxiety about talking loud, forwhich she is happy. She portrays this self-transformation in political terms:for her, talking Arabic is a way to show Jews ‘we stay here’ – the verysame words used by Israeli Palestinian public figures in sonic conflicts inJaffa and elsewhere. Palestinians thus interpret attempts to restrictPalestinian sounds as a continuation of the Nakba, that is, of theirdispossession and expulsion in the 1948 war.

Israel is abundant in structural factors that produce an imagined space inwhich Arab presence is reduced to a minimum (strong segregation inhousing, employment, education and social networks; independent mar-riage markets; discriminatory signage, etc.). Arab sounds function as a‘provocative’ reminder of the presence of a considerable Palestinianminority within the Jewish nation state. Obviously, muezzins calling forprayer at 4.00 am and loud, open-air weddings disturb Jewish neighboursregardless of their nationalization: they violate their right to silence andhence their quality of life. But nationalized sounds are even moredisturbing: they simultaneously violate the perceived identity of space asbelonging to the national collective.

Ethnic and Racial Studies 2041

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Her

iot-

Wat

t Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

8:45

06

Oct

ober

201

4

While expansive sounds may help the subaltern to appropriate contestedspace, attempts (such as Michaeli’s) to purify the space sonically arerelated to – although distinguished from – the purification of space by theactual exclusion of social groups (Sibley 1995). The construction ofnationalized/ethnicized space is not merely a discursive accomplishment: itinvolves the enforcement of a national/ethnic sonic order (Vannini et al.2010) and the silencing of nationalized/ethnicized sounds on behalf ofethnic domination.

Hierarchies of silence

Sounds are read as marking identities not only of (nationalized) spaces, butalso of people. The analysis below relies on Rogers Brubaker’s (2002)assertion that nations and ethnoi are not ontological categories, but ratherepistemological/cognitive ones, lenses through which people experiencesome situations but not others. Whereas Barth (1969) substituted anontology of group boundaries for the ontology of group characteristics,and students of racialization studied emergent classification schemesidentifying practices with groups (Omi and Winant 1986), Brubaker(2002, 2006) denies that groups exist, focusing instead on ‘groupness’ as‘a contextually fluctuating variable’.

The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is so salient in Israelis’ everyday life thatalmost any interaction between Jews and Arabs is experienced through thenational lens (hence, unlike other discriminated groups, Israeli Palestiniansexperience their everyday stigmatization/ discrimination as nationaloppression; Mizrachi and Herzog 2012). However, my data show thatArab sounds are ethnicized by employing a general common frameworkthat ascribes loudness to all low-status groups.

Just before the interview’s end, interviewees were asked whether therewere any groups (occupational, ethnic, age, national, class, etc.) stereo-typically considered to be louder or quieter than others (a formulationchosen to reduce social desirability bias); and whether they believed thesecollective representations to be grounded in reality. The replies wereconclusive: quiet and sonic restraint were strongly identified withAshkenazim, the highly educated, professionals and (less so) the rich,whereas loudness was associated with Mizrahim (especially NorthAfricans), Arabs, manual workers and the poor. Interviewees oftenconsidered these stereotypes at least somewhat true.

The same stereotypes recurred in the non-reactive reader response dataand in accounts of ‘noise’ across the interviews (where intervieweesmentioned the nationality/ethnicity of noise perpetrators, assuming it to berelevant to their story), which supports the validity of the findings.Throughout the data, this loudness was interpreted as indicating a lack ofcivilizedness and social worth.

2042 O. Schwarz

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Her

iot-

Wat

t Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

8:45

06

Oct

ober

201

4

This discursive formation merges different (ethnic, national, class,cultural and occupational) hierarchies and views loudness (loud speech,listening to music loudly or in inappropriate ways) as an index of lowstatus in all forms. It was described by interviewees of all age, class andethnic backgrounds, including Arabs and Mizrahi Jews. These stereotypesare powerful constructions that inform perception: as social psychologistshave repeatedly demonstrated, people register information that supportstheir prejudices while ignoring information that refutes them (e.g.Cameron and Trope 2004).

