Challenges and Opportunities as Stimulus for Transformation for the Bedouin-Arab Society in the Negev, Israel

Conveners: Orna Braun-Lewensohn, BGU

Bedouin society has undergone rapid changes over the past decade. The younger generation of Bedouins is better educated, which has enabled them to enter different professions, increased their incomes and elevated their social status. The present panel will introduce four different studies which examined features of coping of this society during the past 10 years.

In the first presentation Dr. Hassan Ganayim will characterize unique stress situations and coping strategies among Arab Bedouin teenagers living in unrecognized villages‎ in Israel. The study brings up Bedouin teenagers’ voices which are often unheard. These youngsters describe their reality and subjective experiences of stressors as well as coping mechanisms which they encounter in their lives.‎‎

Dr. Haled Al-Said, will portray the impact of demolition of houses, which is a common phenomena in Bedouin villages in the Negev (southern Israel), on adolescents who are exposed to these events. To this end, he will explore how coping resources explain emotional reactions to stress among adolescents from recognized villages and unrecognized villages.

Mr. Dvir Mazri, will explore the objective-structural and subjective-personal catalysts and barriers to approach formal mental health services. Catalysts and barriers will be examined as it interacts under the unique ethnic identity of Arab-Bedouin society and how those relations contribute to the intensity of emotional distress.

Through the last presentation Prof. Braun-Lewensohn will describe three generations of Bedouin women, their sense of coherence (SOC) and its components of meaningfulness, manageability, and comprehensibility as well as the use of coping strategies by these women. The result of this study allows us to see the rapid and dramatic changes during the past decade in which women in the Bedouin have undergone.

Prof. Sarah Abu-Kaf will discuss all studies and their implications based on the salutogenic theory of Antonovsky and the stress and coping theory by Lazarus & Folkman.

Speakers: