PhD Researcher
Friday was a tough day. I had not slept much after a night of excitement and thrill. Once noon had passed, I eventually made it out of bed to meet up with friends in a pub and I stunned them by ordering a large cappuccino rather than a pint when I arrived. The diagnosis was … Continue reading The Hangover
Thinking sociologically means to “broaden our horizons of understanding” by not being satisfied with “exclusivity and completeness” that goes along with individual interpretations (Bauman and May, 2001:181). So thinking sociologically is an invitation to be critical and observant but, as C. Wright Mills points out, social scientists also need to treat sociology as a “practice of a craft” (Mills, 2000:195).
The story begins in 1967. The six-day war is just over and for the first time it is possible for Palestinian Arabs to travel to the lands which they had left in the war of 1948. Bashir, a young man in his mid-twenties, takes his chance to visit his native village Ramla with his cousins and eventually ends up ringing the doorbell of his birth place. There he meets young Dalia, who is at home over the summers from her studies and her training in the Israeli army. To Bashir’s surprise Dalia is welcoming him and his cousins and invites them in. The beginning of an unlikely friendship.
Let me introduce myself as a German who through the most unlikely of coincidences ended up in Scotland and made it her home.
Rebecca Gebauer 