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Sociology
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The online version of this article can be found at:
DOI: 10.1177/0038038513512730
2014 48: 1139 originally published online 16 January 2014Sociology Avi Shoshana and Limor Samimian-Darash
Governing Heterogeneous Populations: 'Separate and Unequal' in Israel
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2014, Vol. 48(6) 1139 –1155
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DOI: 10.1177/0038038513512730
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Governing Heterogeneous
Populations: ‘Separate and
Unequal’ in Israel
Avi Shoshana
University of Haifa, Israel
Limor Samimian-Darash
Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Abstract
Drawing on the Israeli ‘Immanuel Affair’ (also called the ‘Israeli Brown Affair’), we examine
the complex relationship between governmentality and population compositions. In the town
of Immanuel, the State attempted to establish a homogeneous population of ultra-orthodox
Jews by opening it to unrestricted settlement. Rather than homogeneity however, this strategy
produced a divided community, whose Ashkenazi and Mizrahi residents barely interact, and the
State responded by withdrawing from its governance. Contrary to the perception prevalent in
the literature on governmentality, which refers to the governed population as a homogeneous
body, this case invites inquiry into forms of governing in multi-population situations whose
radical heterogeneity resists the State’s homogenization attempts. We argue that examining
governmentality through management of events (or Foucault’s notion of ‘the milieu’) – like the
Immanuel Affair – allows for greater appreciation of the interaction between complex governance
mechanisms and heterogenic populations.
Keywords
governmentality, heterogeneity, population, ultra-orthodox
Introduction
On 17 June 2010, the Israeli Supreme Court ordered the parents of 35 girls in the ultra-
orthodox town of Immanuel to be detained for refusing to comply with its ruling that
Corresponding author:
Avi Shoshana, Faculty of Education, University of Haifa, 199 Aba-Hushi Avenue, Mount Carmel, Haifa
3498838, Israel.
Email: avihush@gmail.com
The authors are equal contributors to this publication.
512730SOC0010.1177/0038038513512730SociologyShoshana and Samimian-Darash
research-article2014
Article
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1140 Sociology 48(6)
they send their daughters to a non-segregated elementary school, that is, one attended by
both Ashkenazi ultra-orthodox Jews (of European origin) and Mizrahi (Oriental) ultra-
orthodox Jews (of Middle Eastern and North African Arabic origin). Thirty-five
Ashkenazi fathers subsequently presented themselves at the town’s police station; the
mothers did not. On 27 June, after widespread protests by both the ultra-orthodox and
secular communities, the High Court of Appeals rescinded the sanctions against the par-
ents and ordered the school to hold three symposiums for all of its students, in which the
most prominent rabbis and lecturers from all community factions would participate, ‘to
bring people’s hearts closer together’. The students’ parents and the school’s teachers
declared their intention to carry out the court order.
On 25 August, the High Court authorized the Ashkenazi group to establish a private
school, which would receive no State funding and therefore be subject to less State
supervision. The court stated that Israeli law acknowledges the right of individual groups
to maintain their uniqueness and their religious and cultural styles within Israel’s multi-
cultural society. Since the beginning of the September 2010 school year, two separate
elementary schools have operated in Immanuel, one for Ashkenazi students and the other
for Mizrahi students. They share a building but have separate entrances.
These descriptions should be read in light of the understanding that the main ethnic
distinction in Israel is between Jews from European and North American countries
(Ashkenazim) and Jews from Arab countries (Mizrahim). As in other cultures around the
world, European identity is hierarchically culturally superior, while Oriental or Arab
identity lies further down the scale. In other words, Oriental (or ‘black’ or ‘yellow’)
identity is a marked identity, while white identity is seen as ‘neutral’, transparent and
unmarked (Shoshana, 2011). Ashkenazi ultra-orthodox Jews are the dominant religious
group. Mizrahi ultra-orthodox Jews are described as ‘marginal’, their practices regarded
as a ‘mimicry [of] ultra-orthodox Judaism’ (Leon, 2009).
In this article, we examine the special fabric of relations between the State of Israel
and the residents of Immanuel, as manifested in this event and in a series of encounters
between them that preceded it. We attempt to elucidate the nature of the governance
mechanisms operating in this case and thereby gain insight into the broader issue of the
governmentality of heterogeneous populations. The literature on governmentality
(Foucault, 2007[2004]) is based on specific premises concerning the conceptualization
of ‘population’, mainly related to its homogeneity. With this in mind, we proffer the
concept of ‘governmentality’ in the context of the heterogenic population and discuss the
concrete governmental technologies that appear in this context. Moreover, we exam-
ine how these technologies produce the population and manage it, that is, the dynam-
ics of the interaction between the population’s composition (homogeneity vs.
heterogeneity) and actual governmental technologies.
We suggest asking what the actual technologies used in the Immanuel case study
were. How do governmentality practices invent (Hacking, 1986) the population and
manage it? Finally, we ask more broadly about the connection between homogeneity/
heterogeneity, governmentality, and its means and end – the population.
