The Americanization of Israeli basketball (1978-1996) - a figurational analysis

By adopting a developmental approach, this thesis studied the case of Israeli basketball and documented the process by which Israeli basketball, as part of Israeli culture, was Americanized.;Recognizing that Americanization needs to be viewed as part of broader globalization, processes, this study examined how far developments in Israeli basketball can be explained as aspects of an Americanization process.;Using Israeli professional basketball as the prism to identify the Americanization process occurring within Israeli society as a whole, this thesis illustrates how basketball in Israel became involved in the network of overlapping social and global forces. The thesis discusses the power relations and balances among various groups and people involved in the development of Israeli basketball such as Israeli, American and naturalized players, coaches, Israel Basketball Association leaders and administrators, sponsors and entrepreneurs, mayors, lawyers, parliament members, reporters, journalists and commentators. All these actors were implicated to a greater or lesser extent in influencing the developmental trajectory of Israeli basketball and were caught up in, and helped contribute to, the process of Americanization.;Going beyond the search for a single cause for the process of Americanization, this thesis also discusses the power relations among various groups that constitute Israel society, based on the analysis of processes such as 'professionalization', 'secularization', 'urbanization', and 'militarization', that gathered momentum parallel to the Americanization process.;In the case of Israeli basketball, and in a much broader context, the suggestion is that Israel society is being 'overshadowed', maybe more than ever before, by the more powerful American state. However, as this thesis indicates and as process-sociologists would argue, assimilation, at least in any simple sense, is not a sufficient explanation for the observed events.