Indeed, some differences in sonic styles may well exist between IsraeliPalestinians and Israeli Jews. This applies to almost any two populations,and high levels of national segregation in residency, employment, personalnetworks and media consumption, together with national tensions, areclassic conditions for the emergence of distinct national habitus (Edensor2002). However, such differences are merely statistical: volume of speechor engagement in specific sound-emitting practices do not map neatly tonational group membership. To perceive these differences qua inter-groupdifferences, one must employ ethnicized cognition that underplays intra-group variance, overestimates inter-group differences, and ascribesperceived differences to nationality/ethnicity. It is ethnicized cognitionthat brings a Swedish grandmother to ascribe the loudness of her AfricanSwedish granddaughter to her Africanness (Hä Llgren 2005) rather than toher age or personality.

The discursive formation portrayed above is instrumental in producingthis ethnicized cognition. It is rooted in colonial ideology (that justifiedcolonial domination in hierarchies of civilizedness) and, on a deeper level,in the old strategy of European elites to foster manners (Bourdieu’s‘embodied cultural capital’ Bourdieu 1984, 70) as markers of status andjustifications for class domination within Europe and colonial dominationoutside it (Elias 2000), framed in terms of culture versus nature(McClintock 1995). This identification of noise with those at the bottomof ethnic, national and class hierarchies, documented mainly for thenineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Bijsterveld 2001; Vaillant 2003),still prevails, although it is disregarded. In contemporary Israel, loudnessand specific sonic practices are thus ethnicized, used simultaneously tobolster both national boundaries and ethnic hierarchies among Israeli Jews(often by comparing Mizrahi Jews to Arabs).

Specific sonic practices identified by interviewees as ‘Arab’ includeplaying loud music from cars (‘If I hear very loud radio from a car, Iwould always find there a young guy, who may be either Mizrahi Jew oran Arab’ (Jewish artist, Jaffa)) and playing music from mobile phoneswithout using headphones. One interviewee, a mother of three children,supplied me with a racialized account of her delivery room experiences:

Ethnic and Racial Studies 2043

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Her

iot-

Wat

t Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

8:45

06

Oct

ober

201

4

Interviewee: Will you ask me later what I think about screams in thedelivery room? …You won’t, but you know, it’s also a culturalthing.

Interviewer: What do you mean?Interviewee: I wouldn’t scream. Like, I haven’t screamed in childbirth. You

try to hold it, you don’t let it out. And some [women], theArabs for example, and also Oriental Jews, for many of themit’s like part of the thing, they scream mad-ly, like, it’s part ofthe culture, screaming.

‘Civilized’ giving birth epitomizes the complete triumph of culture overnature and, hence, the ultimate civilizedness that she identifies withAshkenazi-ness. Other interviewees supported their belief that Arabs werelouder with everyday experiences: one interviewee from a nationally‘mixed’ city supported her claim that Arabs ‘always shout’ by describingArab mothers calling their children from the other side of the playground(ca. thirty feet away), thus setting a bad example instead of educating themto be quiet (shouting from afar is often considered a typical sonic markerof ‘bad neighbourhoods’; Schwarz 2012). Another interviewee whobelieved ‘Arabs produce more noise, they are louder … it’s not necessarilypositive or negative, but it’s a matter of culture that you meet actually inalmost any friction with this population’, supported it with encounters withArabs while hiking, eating in hummus eateries and as a referee in achildren’s football league, where Arab children use ‘much higher volume,and more aggressively’. The identification of Arabness/Mizrahi-ness withloud-ness and uncivilizedness also manifested in the reader responses:while discussing muezzins, reader commentators described it as an‘uncivilized’, ‘disrespectful’ or ‘primitive’ way to call for prayer,demonstrating that Arabs are ‘a bunch of barbarians’. This may rely onthe Western middle-class individualistic norm that condemns any sonicintrusion by the community, but it surely relies on the common tendencyto consider Arabs less civilized (Richardson 2004). Similarly, whilecommenting on a news article about a swimming pool manager whoforbade Arab children to play Arabic music and suggested that they playedHebrew music instead, commentators claimed that the very attempt to playtheir own music was ‘uncivilized’, showing bad manners.

The reader comments data also include many references to the allegedgeneral loudness of Arabs (e.g. ‘Arabs always like noise: shots inweddings, prayers screamed through loudspeakers, music in full volumein the car. Probably they all have hearing impairments, that’s why there’sno peace!!!!!’).