Our findings shed light on attempts to govern the heterogenic ultra-orthodox sector in
Israel not only through the management of space but also through the definition of the
population. Some ultra-orthodox towns have population committees (Kahaner, 2009),
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Shoshana and Samimian-Darash 1141
selective committees that determine who may live in the towns and that give preference
to Ashkenazi ultra-orthodox Jews. These committees govern through spatial segregation
of ‘normal’ (Ashkenazi) and ‘abnormal’ (Mizrahi) parties. However, in Immanuel a dif-
ferent form of governing has emerged, one which regulates by way of the State’s inven-
tion (Hacking, 1986) of a homogeneous population of ultra-orthodox Jews. Furthermore,
we find that the attempt to govern through a concept of ‘homogeneity’ actually estab-
lishes a heterogenic population, challenging the very governance mechanism that has
been applied in this case. Our study also suggests that alongside population homogeniza-
tion the State engages in deliberate neglect of the space and its inhabitants and minimizes
its own presence, and thus pursues a policy of governance from a distance (Rose and
Miller, 1992).
The Problem of ‘the Population’ in Governmentality
In his series of lectures ‘Security, Territory, Population’, Foucault (2007[2004])
describes three governmental technologies. Each emerges in response to a different
governmental problem and is enacted with a certain aim through certain practices. The
first form is the legal mechanism. It is based on law and punishment, on the division
between the forbidden and the permitted, and on the specific punishment of lawbreak-
ers. The second is the disciplinary mechanism, which mainly deals with the surveillance
and supervision of individuals and with bringing those who have transgressed back into
line with accepted norms. To create order, a special body is constructed that mediates
between the law and individuals. This body creates a supervisory sphere that oversees
various disciplinary arms, such as psychology, medicine, and so on. The main thrust of
these supervisory activities is to distinguish between the normal and the abnormal and
to create ‘normation’.1
The problem of population management emerged at the end of the 18th century, with
the development of scientific disciplines such as political science and economics and
scientific methods of statistics. The technology of the security apparatus, the third form
of governmental technology, appeared as its principal solution. In the security form, the
intervention of power is dependent on calculations of cost and potential damage. In place
of the dichotomy between the permitted and the forbidden, an optimal average is estab-
lished toward which the general normal population is directed. The central mechanism
involves regulating the population in the milieu, a space of possible events that may
impinge upon the population, and bring it to normalization, to a suitable end. This end is
not predetermined (as it is in the disciplinary mechanism) but is set over the course of
normalizing the population as a whole.
Foucault calls this type of governance ‘governmentality’ and highlights that security
is the principal means of this apparatus. It is also important to point out that when
Foucault speaks about governmentality he is not speaking about one means of govern-
ance that is stable over time, but rather he is describing different forms of governance in
various periods of history as a response to assorted events and problems. In other words
Foucault suggests dealing in concrete means of governance that are encountered in each
period (Samimian-Darash, 2011a).
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1142 Sociology 48(6)
Foucault’s study of governance, especially his concept of ‘governmentality’,2 has
been extensively discussed in the literature. This concept has been particularly relevant
to current discussions of destatization, neoliberalism, and multiculturalism, among other
issues (e.g. Das and Poole, 2004; Ferguson, 2002; Rose, 2002[1996]), in which it has
most commonly been used as a ‘theory’ of power, denoting a totalizing force invading all
aspects of life (and often referred to as ‘bio-power’). However, as Rabinow and Rose
(2006) point out, Foucault emphasized the heterogeneity of governmental forms (sover-
eignty, discipline, and security, in particular) and the potential for multiple actual tech-
nologies to express various forms of governing that do not submit to any singular unified
form of power (Samimian-Darash, 2011b). Moreover, recent studies examining statis-
tics, risk assessment, epidemiology, and preparedness have shown the complexity of
forms of governing within the security apparatus and concrete techniques of governing
(e.g. Castel, 1991; Dean, 1999; Ewald, 2002; Hacking, 1991; Lakoff, 2008; O’Malley,
2004; Power, 2007; Samimian-Darash, 2011a, 2013).
However, the heterogeneity of governmentality, and of the security apparatus in par-
ticular, is but one part of the puzzle of governing. When presenting the security appara-
tus, Foucault also discussed its special object and subject of action, that is, the
‘population’:
And finally, I will come to what will be the precise problem of this year, which is the correlation
between the technique of security and population as both the object and subject of these
mechanisms of security, that is to say, the emergence not only of the notion, but also of the
reality of population. Population is undoubtedly an idea and a reality that is absolutely modern
in relation to the functioning of political power, but also in relation to knowledge and political
theory, prior to the eighteenth century. (Foucault, 2007[2004]: 11)
That is, Foucault was interested in the problem of governing population, which raises
different challenges than does the problem of governing territory. The population,
Foucault argued, is a governmental invention:
… the transition from an art of government to political science, … the transition in the eighteenth
century from a regime dominated by structures of sovereignty to a regime dominated by
techniques of government revolves around population, and consequently around the birth of
political economy. (2007[2004]: 106)
Moreover, the population was not an abstraction (on the order of ‘the social’ and ‘the
public’ commonly used by sociologists and political scientists) but a concrete figure
accessible through particular forms of knowledge and governing (2007[2004]: 75).
Foucault nevertheless treated the emergence of the population as a problem one needs to
recognize and inquire into, rather than assume as given or as a pre-existing ‘thing’.3
Studies that draw on the idea of ‘securing the population’, we argue, usually either
assume the population represents a homogeneous group on whose members technologies
of governing work equally, or do not investigate the implementation of security actions
when the invention of a homogeneous population is impossible, that is, when a heteroge-
neous population is the object and the subject of governing.
