How Israelis Represent the Problem of Violence in Their Schools 161At the most general ideological level then, this particular ideological construction
provides further reflexive organization. It frames the problem of school violence as an
ideologically explicit ̳crisis‘ in a classic democratic sense. On one hand, one finds common
propositions about there being no clear limits or moral boundaries (n. 29) as well as there
being a weakening of respect for law and order (n. 32).
On the other, however, there are propositions about a lack of respect for the rights of
individuals (n. 31, n. 33). The general result seems to be a loss of faith in the face of a corrupt
society (n. 30). At least in Israeli ideological consciousness about ̳problems‘ in society, a
clear demarcation of how the individual and the social body are to treat each other, or where
the rights of one begins and those of the other ends, seems to be in a very general state of
crisis. The government, schools, parents and their children are all caught in the center of an
ideologically-reinforced discursive construction that is, as such, believed to be one of the
most dominant and widespread in Israel today: there is a society-wide crisis in values that
challenges the unity and for some even the existence of the nation.
Given the logic of the argument here, it is not at all surprising to discover the presence of
this discourse in other cultural practices. Violence in schools thus finds its most general
ideological account in the form of a democratic crisis in modern Israeli society. This specific
problem is thus just one of many instances of what is believed to be one of the most general
problems plaguing society as a whole. This ideological crisis, for example, thematically
characterizes certain genres of academic work in Israel (cf. Katriel 1999 and references there
for analyses of a number of institutions and ritual sites in which this fundamental tension
between the individual and society is visible) as well as opinion polls of Israeli citizens on
related matters (cf. Wolfsfeld 1988 and the tables therein for relevant facts about Israelis
media habits and beliefs about their society as a whole).
Once made relevant to the framing of this social issue, the general ideology of democracy
plays a reflexive role in constraining and supporting the propositions that constitute the focal
discursive construction by reinforcing the previously discussed themes and their recursive
cultural logics of explanation (in n. 1-28). It also reinforces both the folk model that relates
the individual to society as well as providing explicit ideological framing ̳from above‘ (in 29-
34).
Summarizing the argument up to this point, what partial explanations are there for the
common propositions that were discovered by this study? The particular propositions were
found to be common because they were mutually constrained, supported and framed by at
least their own normative status as propositional elements in this verbal practice as well as by
an explicit set of folk concepts about the relationship between the individual and society, an
implicit causal folk model relating the individual to society, three general organizing semantic
themes, general theories about ̳societal problems in Israel‘ and the dominant political
ideology of democracy on the ideal relationship between the individual and society. Given the
level of analysis here then, one must conclude that all of these reflexively overlapping
discursive constructions join together to give relative stability to the others and, as such, all
constitute mutually constraining and supporting causes and effects.