How Israelis Represent the Problem of Violence in Their Schools 157THE REFLEXIVE NATURE OF DISCURSIVE CONSTRUCTS
At least in theory, the focus to this point has been on a ̳single‘ verbal practice as it is
discursively constructed in isolation. Discursive constructions, however, are not made anew
for each practice or ̳object‘ of representational significance to a society. Discursive
constructions are in fact highly interdependent. To consider the propositions that constitute
one is always to be looking at both the literal members, and the implicit reflections, of others.
In an attempt to explore some regular ways in which ideological formulations develop
different kinds of reflexive relationships with each other – and thus to attempt to map some of
the ways in which linguistic practice and cultural ideology are interrelated – a further look at
the data in Table 1 is revealing.
Within the complex web of discursive constructions, found in ̳society‘ at any level of
analysis, there are of course both relationships of relative support and opposition. Consider
first some of the ways in which propositions within the focal discursive construction are
mutually constrained and supported because of their co-occurring operation in other
discursive constructions.
In reconsidering Table 1, note the implicit reliance on a widespread folk model of the
relationship between the individual and society.^ This relatively distinct discursive
construction about the abstract relations holding within the social universe produces
propositional material that is presupposed in and by the focal discursive construction on
school violence. Indeed, such a model makes the very organization of the table, and thus the
table itself, possible. The conceptual categories of the folk model are explicitly present in the
causal propositions as the ̳causal sources‘ and the sites of the ̳causal influences‘. The folk
model as a whole, though never explicitly named, is thus present as the presupposed
underlying guide for how individual behavior is generally influenced by ̳society‘ in the
particular case of school violence.
What is the specific discursive construction that is modeling the relationship between the
individual and society implicitly in the data uncovered in Table 1? The individual, in this case
the ̳youth‘ (or student), is surrounded by a series of ever more encompassing social forces or
influences. As one moves out away from the focal individual as the ̳site‘ of the violence if
you will, there is a corresponding move to groups in which students are members (peers,
family) through institutions in which they participate or by which they are at least influenced
(school, mass media, government, economy) and ending with general explanations for
societal problems which, as such, cannot be localized to any particular individual, group or
institutionalized context of social action. These last influences are in a strangely literal sense,
neither here, nor there. They float above specific contexts of behavior and thus serve here as
explanations for the general causes of many different kinds of social behavior. Given their
more general applicability, they are available to Israelis as more conscious ̳ideological‘
accounts for societal problems in Israel.
The conclusion here is that the way in which individuals represent the problem of school
violence in Israel is partially constituted by presupposing another discursive construction
about the nature of the relationship between the individual and society. That is, the influence
of another discursive construction is reflexively intertwined with the one being studied here.
The practice of representing the problem of school violence is partially constrained by and
thus modeled on one of the regular ways in which the relationship between the individual and