Walk the Talk

Well, I did my talk about the lessons on kibbutz life yesterday, and I think it went well. (Maybe that’s just the energy drink I had beforehand speaking!) It was reasonably well-attended with familiar and new faces. People seemed to be focused and attentive on my potted history of the kibbutz movement, even if the “comic relief” photos from my kibbutz experiences fell a little flat. I’d hoped there might be more discussion in the Q&A, as I’d promised in my talk’s title, about how the lessons of the kibbutz movement could be applied here in Canada. But most people wanted to talk about big issues like socialism vs. Marxism and Israel vs. Palestine. Several people came up to me afterwards and shared stories of their own kibbutz experiences, which I appreciated.

The Q&A got briefly sidetracked by a woman who showed up early to distribute leaflets and claimed my talk left out “half the story” — how the kibbutz had been built on “stolen land” and with the blood of the Palestinian people. I’d anticipated this objection, but I don’t know if I responded to it satisfactorily. (I felt it was a particularly ill-timed critique, considering a guest worker on a kibbutz in the south of the country had been killed by a rocket fired from Gaza that morning.) Instead, an audience member pointed out that most kibbutzim were built, in fact, on land bought by the Jewish National Fund. 

Anyway, I’ll write more about the talk (and post a link to the podcast when it’s ready) next week. In the meantime, I wanted to share a few key points that a good friend, who attended and who lived on a kibbutz (as did his parents), sent me today. They are definitely areas I’d like to follow up in my own research:

A few ideas:

Most kibbutz chalutzim (pioneers) came from Eastern Europe, smaller numbers from the relative wealth and security of North America. Kfar Menachem, where my parents lived, had quite a few Canadians and Americans. This might be an interesting area to explore--why North Americans left relative comfort and safety to live the tough life on kibbutzim in the early days. (One American couple I knew lost both their sons within a few days in the 1967 war.) 

Arab Israeli relations: this is an encyclopedic topic of course but again I think some kibbutz members took leadership in forging better relations, learning Arabic and working with their Arab neighbours. When I visited the Arab village next to KM and asked the men who lived there if the kibbutzniks were their friends, they said "Lo chaverim, achim," Not friends, brothers.

Thanks for the feedback: dialogue is what I hope my talk promoted. And that’s a phrase I think we should all add to our vocabulary: Not friends, brothers. And sisters, too, for that matter!

Purim Photos

I've been buried away the last week or so, devoting all my free time to preparing for my upcoming (yikes!) talk about kibbutz life for the Centre for Co-operative and Community-Based Economy on March 28th. But I did want to take a moment and post a link to a wonderful collection of photos taken of the Purim celebrations on Kibbutz Merhavia in 1963.

It reminded me of the Purim festivities on Shamir that I participated in. The whole story will take more time than I have now to tell, but sometimes an image really is worth a thousand words, so let me include a photo from my experience of Purim, airborne and dancing a mashed-up version of Swan Lake for the entire kibbutz. It was one of the craziest moments of my life... And as you can tell, while more than 25 years separate the photos from Merhavia and Shamir, the irreverent spirit of Purim remains the same. I wish we had the goy-ish equivalent in Canadian culture!

Ultimatum and the Kibbutz

I’ve been enjoying my new tenure as a research fellow, for the next six months, at the Centre for Co-operative and Community-Based Economy (formerly, the B.C. Institute of Co-operative Studies). Every Friday, at 10 am, the staff, my fellow fellows and anyone else interested in what goes on here gathers for tea and conversation. (If you’re on campus, you ought to come by!) On a recent Friday, talk turned to the intriguing results of the socio-economic experimental “game” called “Ultimatum”.

In Ultimatum, two players must decide how to divide a sum of money (say, $100). The first person makes an offer; the second person can either accept or reject that offer, but if he or she rejects it, both players get nothing. It’s a one-offer deal. There is no negotiating.

The rational response of Player #2 should be to take whatever is offered by Player #1—it’s better than squat. However, in practice, many players will reject offers of 30% or less. Why they would take nothing rather than a little is one question. Why Player #1 is such a Scrooge is another—although, at least in pure economic science, players are acting “rationally” (i.e., in their own best interests) if they low-ball their compatriot, who has little leverage beyond accepting or rejecting the offer. Further studies have shown variations based on culture and gender: women behave more cooperatively, apparently, and are more likely to propose an even split.

Later, I came across a brief article in the New York Times Magazine annual Ideas issue that described a “drunken Ultimatum” experiment, in which imbibers at a bar were asked to play. They were even less likely to take anything less than a 50:50 split, suggesting that short-term revenge (or a sense of injustice) rather than long-term strategizing was behind this seemingly irrational behaviour.

Of course, after learning about Ultimatum, I immediately wondered: W.W.K.D.? What would a kibbutznik do?