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Shoshana and Samimian-Darash 1143
Research Design
Ethnographies in Immanuel were conducted between October 2010 and February 2012.
Two visits were also made to the town of Elad in order to see a Haredi town that is dif-
ferent from Immanuel. Both Immanuel and Elad are in the same socio-economic cluster,
according to the Central Bureau of Statistics. The first ethnographic visits to Immanuel
included unstructured tours and observations of the town (residential neighborhoods, the
shopping center, schools) in order to get a general impression of the place. The observa-
tions included spending long periods of time (from the morning until late at night) at the
town’s shopping center; observations at the town’s supermarket for six days; observa-
tions at schools during different times of day (when the children arrive at school in the
morning, recess periods, and the end of the school day); observing the interactions
between parents at the different schools; joining the public receptionist at the local coun-
cil for five days (a position that involves meeting with residents of Immanuel in order to
deal with bureaucratic issues); and finally, tours and observations at the industrial zone
at the entrance to the town.
In order to study the spatial features of Immanuel and accounts regarding the town in
the Immanuel Affair, interviews and observations were carried out, and written texts
concerning Immanuel were analyzed (local newspapers since the establishment of
Immanuel in 1983). A total of 47 interviews were carried out: 24 with men from Immanuel
(12 Ashkenazi and 12 Mizrahi) and 11 with women (five Ashkenazi and six Mizrahi); six
with senior functionaries in the local council (the town engineer, education officials, and
security officials); and six with officials from the Ministry of Housing and Construction.
The interviews were conducted in the interviewees’ homes, in Immanuel’s shopping
center, or in cafes in and around the center of Israel. The interviews comprised five main
sections: an open description of the interviewee’s personal life story; a description of
Immanuel; life in Immanuel; the Immanuel Affair; and the cultural hierarchies in Haredi
society. All of the interviews were recorded and analyzed in accordance with the proce-
dures for content analysis as put forward in grounded theory (Strauss and Corbin, 1998).
Immanuel: Extreme Heterogeneity, One Space
Immanuel is located in the West Bank,4 not far from the center of Israel (50 km from
Jerusalem, 56 km from Tel Aviv, and 35 km from Bnei Brak). It was established in 1983
and was declared a local council in 1985. The town was established to provide a solution
to the housing shortage affecting ultra-orthodox Jews in heavily populated areas of
Israel. Unlike other ultra-orthodox towns, Immanuel was planned as a populous town (in
Israeli terms), one that would house approximately 200,000 residents. However, as of
December 2010, it only had 3000 residents (Central Bureau of Statistics, 2011). In other
words, during its 20 years of existence, the town failed to expand and develop as envi-
sioned, and throughout the years many residents have left. Socio-economically, Immanuel
is one of the five weakest towns in Israel.
We were struck during our first visits to Immanuel by the dramatic heterogeneity of
its residents. This heterogeneity is manifested not only in separate residential areas and
in the residents’ appearance and style of dress but also in the various modes of conduct
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1144 Sociology 48(6)
in the public sphere. Immanuel houses a number of ultra-orthodox Jewish groups:
Ashkenazi (from various Hasidic backgrounds, such as Slonim, Lithuanian, Breslov,
Gur), Mizrahi (including the Yemenite Hasidic group), American, and Chabad.
What especially drew our attention were two other groups of residents who did not
display the obviously ‘normal’ ultra-orthodox appearance to which our secular eyes had
been accustomed. In conversations with local residents, we learned that these groups are
unique to Immanuel among ultra-orthodox towns and cities: ‘ex-convicts who are newly
orthodox’ and ‘wanderers’.5 Tomer, a 32-year-old Ashkenazi Jew, describes the first
group: ‘they are what you call rehabilitated, they were convicts who have now become
religious, but they still haven’t broken off from their past … they steal water, they steal
electricity, they don’t pay rent, they don’t pay municipal taxes’.
Aharon, a 42-year-old Ashkenazi Jew who has been living in Immanuel for 14 years,
says that he thinks the ‘most problematic’ population is the ‘wanderers’ and not the
‘criminals who are newly orthodox’:
The wanderers are these strange people who one bright morning land in Immanuel and walk
around looking like they have lost something, they still haven’t found it, they look mad,
wandering from this place to another, isolated, don’t speak to anyone, dirty … kind of like the
homeless you seculars have … one day they just disappear, and others arrive, and look exactly
the same … long hair like Jesus [laughs] … they finally leave.
Aharon emphasized that Immanuel, unlike other ultra-orthodox towns, allows the wan-
derers to reside in it and that it is a town in which many marginal and contradictory
groups exist side by side. Our interviews with residents of Immanuel show that this het-
erogeneity is experienced as a critical characteristic of the space and of daily life. For
example, Rachel, a 48-year-old Ashkenazi woman, who owns a stationery shop, says:
Did you notice that this is not an ordinary ultra-orthodox town? … There are different groups
here, and even a Yemenite Hasidic group [laughs], not that I know where it came from, because
that’s an invention that does not exist in Judaism, there’s no such thing as a Yemenite Hasidic
group, Sephardim6 cannot be Hasidim, but here you have a variety of groups.
