Breakthrough or Restraint? "Four Mothers" and the Role of Motherhood in Israeli's Withdrawal from Lebanon

University of Haifa Political Science Department

Breakthrough or Restraint?
"Four Mothers" and the role of Motherhood in Israeli's Withdrawal from Lebanon

Seminar M.A.: Contemporary Politics of the M. East
Lecturer: Dr. Clive Jones

Israel, September, 2002 Sara Lazar


Table of contents

I .................................................................................... Introduction
1 “Four Mothers”: New Social Movements, the effectiveness of Collective   Action and the boundaries of self- constraint .................................................
1 1. Motherhood through the speculum of Collective Action....
1 1.1. Challenging the boundaries of private and public social spheres ..........................................................
2 1.2. Of Woman Born ......................................................
4 1.3. The Human Resources factor .................................
5 1.4. The Mobilization Strategy .......................................
7 2.When Motherhood becomes a crowbar to Citizenship practice ................................................................................
7 2.1.What do the Mothers have to say?...........................
8 2.2.Enlarging Public Consensus: “Four Mothers” towards a new civic identity............................................
10 2.3. The ritual forms of the Mothers’ collective protest...
11 2.4. Blurring social and political boundaries ..................
13 Conclusion           ....................................................................................
16 .................................................................................... Bibliography

Introduction
“Women have tremendous power. As mothers we must make sure the world is safe for our babies…[…] I appeal especially to the women to do this work because we understand the genesis of life.” Dr. Helen Caldicott
I
t’s hard to imagine a human society where women’s social performance is not... [continues]

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