Value and Epistemic Shifts Accompanying Social Change Among the Bedouin in Southern Israel

This study examines the influence of social change on shifts in values and epistemic perspective among Bedouin in southern Israel, a formerly nomadic community which has become increasingly sedentary, urban, and exposed to a diverse, multicultural society. They now live in three social ecologies: single-clan villages with little infrastructure; multi-clan towns with increasing infrastructure; and multicultural cities. Generations within these communities grew up in different social ecologies; the grandparents as adolescents had been nomadic, less educated, and concerned with subsistence, while among parents and current adolescents there has been a transition toward more schooling, commerce, and contact with outside groups.

It was hypothesized that older generations of Bedouin and Bedouin from single-clan villages would be the most likely to value gender hierarchy and ascribed gender roles, and least likely to have relativist beliefs about the source and nature of knowledge. 180 participants, consisting of 60 adolescent girls and their mothers and grandmothers their same sex parents, and their same-sex grandparents, divided evenly between single-clan villages, multi-village towns, and multicultural cities, responded to dilemmas concerning gender roles and epistemic perspective. There were significant main effects of generation. Grandmothers, followed by mothers, and then adolescent girls, valued gender hierarchy and ascribed roles, with adolescents valuing gender equality and role choice more. Adolescents had the most relativist epistemic perspectives followed by mothers and grandmothers, respectively. Interactions between generation and social ecology showed that these patterns were strongest in multicultural cities in which the grandparents had grown up in a radically different social ecology.