Despite the town’s ability to absorb various groups (according to the vision of its estab-
lishment), our observations reveal radical residential segregation, mainly between
Mizrahi and Ashkenazi ultra-orthodox Jews. The town stretches across 1200 acres and
was originally built for the Ashkenazi ultra-orthodox community. It was not initially
planned with neighborhood segregation in mind. However, after the company responsi-
ble for construction in Immanuel went out of business, two years after the town was
established (1985), and particularly after the town became a target of terror attacks,
poorer groups of people began to arrive, mostly ultra-orthodox Jews, and boundaries
began to form between groups. Today each group has its own synagogue. Moreover,
even in the common public spaces (e.g. the walkway between the residences and the
shopping center), members of different groups do not communicate with each other or
even share the same space. As Israel, a 37-year-old Mizrahi observed: ‘They [Ashkenazi]
walk on one side, and we walk on the other side. Each of us has his own side; it’s better
like this, it creates order.’
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Shoshana and Samimian-Darash 1145
The segregation, especially between Ashkenazi and Mizrahi, is so fundamentally rooted
that members of different groups experience their lives as almost completely separate.
Chaim, a 53-year-old Ashkenazi man, described the segregated atmosphere of life in town:
It is a routine known to everyone. You pass each other without looking in each other ’s eyes, like
air, you pass by, there’s no issue of avoiding one another … we don’t even feel embarrassed,
the situation is clear for both parties.
Ashkenazis expressed their longing for a homogeneous space, for Mizrahis to leave
Immanuel, so that they can make it into the kind of ultra-orthodox space they have seen
elsewhere. Aharon, a 53-year-old Ashkenazi, expressed his desire for homogeneity in the
following terms:
Immanuel should be like an East European shtetl or like Mea Shearim in Jerusalem. Only
Hasidim whose origin is Eastern Europe should be living here. There should be complete
separation. Each group needs a place of its own. This is not the place for them [Mizrahim].
What do we have in common? They make our lives hard, we have no common ground.
For Aharon, then, the European shtetl is the model for community: an enclosed space,
segregated, with a homogeneous population. Moreover, he asserts, a homogeneous pop-
ulation would make daily life in Immanuel easier.
Meanwhile, Mizrahis expressed their longing to leave Immanuel for a different com-
munity, one where discrimination and separation are not so dramatic. As Moshe, a
52-year-old Mizrahi, describes the situation:
They [the Ashkenazi Jews] openly say, there is only one Judaism, and it is the Ashkenazi
Judaism; the Sephardim [Mizrahim] are not real Jews as far as they are concerned, they are
tyrants, it’s painful to live in a such a place where there is discrimination.7
One of the public spaces in which segregation is most visible is the elementary school,
Beit Yaakov, which Mizrahi and Ashkenazi girls attend and which was at the center of
the public storm that erupted at the end of 2007. On 5 July 2011 we visited the school
with Amos, who has a senior position in the educational system in Immanuel. The school
is divided today into two wings, one for the students from the Ashkenazi community and
one for the students from the Mizrahi community. For maximal segregation, there are
separate entrances to these wings.
Since we could not easily identify the origin of the students attending the school, we
asked Amos whether he can do so and, if so, how. Amos replied:
Strangers cannot understand this, but I can tell; not always, in most cases, the Sephardic girls are
light-skinned and you may get confused, but you can notice in the speech, both in the style of speech
and in the tone, in their body movements, in the way they dress, and even in the look in their eyes.
We asked Amos whether there is any interaction between students from the different
communities, and he responded, ‘No. That is avoided. They take recesses at different
hours. They cannot be in contact.’
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1146 Sociology 48(6)
The segregation extends beyond students to their parents. While in the school, we
observed Ashkenazi and Mizrahi parents pass by one another other without any acknowl-
edgment. Their bodies did not touch and their eyes remained focused straight ahead.
The dramatic separation and segregation we observed in Immanuel, and that is typical
of daily life there, is not reflected in the informational summaries compiled by the offi-
cials in charge of governing the town, as we discuss in the next section.
Practices of Governing and the Promotion of Homogeneity
Notwithstanding the stark heterogeneity of the space as we experienced it and as our
interviewees extensively described, Ministry of Housing and Construction officials and
senior functionaries in the local council with whom we spoke told a different story.
Central to their discourse was the use of homogenizing language to refer to the town’s
population: ‘They are all ultra-orthodox; they are all Jews; there is no difference.’ These
expressions were completely at odds with the radical separation manifested in the daily
practices of the town’s residents. Amiram, a Mizrahi and a leading functionary at the
Ministry, clearly expresses the official position:
They are all ultra-orthodox; they are all Jews; there is no difference. They should be educated
and understand that they are all Jews. This place [Immanuel] should be an example of the way
ultra-orthodox Jews can get along with each other. It’s not like other ultra-orthodox cities like
Modi’in Illit or Beitar Illit, where we are having problems. There you see selections, the
Lithuanians do whatever they want there, and decide who can or cannot enter. For example,
newly orthodox and Mizrahi Jews have no chance of entering the city, unless they speak Yiddish
and look like the Lithuanians … In other places you have selection, you have selection
committees called population committees, they are prohibited according to the Israeli law, but
the State can’t do anything, these committees act informally, you can’t mess with the rabbis
there, they are very powerful. [our emphasis]
The last quote reverberates to Ian Hacking’s (1986: 166) discussion on ‘making up peo-
ple’: ‘who we are is not only what we did, do, and will do but also what we might have
done and may do. Making up people changes the space of possibilities for personhood.’