I wasn’t surprised to learn that someone had already answered this question. Because of its unique communal set-up and voluntary membership, the kibbutz is one of the most intensely studied communities in the world, generating thousands of academic studies over the years. (I can only imagine what it must be like to be kibbutz-born identical twins, one raised there and one raised elsewhere—you’d be the ideal choice for every social science, nature-vs.-nurture experiment on the planet!)

While they didn’t use Ultimatum, Bradley Ruffle and Richard Sosis deployed a similar experiment to compare the level of co-operation of kibbutzniks (taken from relatively well-off, still-traditional kibbutzim) between fellow (but anonymous) kibbutz members versus “outsiders” (i.e., likely townsfolk). To simplify, the two players were told that an envelope held 100 shekels and they could take as much or as little as they wanted, but so could the other mystery player. If what the two players took totalled more than 100, then they would receive nothing. If it totalled less than 100, then what remained was multiplied by 1.5 and divided equally between the two players, plus they could keep whatever they had removed originally. The idea is to distinguish motives for individual gain (i.e., taking a lot and hoping your opponent takes a little) from those of collective gain (i.e., taking nothing or a little, knowing that what remains will be redistributed fairly with dividends).

The 2006 paper documents some surprising results. When faced off against another (unknown) kibbutz member, kibbutz subjects showed a willingness to behave cooperatively and only take a little from the envelope. When matched with an “outsider”, they behaved exactly as other subjects in the control group of non-kibbutzniks and were tempted to take more from the envelope. (Sociologists describe this as an example of “in-group bias”.) Equally intriguing, the longer that someone had lived at a kibbutz—i.e., if they were a born and raised kibbutznik versus a new member—the more likely they were to behave less rather than more cooperatively. New members—at least those who choose to join the still-traditional kibbutzim (the experiment was done in 2000, before the acceleration of privatization)—tend to be more ideological in their communalism than existing kibbutzniks.

As the co-authors write in their conclusion:

Despite the promise of a universally cooperative group, kibbutz members cooperate more with members of their own kibbutz than with city residents. What is more, when paired with one another, kibbutz members and city residents exhibit identical levels of cooperation. In this sense, kibbutz members may be said to be conditionally cooperative individuals. Our findings attest to the strength of the psychological foundations of in-group-out-group biases, in spite of a society’s efforts to train its members otherwise. Even members of this once idyllic, voluntary, cooperative community do not treat all individuals alike. Instead, they appear to form expectations concerning others’ degree of cooperation and reciprocate in kind.

Happy Anniversaries

Just over twenty years ago, I took my tuition money for second-year university and bought a plane ticket to Israel instead. I'd heard about a kind of communal farm called a "kibbutz" that welcomed international volunteers—often wander-lost souls like myself—on working vacations. Once in Israel, I was assigned to Kibbutz Shamir, in northern Galilee, on the slopes of the Golan Heights. I only intended to stay for a month or two and then continue travelling. I ended up working there for nearly seven months—and was sorely tempted by an offer of a longer term job.

I returned to Canada profoundly changed by my experiences on Kibbutz Shamir. I tried to write about my time there in poetry, fiction and drama, but never felt satisfied with these creative expressions. My life and studies and work in Canada took over, and I never returned to Israel as I had intended.

A year or so ago, I decided to google "Kibbutz Shamir" out of curiosity—I had lost touch with friends from my time there—and was startled to see that many of the documents that came up were about how, in 2005, the lens-making factory (where I had often worked) had made its debut on the NASDAQ stock exchange.

A kibbutz founded by Romanian socialists, part of a communal movement often described as "the purest form of socialism in the western world", was getting wealthy in the free market. Shamir had obviously changed since I'd left. So, too, I was soon to discover, had much of the movement.

Last June, I had the opportunity for a two-week return visit to Shamir and Israel and a chance to talk to members of Kibbutz Shamir and many experts in the field of kibbutz studies. I hope to return again some time soon for a longer visit.

This new year—2010—marks the centenary (okay, some people mark it as 2009, others as 2011, but more on that later) of Israel's kibbutz system, with the founding of Degania, the original kibbutz, along the shores of the Sea of Galilee, where the River Jordan flows south, by a dozen young Jewish pioneers. There will be many celebrations to mark this anniversary and much soul-searching amongst critics and kibbutz members who fear that the movement has lost its ideals and its positive influence on the state of Israel.

This blog is just one small, highly subjective attempt to chart some of these debates about the most influential communal movement in the world, as well as an opportunity (kindly supported by a fellowship at the Centre for Co-operative and Community-Based Economy here at the University of Victoria) for me to share research, conversations and memories as I reflect on what I experienced on Kibbutz Shamir and what I'm continuing to learn about the kibbutz movement. In a more general way, it will also be about our shared search for utopia—for a better place—in an often divided world.

Please join me on this journey of discovery and share your own thoughts and comments at the different stops along the way.

—David Leach