These stereotypes may nurture (or justify) discrimination and exclusion,as Arab neighbours are considered a threat not only to Jewish sovereignty,but also to life quality. Time and again readers tell stories about theirpersonal experience with loud Arab neighbours who shout or listen to

2044 O. Schwarz

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Her

iot-

Wat

t Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

8:45

06

Oct

ober

201

4

Arab music at night, loud Arabs in the swimming pool, and so on. Thus,one reader commentator blamed Arabs for the dropping real estate pricesin his town:

Prices fell because of their loud and vulgar culture, e.g. Arabs in Harishchose my pavement to be their living room, another example: the loudmusic, yelling at each other, things that are really unacceptable in ourculture, which lowers apartments’ value.

Another commentator explained falling prices by ‘the fact that when oneArab family moves in, the other Jewish families want to leave, not becausethey hate Arabs, but because it’s uncomfortable. It’s a different culture.They play music in deafening volume, they speak loud.’

This discourse obviously naturalizes, justifies and fosters furtherexclusion, discrimination and residential segregation of Israeli Palesti-nians: the loudness of Arabs is often used in the reader comments data asan argument against the residence of Arabs in all-Jewish villages andneighbourhoods.4 Sometimes arguments of ‘life quality’ and territorialismare intertwined. Thus, a Ukrainian immigrant interviewee distinguishedbetween the quiet Russian speakers living in his neighbourhood and theloud visitors from adjacent Arab neighbourhoods who play loud music:

Every average Arab guy, once he gets a driving license and a car, he alsogets a stereo, be it a stereo that costs more than his car, double subwoofer inthe rear, and then he drives around in the neighbourhood, looking for someaction, for girls, with loud music, so it’s a nuisance.

Or those who have loud conversations on the street:

Whether they fight or laugh, like you know, you hear it in the whole building.Sometimes it disturbs, and also, it’s not pleasant to hear it, you know, whenArabs shout outside your home, even if they shout at one another, like, heshould go to his own village and shout there outside his home. Why should hesit on a bench outside my building, smoke water-pipe and shout?

Although he later mentioned that some ‘Russians’ partake in similaractivities and make similar noises, he used frames of cultural differenceand national territorialism to justify his opposition to the presence of Arabsin the neighbourhood’s public spaces.

Often reader commentators referred to Arab sounds metaphorically,while claiming that the alleged loudness of Mizrahi Jewish neighboursdemonstrate their ‘Arab’ culture. Mizrahi neighbours are claimed to be‘uncivilized’, loud (listen to loud music, shout at the stairwell) andinconsiderate, and to lower real estate prices and impair their neighbours’quality of life because they are essentially Arabs. Arabs thus turn from aconcrete social group into a symbol of loud uncivilizedness, just as Jews

Ethnic and Racial Studies 2045

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Her

iot-

Wat

t Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

8:45

06

Oct

ober

201

4

did before (in the common German expression ‘noise as in thesynagogue’; HaCohen 2011).

Arab interviewees shared the assumption that Arabs were louder andthat loudness indicates lower status (thus participating in their owndomination: Bourdieu 2000). Furthermore, they reproduced the model ina fractal manner, directing the same allegations of loudness quauncivilizedness at the poorer, most deprived section of Israeli Palestiniansociety – Bedouins. One middle-class Arab interviewee hinted heavily atBedouins while blaming loud provincial Arabs who moved to her town forstaining the whole Arab community as noisy; whereas another middle-class Arab interviewee from a nationally mixed neighbourhood saidexplicitly that Jewish neighbours are quieter while ‘Bedouins are themost noisy’. He used to have Bedouin neighbours and prefers not to haveany, since they are so loud: they yell, detonate firecrackers, shoot and‘usually you can find [their youths] driving around blasting.’ It is of coursepossible that Bedouins in his town are statistically most prone to engage inthese practices. However, the discursive strategy of passing the blame maybe viewed as another demonstration of ‘the chain of Orientalism, in whichone recently stigmatized group evaluates other similar groups in terms ofthe extent to which they show the stigma’ (Khazzoom 2008, 315); the verysame images of ‘loud uncivilized Orientals’ are repeatedly reproduced.

At the opposite symbolic pole lies the construction of Europeanness.Interviewees often referred to this imagined pole, in relation to whichIsraeli-ness represents a cultural lack: for them, being Israeli (evenAshkenazi Israeli) meant being uncivilized and loud compared toEuropeans. While discussing their experiences abroad, interviewees posi-tioned themselves vis-à-vis the imagined European and the ‘loud Israeli’ invarious ways (similar to those described by Sella-Sheffy 2006). In theiraccounts, concrete voices are always measured against the assumedwesternness of the speaker’s nationality and the symbolic pole of imaginedwesternness, the epitomization of self-restraint and considerateness.