For an ultra-orthodox Mizrahi, the range of possibilities of what kind of a person one can
be, or alternatively the kind of population one can belong to or be observed through, is
discursively led by ‘you are all Jews’ and ‘you are all orthodox’. The possibility of being
‘an ultra-orthodox AND a Mizrahi’ is discursively absent. It is absent from the State’s
mode of veridiction, and from the legal discourse in particular. Thus our findings claim
not only the invention of a particular population, but also the inevitability of an invention
of alternative populations instead. Furthermore, the unifying discourse enacted upon the
population in Immanuel is also manifested in practices of homogenization. The govern-
ment is most centrally concerned with preventing the existence of population committees
in the town. As Amiram laments, in other ultra-orthodox cities and towns in Israel, popu-
lation committees determine the composition of communities according to various crite-
ria. For example, strict population committees operate in two other ‘new’ ultra-orthodox
cities: Beitar Illit and Modi’in Illit (Kahaner, 2009). Both cities have established a limit
on the number of Mizrahis who can live there; in neither case can the city’s Mizrahi
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Shoshana and Samimian-Darash 1147
population exceed 25 percent. These cities are controlled by Ashkenazi ultra-orthodox
elites and have received the formal blessing of Hasidic community leaders.
The population committees check would-be residents’ parents’ background, where
their father and mother went to school (e.g. whether to Yeshiva and seminary, respec-
tively), their ethnic origin, knowledge of Yiddish, daily religious practice, adherence to
Ashkenazi pronunciation when praying, and so on. In other words, in ultra-orthodox
towns, these committees de facto prevent the acceptance of Mizrahis, guaranteeing the
homogeneity that Ashkenazis seek.8 However, in Immanuel, the governmental officials
claim, there is no rationale for such committees, since ‘they are all Jews’. That is, the
population is undifferentiated – residents are all Jews, they are all ultra-orthodox – and
this generalization is sufficient to control what happens in the town.
The absence of population committees, on the one hand, enables ultra-orthodox Jews
of different origins to take up residence in the town unopposed; but, on the other hand,
that unfettered access contributes to the emergence of local, self-imposed practices of
cultural and ethnic segregation, selection, and discrimination among community fac-
tions. Thus, while the population committees in other ultra-orthodox towns implement
spatial selection guaranteeing homogeneity by approving the access of only one ultra-
orthodox group into the community, in Immanuel, government officials attempt to
achieve a similar homogeneity by inventing a population to which all residents belong:
ultra-orthodox Jews. In other words, the two cases illustrate the connection between
homogeneity and governmentality – that homogeneity can be a means of governance and
that there are various ways of achieving it.
Interviews with governmental officials and local council functionaries unearth another
aspect of governance unique to Immanuel: daily neglect by the State. Senior functionar-
ies on the local council, for example, reported that the State is not interested in tax col-
lection, that it forces the local municipality to undertake this task. In addition, they
asserted that officials in various governmental departments did not return their phone
calls and charged that the municipality was forced to operate independently of the State.
Amir, a senior functionary, said:
This in no ordinary place, it’s more like the Americans’ Wild West, Immanuel is a different state
[a state within Israel], people don’t pay taxes, municipal taxes, they steal water, yes, you heard
me, have you ever heard of a place where they steal water? … We can’t do anything, the State
isn’t interested in this place; there are senior governmental officials that tell me, you should be
grateful that anyone would even want to come live in that remote place, we should be paying
them, they tell me, so we at the council try to chase them down ourselves, we do everything by
ourselves; Immanuel is not an ordinary place …
Ministry of Housing officials, for their part, explicitly say they try not to interfere with
what is going on in Immanuel because of the town’s complex situation. Erez, who is
responsible for issuing construction approvals, told us too:
… don’t let the media blind you, Immanuel is hell … it a poor, filthy place, we have nothing we
can do there, you can’t help them, they are all desperate there, and whoever tells you differently
is lying, only the minimum should be done and it should be done from a distance, we should
not interfere with what goes on there.
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1148 Sociology 48(6)
Thus, the absence of the State does not just signal a lack of interference in what goes on
in the town; rather, it reflects a policy of governance at a distance: ‘acting from a center
of calculation such as a government office or the headquarters of a non-governmental
organization, on the desires and activities of others who [are] spatially and organization-
ally distinct’ (Rose et al., 2006: 89). This governing at a distance helps perpetuate the
radical heterogeneity of the population.
Residents too describe a state that is conspicuous by its absence. They describe the
place as ‘godforsaken’, and say that ‘someone forgot us’. Tomer, a 33-year-old Mizrahi,
offers the following description:
If I were still secular I would say this place was ‘godforsaken’ [laughs]. Non-religious people
call remote places godforsaken, but we can’t say godforsaken, because god is with us,
Immanuel,9 and that’s what’s holding people here. But this place is tough; the things that go on
here are not natural … There are divisions here, it’s a place of rigid divisions.
Tomer clearly sees a connection between the absence of daily State management and the
radical heterogenic nature of the town’s population, its ‘tough cases … of rigid divi-
sions’. Other residents too see a direct link between their town’s radical heterogeneity
and governance practices: the absence of population committees and the unrestricted
access to the town have created, paradoxically, a heterogeneity of ‘rigid divisions’.
