Shai M. Dromi

Provides a historical analysis of contemporary humanitarian NGO policies and challenges. Examines the origins of humanitarian relief organizations emphasis on neutrality and avoidance of politics. Highlights central role of the International Committee of the Red Cross in developing these policies. 

Claims that environmental activists often harbor ideas about nature protection that are drawn from national culture. Analyzes opposing groups in Israel — ideological settlers and green activists — and shows that despite harboring different ideas on environmental activism, both interlink their ideas on nature protection and their sense of commitment to their country, and both draw on national discourses in order to promote environmentalism.

Focuses on founding political elites, which are groups that found new political systems and dominate them for extended periods in new democracies. Claims that these groups face difficulties conceding democratic electoral defeat, and develop long-lasting perceptions of having been unfairly removed from power. Shows that both the Israeli Labor Party and the Turkish Republican People's Party experienced similar trajectories as founding political elites, and that both are limited in their public maneuvers by persisting resentment toward much of the voting public.

Shows that advertising professionals also tie job satisfaction to their beliefs about the positive effects of their work on society. Claims that employees need to perceive themselves as moral individuals, and experience frustration when they believe their industry is stigmatized. 

Shows that the values humanitarian nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) use to justify their policies, such as impartiality and neutrality, originate from a mid-nineteenth-century Protestant movement. Focuses on the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), a leader in the humanitarian relief sector. Claims that current ideas governing humanitarian interventions rely on culturally-specific beliefs that have predominated over the past 150 years. 

Focuses on the role national belief systems and patriotic sentiments have had for the worldwide adoption of humanitarian policies and organizations. Analyzes the late-nineteenth-century development of national Red Cross societies. Claims that the spread of the Red Cross movement and the ratification of the Geneva Convention in different countries was facilitated by their resonance with local beliefs about national responsibility. 

Draws attention to the communicative functions of money in the reparation process, using the 2005 removal of Jewish-Israeli settlers from Israeli-occupied territories as a case study. Claims that actors may grudgingly agree to attach a monetary value to what they hold sacred, but simultaneously strive to preserve their sense of self-worth and to elicit identification by raising moral critiques about the use of fiscal logic.

Focuses on how individuals account for the mundane, everyday exchanges they have with strangers who seek their help. The article claims that the presence of beggars does not inherently symbolize urban decay to passersby and does not necessarily elicit anxiety, but instead provides a valuable texture of urban life. The article suggests that urban sociology and the sociology of risk would benefit from sensitizing their studies of public interactions to the diverse meanings individuals assign to them, rather than presupposing annoyance, anxiety, or fear as their predominant characteristic.

Explores how references to trauma, and representations about it, are not just individual but social and collective by tracing the divergent trajectories and moral meanings the Holocaust memory has taken by different parties in the Middle East.