Like the construction of Arab sounds as territorial claims discussedearlier, the discursive construction of Oriental loudness is used todelegitimize Arab sounds and justify exclusion and segregation. However,it is different in not being openly nationalized, hence not threatening theprogressive self-image of Israel’s liberal, cosmopolitan elites. Instead, itsupports their claims for status (as more civilized) and quality of life, andtheir self-concept of being a Western fortress, or in Israeli politician EhudBarak’s phrase, ‘a villa in the jungle’ (Barak 1996).

Bodies out of place

Having discussed how Israeli Jews experience and interpret Arab soundsand the discursive frameworks that mediate their experiences, this section

2046 O. Schwarz

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Her

iot-

Wat

t Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

8:45

06

Oct

ober

201

4

examines the perspective of those who produce Arab sounds to explorequestions of national habitus and self-positioning vis-à-vis nationalstereotypes and nationalized cognition.

The sonic dimension of the experience of national minorities as beingbodies out of place is powerfully demonstrated by Ibtissam (pseudonym),a young college-graduate Israeli Palestinian interviewee from a well-to-do,highly educated family. Although similar to many young middle-classJews in her lifestyle, leisure and appearance, she experiences her sonichabits as incompatible with the demands posed by the spaces that sheinhabits.

Ibtissam and her friends often get dirty looks from other patrons andreprimands from waiters in fancy restaurants in Europe as in cafés inIsraeli Jewish towns. They sometimes feel ‘embarrassed and uncomfort-able about not being quiet’ and occasionally choose less sonicallydisciplined spaces, yet as a rule, she does not let dirty looks exclude her:despite having ‘plenty of screw-ups and blunders with waiters, we stillreturn to the same places. Like, it wouldn’t stop us from going there, that’swho we are!’

The last four words in the first person plural, which were repeated in theinterview, demonstrate that her speech style is a group style associatedwith collective (age/gender/national) identities, although not co-extensivewith any social group (Benor 2010). Ibtissam characterized the style of herand her girlfriends as having distinct prosodic features (including speechvolume) and emotion display rules, which render it exceptional andconspicuous in these cafés: ‘it gets louder, since all of us interrupt eachother, get excited, and shout.’ This style also proved embarrassing inthe Jewish middle-class space of a quiet and peaceful massage studio,where an Arab friend of her screamed out of excitement upon hearingsome personal news: ‘people started looking at me, and I felt my facesoooo red … even the masseur heard us from inside. Such a gaffe.’

Admittedly, Ibtissam masters other styles, and reflexively switchescodes to a formal, quiet style in college or at work. However, while withfriends, talking loud is ‘how we are’, the only choice acceptable asauthentic: style is not reflexively chosen but employed habitually. Whereasspeech style (including volume) is shaped by impressionmanagementstrategies, the choice is constrained by linguistic, cognitive and socialfactors (Bourdieu 1991; Benor 2010), and particularly by situation- andgroup-specific norms. Ibtissam sticks to this style despite social sanctions(she believes some people – including a quiet, ‘posh’ co-worker – areembarrassed by it and hence avoid going out with her). While performedin marked Jewish middle-class spaces, this style may shame its carriersand cast them as bodies out of place. While in other contexts Ibtissamglorifies authentic self-expression as superior to Ashkenazi inhibition; itdoes not render her resistant to symbolic violence and shaming in thesespaces.

Ethnic and Racial Studies 2047

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Her

iot-

Wat

t Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

8:45

06

Oct

ober

201

4

While loud style is not employed by Arabs alone, once stereotypesexist, some Arabs acquire the same ethnicized cognition. Thus, anotherArab student interviewee claimed that Arabs yell more often, ascribing itto their worse economic situation (being poorer allegedly makes themmore ‘negative’ and ‘stressed out’) and their ‘culture’. Speaking extremelyquietly and softly, he reported using a louder, rougher tone while visitinghis home village.

The ethnicization of loudness may put middle-class Israeli Palestiniansin a complex situation: whereas embodying the stereotype may be a sourceof shame and further stigmatization and discrimination (adding discrim-ination based on cultural hierarchies to those based on naked racism andnationalism), not embodying it may be taken for inauthentic mimicry – aparadox well studied since the inauguration of the ‘acting white’ debate(Fordham and Ogbu 1986). The ‘stereotype threat’ is an effect of racialdomination on the unconsciousness, as members of stigmatized groups arealways at risk of confirming as self-characteristic negative stereotypesabout their group (Desmond and Emirbayer 2010, 335–337).