Foucault insinuated a connection between spatial unification and the disciplinary
mechanism. Spaces such as the clinic or the jail, Foucault (1998[1977]) emphasized, are
designed to facilitate surveillance of individuals belonging to a defined homogeneous
category (they are all insane, sick, criminals), and thus to control and monitor their
behavior. The Immanuel case study reveals the connection between the security appara-
tus and the degree of a population’s homogeneity and, therefore, governability. Through
the reinvention of the general normal population in the absence of population commit-
tees, a radical heterogenic governance object/subject is formed, and, through it, the lives
of residents are dramatically affected. This radical heterogeneity challenges the govern-
ance mechanism in town. The missing premise here is that the homogeneity of the gov-
erned population acts in itself as an efficient measure of governance.
In the following section, we show what happens when the State, and the High Court
of Justice in particular, is summoned to actively correct the discriminatory policies and
practices that the population itself has instituted. This event can be seen as an encounter
between the dramatically heterogenic population and governmental practices in the non-
territorial space of Foucault’s milieu. In the milieu, one can observe the heterogeneity not
only of the population but also of governance mechanisms and the encounter between
them.
The Event: ‘The Town Calls the Universe to Order’
During the 2007 school year, in response to an initiative of some of the students’ parents,
the Beit Yaakov school management decided to make changes in the school structure and
educational arrangements. All students’ parents received a letter specifying the following
requirements:
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Shoshana and Samimian-Darash 1149
a. School prayers and studies had to be conducted ‘in the holy language’ (i.e. us-
ing Ashkenazi pronunciation). Parents had to make sure that students practiced
prayers at home as they were said at school.
b. For reasons of modesty, girls were not allowed to ride bicycles outside the
home.
c. Radios could not be used at home. Computers on which movies of any kind
could be watched were prohibited at home. Internet access in the home was
also prohibited.
d. Girls could not be taken to any hotel or holiday resort. They could not stay at
the home of relatives or friends who were not religious Jews.
Notably, students who did not comply with these requirements were prohibited from
studying in the Hasidic academic track, which could have a detrimental effect on their
futures. Ashkenazi education in men’s yeshivas and women’s seminaries is prestigious,
equips individuals with cultural and symbolic capital (Bourdieu, 1984), and may enable
them future access to various institutions.
Along with these changes, curtained partitions and a railing were raised, separating
Ashkenazi from Mizrahi students. According to the accounts presented in court, even the
lesson hours were changed so that the recesses for the two student groups did not over-
lap. Ashkenazi and Mizrahi students were given distinct uniforms to wear. In fact, two
programs of study were established in the school (the general program and the Hasidic
program), essentially creating two separate schools. Each program had its own principal.
According to proponents, the segregation reflected differences in Ashkenazi and Mizrahi
lifestyles and ultra-orthodox observance. The Hasidic educational program, according to
the segregationists, was more stringent and strict than the general one, and more appro-
priate for students of Ashkenazi origin. The general track was seen as more appropriate
for girls of Mizrahi origin, some of whom came from families of newly orthodox Jews
and of low socio-economic status.
Following this segregation, in August 2007, a number of parents of Mizrahi students
petitioned the Ministry of Education to intervene and halt what they saw as discrimina-
tion against their daughters. The Ministry of Education sent letters to the school, which
were ignored. The Ministry subsequently appointed the legal counselor in the Israeli
State comptroller’s office, Adv. Mordechai Bass, to investigate the situation. In his find-
ings, Adv. Bass noted that he understood the segregation to be the result of different
degrees of observance in the religious life of Hasidic community members (Ashkenazi)
and Mizrahi members. According to Bass, this division had no ethnic basis, and he
asserted that every parent should be free to enroll his or her daughter in the Hasidic track.
The Mizrahi parents also filed a petition asking the High Court of Justice to look into the
matter. The High Court ordered the Ministry of Education and Immanuel local council to
explain why the Ministry was not actively supervising the school and why it did not
ensure that the financial support given to the school was contingent upon compliance
with the law against discrimination.
The High Court’s ruling, issued on 6 August 2009, asserted that the school had
infringed on the Mizrahi students’ right to equality. Moreover, the court ruled that the
Ministry of Education was negligent in not exercising its legitimate authority to prevent
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1150 Sociology 48(6)
this discrimination. The High Court ordered that the segregation in the school be ended
and asserted that ethnic, and not religious, discrimination was transpiring in Immanuel.
The ruling was based on the breach of three central Israeli laws: the law guaranteeing the
right to education and equality (1948); the law protecting human dignity and liberty
(1992); and the law against discrimination (2000).
The parents of the Hasidic-track students refused to comply with the court order.
Their daughters withdrew from the school and alternatively joined ‘private schools’
established in private apartments.
The petitioners then requested that the High Court hold the parents in contempt of
court. The court subsequently ordered contempt proceedings and imposed a penalty on
both the school and the recalcitrant parents. On 7 April 2010, after the parents refused to
comply with its rulings, the High Court ruled that they pay a fine of NIS 5000 for each
day of continued refusal. On 15 June 2010, after the parents had refused to comply with
this order, the court resorted to the threat of arrest. In their ruling, the judges wrote:
Finally, we shall comment that we are still hoping that in Israel there will be no need for the
severe measures used in the United States in order to enforce the famous ruling, Brown vs The
Board of Education of Topeka 347 US 483 (1954), in which the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’
was abolished in the field of education.
