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Doing Business with Beauty: Black Women, Hair Salons, and the Racial Enclave Economy

contrast to Polish and Russian Jews (eastern and primitive). Zionism maintained and extended this dichotomy. The ideology assumed that Middle Eastern Jews (Mizrahim) posed a threat to the westernized society that European Jews (Ashkenazim) would establish in Israel. Thus European Jewish discourse in general, and Zionism’s pre-state blue prints for Israel in particular, endorsed ethnic hierarchy. Understanding the development of Jewish identities during the 1800s and early 1900s by itself contributes much to the sociology of culture and ethnicity. But history created a natural experiment on social movement outcomes and state building when Israel was created in 1948. About 600,000 Jews lived there at the time. From war and expulsion, the non-Jewish population of some 900,000 was reduced by four-fifths. Over the next twelve years, almost one million Jewish immigrants from more than twenty countries arrived. Khazzoom summarizes the theoretical significance of these developments: “What emerged was as close to a new society as sociologists can hope to find” (p. 3). Much scholarship has been devoted to understanding the development of Israeli social structure, but SEBI adds significantly to this literature by systematically analyzing the socio-economic adaptation of immigrants. Six countries accounted for more than two-thirds of the post-statehood immigration: Romania, Poland, the USSR, Iraq, Morocco, and Yemen. The first three provide an Ashkenazi sample while the latter three provide a Mizrahi sample. With data from the 1961 Israeli census—which includes information on the pre-emigration occupation of immigrants—SEBI makes the most of this empirical manna to test a range of theoretically informed hypotheses on ethnic boundaries, discrimination, and class. The sociology of Israel has already documented how state gatekeepers used their power to micro-manage immigrants’ modes of incorporation. Preventing the Mizrahim from “easternizing” Israeli society was a top priority. SEBI demonstrates how this social control played out in the labor market. Ashkenazi and Mizrahi immigrants with comparable human capital on arrival obtained (respectively) more and less prestigious occupations. In addition, class differences among Ashkenazi immigrants diminished over time as did those among Mizrahi immigrants. Why? State sanctioned dichotomization homogenized initially disparate ethnic groups by producing more cultural capital for immigrants with Ashkenazi national origins and less for those with Mizrahi national origins. So now we know how the Polish peddler became a German intellectual. But SEBI adds a twist to the story: so did the Iraqi bookkeeper! Iraqi immigrants attained a socio-economic status comparable to that of Ashkenazi immigrants despite being labeled Mizrahi. How? By having “modern” cultural capital (such as a secular education) that gatekeepers valued for nation-building projects. By analyzing the precise historical period when class and ethnic hierarchies converged in Israel, SEBI makes an original and brilliant contribution to theoretical explanations of social inequality. Ethnic competition theory argues that ethnic identities are mobilized largely due to conflict among groups to secure scarce economic resources. SEBI persuasively demonstrates another stratification process. In some socio-political contexts, the motivation behind economic competition is not just material gain but the validation of group identity and its ideological assumptions. Who could value identity and ideology that much? Refugees, social movements, and state builders, that’s who.