A fictitious representation of this paradox is offered by the successfulIsraeli sitcom Arab Labor, which tells the story of a middle-class IsraeliPalestinian family moving to a condominium in an upper-middle-class all-Jewish neighbourhood. While moving, protagonist Amjad Alian is anxiousto make a good first impression. In the village, Amjad shouts while talkingto his father, but when the movers arrive he begs them: ‘When you arrivethere, keep it quiet, because you know, it’s Rehavia.’ The boss answers:‘Don’t worry, all my clients are Ashkenazim.’ When the mover keepsshouting at his employees in Arabic, Amjad hushes him, afraid that theloudness of his co-nationals will stain him and thwart his attemptedintegration into the Jewish middle class. This actually happens when hisfather comes to visit and calls him from the stairwell: all the neighboursopen their doors and Amjad is extremely embarrassed. His attempts todissociate himself from stigmatic representations of loud ‘uncivilized’Arabs fail. In another episode, after a Jewish friend criticized ‘Arabloudness’ (‘What’s wrong with you that you talk in shouts … you, theArabs living in Zion’), Amjad reacts by a dramatic conversion to theexclusive use of whispering, and by silencing his whole family.5

Throughout the series, Amjad tries to erase his Arabness and assimilateinto Israel’s Ashkenazi elite, through a project of strategic selftransforma-tion of the Arab body and its marked embodied habits: he drives wearing aseat belt; pays inflated prices without bargaining; and experiments withvegetarianism, swimming, contemporary classical music, dog raising,feminism and metrosexual masculinity – practices identified as opposedto Arabness, and typical of upper-middle-class Ashkenazi Jews. Amjadidentifies them with value in both senses: material success and Westerncultural progress. Since sonic style is a marked feature of Arabness, it is anindispensable component of this self-transformation.

2048 O. Schwarz

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Her

iot-

Wat

t Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

8:45

06

Oct

ober

201

4

Belonging to a national group may be correlated to some degree withmastery of corporeal competences and styles: as Tim Edensor (2002, 88–98) suggested, national identity is thus embodied and performed throughmundane choreographies, techniques of the body and trivial expressivecompetences as the right volume of laughter in such a given situation.While groups may intentionally distinguish themselves by developingoppositional styles, a high level of segregation, a dearth of inter-groupcontact and different socialization paths may unintentionally producedistinguished national habitus. Embodied habits of sound production andperception may pose resistance to self-transformation attempts. Theyinform the sensuous experience of national difference and belonging in amanner irreducible to discourse.

Unlike Ibtissam, Amjad is not satisfied with acquiring mastery ofanother code to use in formal situations: he desires to erase his Arab bodyaltogether, only to find out ever more markers of Arabness to be erased.

Like the fictitious Alians, Ibtissam’s family – who lived in a ‘good’Jewish neighbourhood mainly populated by immigrants from the ex-Soviet Union – engaged in some stigmatized sonic practices that couldidentify them with national stereotypes and render their presence sonicallyconspicuous. Thus, Ibtissam reported usually playing music at full volumewhile driving (a practice strongly identified with Arab youths), much toher parents’ dismay; and her mother usually shouts while calling her froma different floor or from outdoors – on the day of the interview, Ibtissamforgot her lunch and her mother called her from the street until she noticedand stopped driving. These sonic practices rely on certain bodies: somemiddle-class Jewish interviewees reported not being able to properly shouteven when they need to and being appalled while witnessing such abehaviour, which they experienced as violating the sonic space of others.

One ‘Russian’ neighbour repeatedly filed noise complaints againstIbtissam’s family and the other two Arab families in the street. Ibtissaminterpreted his motivation as racist, claiming that he had explicitlyconfessed to hating Arabs. Racism may indeed contribute to soundconflicts, either consciously (using noise laws as a mere pretext for racistharassment) or unconsciously (the ‘loud Arabs’ stereotypes increases thetendency to judge ambiguous sounds made by Arabs as loud and noisy:Sagar and Schofield 1980). Rather than replacing the social scientist rolewith that of the judge, we may use this case to explore the complexinterrelations between discourses, cognition and bodies: just as racistdiscourses may inform the sensuous experience of ethnic others, embodiedsonic habits may be used against their carriers in micro-level nationalpolitics.