The court, in short, used every means at its disposal to try and dismantle the ethnic seg-
regation created in the town’s educational system. Its rulings were ignored. On 17 June
2010, the Supreme Court ordered the arrest of the defiant parents, and 35 fathers duly
surrendered themselves at the police station.
However, after protests in the ultra-orthodox and secular public sectors (demonstra-
tions and appearances by community leaders in the media), the High Court of Justice
ordered the sanctions against the parents lifted and drastically changed the anti-segrega-
tion policy that had characterized its previous ruling. This time, the High Court ruled that
the school hold three joint symposiums for all of the school’s students, in which the most
prominent rabbis and lecturers of all communities were to participate. The intent was to
achieve a level of understanding and reconciliation before the beginning of summer
break in July 2010. That is, instead of imposing a joint educational system, the High
Court in a way embraced the State’s ‘alignment’ practice, according to which all groups
should live side by side in a shared space as if identical. However, this ruling reinforced
the segregation between the different groups, thus having the opposite effect of its unify-
ing intent.
On 25 August 2010, only three months later, the High Court of Justice demonstrated
a radical shift in its previous decision and approved the operation of the Hasidic track as
a private school, unsubsidized by the State and thus subject to little State supervision.
Hence the High Court employed the practice of neglect and governing ‘at a distance’ and
actually authorized the segregation of the population. The High Court acknowledged the
right of various populations to maintain their uniqueness and their religious and cultural
style within Israel’s multicultural society. Currently, two separate schools operate in
Immanuel. They occupy the same structure, which has separate entrances for Ashkenazi
students and Mizrahi students.
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Shoshana and Samimian-Darash 1151
Contrary to Brown vs The Board of Education, in which the law overpowered other gov-
ernance mechanisms, in this case the assumption that the creation of a ‘population’ requires
a certain amount of homogeneity and the practice of governance at a distance actually led to
an antithetical result: an authorized preservation of segregation and heterogeneity.
The claim by Shlomo (a 41-year-old Mizrahi) that ‘the town called the universe to
order’ characterizes a single transient moment in this event, during which a segment of
the local population tries to undermine the segregation created in town by the State’s
governing practices. However, at the end of the day, the judicial order that is sought is
not maintained. On the contrary, the ‘disorder’, discrimination, and official neglect
receive a governmental seal of approval through legal mechanisms.
Discussion
In the past three decades, the concept of ‘governmentality’ has figured prominently in dis-
cussions about the complex ways in which neoliberal and democratic states act. Foucault
emphasized, first and foremost, the heterogeneity of forms of governance (sovereignty,
discipline, and security apparatus) and the multi-dimensionality of the local technologies
enacted under specific political-cultural circumstances. To this complex concept of govern-
mentality, however, Foucault added the concept and the entity of population, and he dis-
cussed the manner in which the governance mechanism invents the population and governs
it to achieve specific goals. It is surprising not only that the invention of population remains
largely untouched in the literature, but also that one of the most central premises in studies
of governmentality – both theoretical and empirical – is that populations are homogeneous.
In this article, we suggest that governmentality always be examined with the understanding
that population is not a pre-existing entity and that it may incorporate a variety of groups
rather than constituting a homogeneous collective body.
This necessitates us to uncover concrete State governance technologies (what Foucault
calls ‘the history of actual technologies’), to examine how they produce the population
and manage it, and to examine the dynamics between the population’s composition –
homogeneity/heterogeneity – and actual governability.
In this regard, Curtis (2002) offers an interesting development of the concept of ‘pop-
ulation’ and points out an important distinction between populousness and population:
‘Population’ is dependent, in the first instance, on the establishment of practical equivalences
among subjects, objects or events. In contrast to populousness, whose logic centers on the
hierarchical differentiation of essences (knights fight, priests pray, peasants till), population
depends upon the notion of a common abstract essence. At the outer limit of abstraction,
population consists of so many undifferentiated atoms distributed through abstract space and
time. (Curtis, 2002: 508)
Moreover, whereas populousness:
… sustains analyses of the collective or social body that connect the relative size of its categories
to policy initiatives, population sustains analyses that may centre on the categorization and
re-categorization, the de-composition and re-composition, the articulation or re-articulation of
the molecular elements of the social body. (Curtis, 2002: 509)
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1152 Sociology 48(6)
Curtis argues that using the concept of the ‘population’ enables ‘the construction of the
uniformity of the governed’. Curtis implicitly suggests a relation between governmental-
ity and the uniformity of the governed: governmentality calls not only for a particular
form of governing but also for a particular form of ‘the governed’ – the population – as
a unified and homogeneous subject. However, when Foucault formulated the concept of
‘governmentality’ and discussed the security apparatus, he concurrently emphasized the
latter’s distinction from the discipline mechanism.
In this regard, we argue that the concept of ‘population’, extracted from a complex
and heterogeneous group of elements, marks a certain level of abstraction which enables
the flattening of its complexity but not necessarily the unification of its components.
Hence, the connection between governmentality and the problem of the population
deserves further discussion, particularly in the context of the heterogeneous population.
