Becoming a Triple Stranger: Autoethnography of a Kibbutznik's Long Journey to Discoveries of Researchers' Faults

Abstract:     
My desire to solve the basic problems of my own society, kibbutz, led me to engage in a "long effort applied to oneself which [has converted]... one's whole view of... the social world" (Bourdieu 1990:16), and this view exposed the true extent of kibbutz misunderstanding by its hundreds of previous researchers. However, if the kibbutz is a venture in utopia (Buber 1958[1945]; Spiro 1955), it is plausible that its utopistic intentions have been a major reason for my long and winding route to the exposure of students' blindness to its reality. An individual has many desires, and his/her efforts to satisfy them depend on many factors, while their relative importance and their effect on her/his life choices change with age, life experience and other circumstances. Thus, if my above mentioned desire explains the long effort that converted my whole view of my society, a major question is how this desire was born and how it retained its primacy for so long despite the stubbornness of kibbutz conservative social reality which frustrated it repeatedly. Considered by itself, my desire could barely explain the many choices I have made while facing various constraints and opportunities which were decisive in the shaping of my career that led to the exposure of a social reality which hundreds of students had failed to discern.

Keywords: Kibbutz, Social Research, Paradigm Change Habitus, Life History, Autoethnography, Estrangement

working papers series