Regulating Sex, Gender and Leisure in the Irish Free State

Abstract

The Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling, borrowing from the signal work of Max Weber, argues for the idea of a ‘unique “fingerprint” that distinguishes each state-society complex and is created through interaction between the state and civil society.’² In the case of Israel, Kimmerling talks of the pre-1948 Jewish community in Palestine as a ‘state in the making’. A direct result of the existence of this proto-state, he feels, was that after 1948, ‘the boundaries between “state” (i.e., the central political institutions) and “society” (non-political but exclusive ethnic institutions) were completely blurred, as institutionalization of political organizations and leadership intensified social control and surveillance.’ Kimmerling thus identifies the essence of the Israeli ‘fingerprint’ as being determined by state–society relations that predated the formal birth of the state. This led, he feels, to a situation wherein the Israeli state sought to impose its dominance in society by forging alliances with those groups that would help it maintain its initially fragile hegemony.³