We argue that numerous studies of governmentality simply assume the homogeneity of
the governed population. Questions about what happens in cases of heterogeneous popu-
lations and how heterogeneous populations should be governed are not asked. In this
article, we examine concrete techniques of governance that invent a heterogenic popula-
tion and ask what challenges this object/subject brings to the act of governing and how it
is governed in practice (Samimian-Darash, 2011a).
In this article, we suggest that governmentality and the population are connected in a
complex manner. While the space of the disciplinary mechanism is also one that creates
homogeneity, or at least compels joint categories through enclosure and circumscription,
in governmentality the concept of the ‘population’ creates flattening, but not necessarily
homogeneity, through which the population is visible and may be acted upon (Shoshana,
2011). The advantage gained by State authorities in viewing the population as homoge-
neous is evident. Reducing variance within the population while increasing variance
between populations (normal–insane; criminal–normative; religious–secular; Jews–non-
Jews; Mizrahi–Ashkenazi, etc.) seemingly makes regulation easier (as in the disciplinary
mechanism).
The daily governance of the population in Immanuel may be divided into three main
practices that governmental officials try to carry out: non-selection with respect to admis-
sion, neglect, and reducing the State’s authorities presence in town. These practices,
aimed at creating a certain unification and enabling governance at a distance, instead
allow the creation of radical heterogeneity in the town, which in turn decreases the
State’s involvement to the point in which the town becomes almost ‘invisible’ (‘godfor-
saken’) to the authorities. However, the town temporarily achieves maximal visibility
during ‘the event’, when the relationships between its constituent groups as well as the
State’s governmental mechanisms are revealed.
Taking these findings into consideration, we suggest reading and examining the
encounter between the population and the governance and emerging forms of governing
(governmentality) through Foucault’s 1998[1977] concept of the ‘milieu’. The milieu is
the (non-material) space of possible events in which the State operates in regulating the
population. In other words, we propose examining governmentality in events that high-
light the unique encounter between complex governance mechanisms and heterogeneous
populations.
This examination of governmentality may also contribute to the understanding of the
underlying complex cultural and political dynamics within inequality. The sociological
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Shoshana and Samimian-Darash 1153
and anthropological study of inequality suggests three levels of analysis: structural, phe-
nomenological, and ethnographic. The first level describes the structural and organiza-
tional factors responsible for durable inequality (Tilly, 1999). The two other levels
involve analysis of inequality in naturalistic social settings (Rivera, 2010). The Immanuel
case study, drawing on the study of Governmentality, shows the manner in which the
actual technologies of governance, explicitly intended to promote homogeneity, end up
increasing heterogeneity, segregation, and inequality. Hence, more studies on practices
of governing that take place beyond formal State institutions’ actions might shed light on
the complex relationship between governmentality, population, and inequality.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or
not-for-profit sectors.
Notes
1. Normation differs from normalization: normation is directed towards a predetermined norm,
whereas normalization creates the norm through action.
2. In this article, we refer to governmentality in its three main aspects – sovereignty, disci-
pline, and security. When referring specifically to the third function, we use the term ‘security
apparatus’.
3. We thank Paul Rabinow for making this distinction.
4. Immanuel is located in Judea and Samaria in the West Bank, or the ‘occupied territories’. In
this article we do not engage in discussing the politics of the town’s establishment but rather
in the internal governmental practices enacted on the town’s population. Ethnographically
speaking, the town’s governance was the main issue of concern raised explicitly by our
informants, various residents as well as bureaucratic officials. That is to say, in this town
what is experienced in everyday life is the difficult socio-economic status and the religious
tension between the various groups in the town.
5. These are the names the residents themselves used.
6. ‘Sephardim’ is a label originally applied to Jews expelled from Spain in 1492, most of whom
moved to Muslim countries. Today it refers to Mizrahi Jews.
7. Ashkenazis sometimes describe their form of ultra-orthodox Judaism as authentic Judaism, as
continuing the traditional Jewish way of life; see, for example, Heilman, 1992.
8. Population committees are active in places where ultra-orthodox rabbinic authorities are pow-
erful (and where the access of mainly Mizrahi ultra-orthodox Jews and newly orthodox Jews
is prevented). Population committees act informally and in a manner unrecognized by the
State’s authorities.
9. Immanuel in Hebrew literally means God is with us, that is, Immanu El.
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Avi Shoshana is a senior lecturer at the Faculty of Education, University of Haifa, Israel. Avi’s
areas of research include social psychology; discourse and subjectivity; ethnicity, race and
social class; and culture, education and self-concept.
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Shoshana and Samimian-Darash 1155
Limor Samimian-Darash is a lecture (assistant professor) at the Federman School of Public Policy
and Government at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She was recently chosen as one of five
promising early-career social scientists in Israel, for the Alon Fellowship (2013–2016). She
received her PhD in anthropology and sociology from the Hebrew University (2009). Her research
interest include: anthropology of the state and policy, anthropology of security, and risk and uncer-
tainty. She was a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley (2006–2008), and a
post-doctoral researcher at Stanford University (2010–2012). Her most recent publication is:
Preparedness for Potential Future Biothreats: Toward an Anthropology of Uncertainty. Current
Anthropology 2013, 54(1).
Date submitted October 2012
Date accepted October 2013
