Case Study: Venture in Utopia

The only money chaverim receive, in fact, is a small annual vacation allowance which go away allow them to pay for goods or services they might gaze to purchase on their stays outside the kibbutz (20).

Because money is non a factor in kibbutz society and food and hold are provided on the basis of need and/or length of service in the participation, there is little emphasis place on occupation, and no stigma is attached to jobs which are often considered secondary in the outside world, such(prenominal) as cleaning lavatories. In fact, contrary to practice in the outside world, where scholars and professionals hold high-prestige positions, in the kibbutz system, physiologic labor is highly valued--in fact, "the further removed from physical labor, the less prestige a job confers" (16). The emphasis placed on the importance of physical labor is so voiceless that chaverim are subject to excessive feelings of guilt when they do not gain, even if their absence is due to sickness or virtually other reasonable cause (16). Spiro even reports that he, as an outsider, push down prey to this philosophy. For the sake of his research, he was allowed to pay for some of his expenses and treat for others; when he was forced to cut his work hours further, he sight he was able to do even less work on his research because his feelings of guilt

Family life, such as it was, also remained essentially intact in the age between Spiro's initial visit and his return in 1970. He does note that parents, due to lack of necessity, fail to acquire about of the abilities essential to traditional parenting, and that they are incapable of spending much time with their children than the two hours per day the system allows (276). He suggests, alas without elaboration, that the system somehow deprives parents, particularly mothers, of something essential, saying of mothers that "perhaps they . . . are ambivalent and somewhat confused--accepting the system, but not getting a great deal of emotional satisfaction from it" (277).

Spiro, M. E. (1970). Kibbutz: Venture in Utopia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

In an epilogue written in 1970, Spiro examines the effects wars, modernization, and phylogenesis had on Kiryat Yedidim family life. Although the general marriage patterns Spiro observed two decades in front persisted, he noticed that the general attitudes toward sex were much more than open. In his original visit, Spiro noted that there were few couples among high-school students, and criminal conversation was almost unheard of; in addition, dirty jokes were rarely if e'er heard, even among same-sex groups (112-117). By 1970, high-school romances occurred, though they were still uncommon; furthermore, Spiro writes, by 1970, "chaverim do tell dirty jokes . . . they do look at Playboy center folds, and they do look over a pretty face or body," though he concedes that such behavior is tolerated, not encouraged (272).

In a community where various(prenominal)s own nothing, have no money to acquire anything, go away not where they choose but where they are assigned housing--what is the billet of the family, and how are children reared? Kibbutz philosophy stresses the importance of the group over the individual; therefore an outsider might at first run into that children are drenched in this philosophy and perhaps adversely
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