Whereas feelings of national animosity, territorial conflicts, andprevalent stereotypes and discourses surely inform the reactions to Arabsounds, no discussion of inter-group relations may ignore the ways inwhich bodies are themselves socialized to embody identity, read as identity

Ethnic and Racial Studies 2049

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Her

iot-

Wat

t Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

8:45

06

Oct

ober

201

4

markers, and struggle to be re-socialized in projects of self-change. Whilewe should be cautious to avoid ascribing national/ ethnic sonic habitus togroups, studying somatic styles and performances as components ofgroupness is essential to understand the sensuous dimension of grouprelations.

Conclusions

The case of Arab sounds in Israel offers several important insights forstudents of ethnicity, race and nationality. First, it demonstrates theimportance of the sonic in struggles over territories, which are not restrictedto physical access to territories and formal sovereignty. Groups also struggleover the symbolic appropriation of space, its appearance and sounds, and thesensuous salience of the various groups that populate it. Sound plays amajor role in such conflicts, in which silencing is not a mere metaphor fordiscursive subjugation but rather a material reality – the effect of laws,policies, symbolic violence and social norms that restrict sonic presence.The nation state may thus enforce one ‘sonic order’ at the expense of others,and questions of somatic order (Vannini et al. 2010), originally formulatedas interpersonal, are re-framed as political/structural questions.

Second, the sonic – and the sensuous in general – cannot be disentangledfrom discourse. Corporeal-sensuous experience is already ethnicized andracialized. The discursive construction of ethnic, racial, national and classidentities – which attributes particular bodies with particular meanings andvalue to particular groups – shapes the most intimate sense experiences ofindividuals. In particular, colonial discourses on progress and civilization arestill forceful constructions that frame people’s everyday experience of selvesand others. Just like our eyes, our ears are not colour-blind.

Sonic norms and the discursive production of sonic hierarchies areimportant sites for students of symbolic violence. These racialized sonichabits and discourses deserve special attention due to the shift from old tonew – cultural racism (Balibar 1991; Taguieff 2001; Pautz 2005).However, it should be noted that bad old national hatred and racismhave not disappeared altogether. Among Israeli Jews, liberal cosmopolitanelites are more prone to employ ‘cultural’ or ‘Leitkultur’ discourse againstIsraeli Palestinians, whereas among other groups, explicitly professingcrass anti-Arab sentiments is considered legitimate.6

Third, sonic habitus and styles are proved to be important componentsof the ethnically marked body: although acquired (hence susceptible to de-and re-socialization), these sonic features may easily cast bodies as others,out of place, or even a nuisance, thus nourishing the discourses discussedabove.

Although offering some general insights, Israel/Palestine has uniquehistories and state policies. The sonic dimension of group relations in other

2050 O. Schwarz

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Her

iot-

Wat

t Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

8:45

06

Oct

ober

201

4

national contexts awaits further research and comparative studies are muchneeded.

The perspectives and mechanisms discussed in this article’s differentsections are distinct, yet interrelated. All participate in the de- Arabizationof Israeli sonic spaces, whether as a national-religious project ofdomination, a project of class distinction, or a moral project with universalpretensions. Thus, the sounds produced by national minority families likethe Alians or Ibtissam’s family may be considered ‘out of place’ for threereasons simultaneously: (1) for demonstrating a distinct habitus thatdeviates from the embodied habits and dispositions of the hegemonicgroup, which are interpreted as indexical of moral, cultural and socialworth; (2) for being subjected to nationalized cognition that overplays andgeneralizes these differences and assumes an a priori correlation betweenWesternness and civilizedness; and (3) since Arab sounds draw attentionto the very presence of Arabs in a ‘Jewish’ space and their claims over thisspace (usually less palpable due to segregation). Combined, these threecomponents nationalize sounds produced by Arabs just as they endownationalism with a sonic dimension – one that deserves our attention.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Yehouda Shenhav for his helpful comments on an earlier draft ofthis article.

