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Abstract
In the kibbutz debate about changes, payment for work of the members is
considered a fundamental change. Several kibbutzim have experienced this
change since the beginning of the 1990s. What actually happens in a kibbutz
community after it starts paying members for their work? How do people react
to this change? Is it a final change or only a step toward a deeper change, such as
the introduction of differential wages? These questions are treated in this paper.
On the basis of qualitative data, it is suggested that: The different prevalent
agreements of payment for members' work result in unequal opportunities to
work for money. First and foremost, they seem to upset the classic stratification
by discriminating against the highest strata (managers in the economic and
social sectors). More than seven years after the introduction of remuneration for
work, no stable rules have been found and this topic is in perpetual negotiation.
Finally, Bourdieu's theory of social field seems to provide adapted tools to
describe and explain the process involved in this specific change: with financial
reward from work the kibbutz community figures as a social field where all
the actors (the members) are involved. In this field, the increase of members'
private income from work is at issue. To achieve this aim, the actors developed
different strategies. But beyond the manifest and short-term "struggle" for
accumulation of economic capital, a latent struggle is discernible. In this, at
stake is the completion of technocrats' domination of the kibbutz community
and the predictable coup de grace to the egalitarian ideology.