Notes

1. 1.6 million Arabs constitute 20.5 per cent of Israel’s residents, not includingmost Palestinians living in the 1967-occupied territories (where Jew–Palestinianrelations are shaped by different legal and social realities, which lie beyond thisarticle’s scope).2. The other groups included affluent retirees, subscribers of a classical orchestra,middleclass married urbanites who moved to the countryside, and librarians.3. Ashkenzai Jews are Israelis of European descent, commonly perceived asmoreWestern and culturally remote from Arabs than Mizrahim, Jews of Middle-Eastern/North African descent.4. In many Israeli Jewish villages, new families must be approved by admissioncommittees that often justify their discriminatory policies in terms of ‘culturalcompatibility’.5. This self-silencing reaction was actually reported by a Jewish interviewee,daughter to a working-class Mizrahi family raised in a mainly Ashkenazi middle-class town, where her family’s loudness was notorious: only after engaging inover-correction did she find the middle way.6. Ethnic animosity among Israeli Jews is considered much less legitimate (as itthreatens national unity and cannot be excused as a reaction to warfare), hence‘cultural’ difference plays a much stronger role in everyday racism againstMizrahi Jews.

Ethnic and Racial Studies 2051

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Her

iot-

Wat

t Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

8:45

06

Oct

ober

201

4

References

Bailey, Peter. 1996. “Breaking the Sound Barrier: A Historian Listens to Noise.”Body & Society, 2, 49–66. doi:10.1177/1357034X96002002003.

Balibar, Etienne. 1991. “Is There a Neo-racism?” In Race, Nation, Class:Ambiguous Identities, edited by Étienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein,17–28. London: Verso.

Barak, Ehud. 1996. “Address by Foreign Minister Ehud Barak to the AnnualPlenary Session of the National Jewish Community Relations AdvisoryCouncil.” February 11. http://mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH016g0.

Barth, Fredrik. 1969. Ethnic Groups and Boundaries. Boston, MA: Little, Brown.Benor, Sarah Bunin. 2010. “Ethnolinguistic Repertoire: Shifting the AnalyticFocus in Language and Ethnicity.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 14 (2): 159–183.doi:10.1111/j.1467-9841.2010.00440.x.

Bijsterveld, Karin. 2001. “The Diabolical Symphony of the Mechanical Age:Technology and Symbolism of Sound in European and North American NoiseAbatement Campaigns, 1900–1940.” Social Studies of Science 31 (1): 37–70.doi:10.1177/030631201031001003.

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1991. Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge: Polity.Bourdieu, Pierre. 2000. Pascalian Meditations. Cambridge: Polity.Brubaker, Rogers. 2002. “Ethnicity without Groups.” European Journal ofSociology 43 (2): 163–189. doi:10.1017/S0003975602001066.

Brubaker, Rogers. 2006. Nationalist Politics and Everyday Ethnicity in aTransylvanian Town. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Cameron, Jessica, and Yaacov Trope. 2004. “Stereotype-biased Search andProcessing of Information about Group Members.” Social Cognition 22 (6):650–672. doi:10.1521/soco.22.6.650.54818.

Cesari, Jocelyne, ed. 2005. “Special Issue: Mosque Conflicts in Europe.” Journalof Ethnic and Migration Studies 31 (6).

Desmond, Matthew, and Mustafa Emirbayer. 2010. Racial Domination, RacialProgress: The Sociology of Race in America. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Edensor, Tim. 2002. National Identity, Popular Culture and Everyday Life.Oxford: Berg.

Elias, Norbert. 2000. The Civilizing Process. Oxford: Blackwell.Erdreich, Lauren, and Tamar Rapoport. 2006. “Reading the Power of Spaces:Palestinian Israeli Women at the Hebrew University.” City & Society 18 (1):116–150. doi:10.1525/city.2006.18.1.116.

Fordham, Signithia, and John Ogbu. 1986. “‘Black Students’ School Success:Coping with the Burden of ‘Acting White.’” The Urban Review 18 (3): 176–206. doi:10.1007/BF01112192.

Hacohen, Ruth. 2011. The Music Libel against the Jews. New Haven, CT: YaleUniversity Press.

Hä Llgren, Camilla. 2005. “‘Working Harder to Be the Same’: Everyday Racismamong Young Men and Women in Sweden.” Race Ethnicity and Education8 (3): 319–342. doi:10.1080/13613320500174499.

Khazzoom, Aziza. 2008. Shifting Ethnic Boundaries and Inequality in Israel.Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

2052 O. Schwarz

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Her

iot-

Wat

t Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

8:45

06

Oct

ober

201

4

Khoury, Jack. 2012. “Railways CEO Says Station Names Need Not BeAnnounced in Arabic.” Haaretz, January 22. http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/railways-ceo-says-station-names-need-not-be-announced-in-arabic-1.408521.

Langer, Robert, et al. 2011. “Ritual as a Source of Conflict.” In Ritual, Media, andConflict, edited by Ronald Grimes, et al., 93–132. Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress.

Laurence, Jonathan, and Justin Vaïsse. 2007. Intégrer l’Islam: la France et sesmusulmans, enjeux et réussites. Paris: Odile Jacob.

Lee, Tong Soon. 1999. “Technology and the Production of Islamic Space: TheCall to Prayer in Singapore.” Ethnomusicology 43 (1): 86–100. doi:10.2307/852695.

Mcclintock, Anne. 1995. Imperial Leather. New York: Routledge.Mizrachi, Nissim, and Hanna Herzog. 2012. “Participatory DestigmatizationStrategies among Palestinian Citizens, Ethiopian Jews and Mizrahi Jews inIsrael.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 35 (3): 418–435. doi:10.1080/01419870.2011.589530.

Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant. 1986. Racial Formation in the United States.New York: Routledge.

Oosterbaan, Martijn. 2009. “Sonic Supremacy: Sound, Space and Charisma in aFavela in Rio de Janeiro.” Critique of Anthropology 29 (1): 81–104. doi:10.1177/0308275X08101028.

Pautz, Hartwig. 2005. “The Politics of Identity in Germany: The LeitkulturDebate.” Race & Class 46 (4): 39–52. doi:10.1177/0306396805052517.

Pinch, Trevor, and Karin Bijsterveld. 2012. Oxford Handbook of Sound Studies.Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Richardson, John. 2004. (Mis)Representing Islam. Amsterdam: Benjamins.Sagar, Andrew, and Janet Ward Schofield. 1980. “Racial and Behavioral Cues inBlack and White Children’s Perceptions of Ambiguously Aggressive Acts.”Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 39 (4): 590–598. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.39.4.590.

Schwarz, Ori. 2012. “The Sound of Stigmatization.” Paper presented at theCulture and Social Analysis workshop, Harvard, Cambridge, MA, January 23.

Sella-Sheffy, Rakefet. 2006. “Detachment and Engagement: Israelis’ EverydayVerbal Representations of ‘the Israeli Person’ and the Contest for the Right toCondemn a Collective Identity.” Social Identities 12 (3): 325–344. doi:10.1080/13504630600744179.

Sennett, Richard. 1977. The Fall of Public Man. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Shor, Eran, and Yuval Yonay. 2011. “‘Play and Shut Up’: The Silencing ofPalestinian Athletes in Israeli Media.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 34 (2):229–247. doi:10.1080/01419870.2010.503811.

Sibley, David. 1995. Geographies of Exclusion. London: Routledge.Taguieff, Pierre-André. 2001. The Force of Prejudice. Minnesota, MN: Minnea-polis University Press.

Vaillant, Derek. 2003. “Peddling Noise: Contesting the Civic Soundscape ofChicago, 1890–1913.” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 96 (3):257–287.

Ethnic and Racial Studies 2053

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Her

iot-

Wat

t Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

8:45

06

Oct

ober

201

4

Vannini, Phillip, et al. 2010. “Sound Acts: Elocution, Somatic Work, and thePerformance of Sonic Alignment.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography39 (3): 328–353. doi:10.1177/0891241610366259.

Weiner, Isaac. 2009. “Religion Out Loud: Religious Sound, Public Space, andAmerican Pluralism.” PhD diss., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Wodak, Ruth, and Michael Meyer. 2009. Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis.London: Sage.

Yiftachel, Oren. 2006. Ethnocracy: Land and Identity Politics in Israel/Palestine.Philadelphia, PA: Pennsylvania University Press.

Yiftachel, Oren, and Haim Yacobi. 2003. “Urban Ethnocracy: Ethnicization andthe Production of Space in an Israeli ‘Mixed City.’” Environment and PlanningD: Society and Space 21 (6): 673–693. doi:10.1068/d47j.

ORI SCHWARZ is a Research Fellow in the Department of Sociologyand Anthropology at Tel-Aviv University.ADDRESS: Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Tel-Aviv Uni-versity, 69978 Tel Aviv, Israel. Email: ori.schwarz@gmail.com

2054 O. Schwarz

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Her

iot-

Wat

t Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

8:45

06

Oct

ober

201

4