If a stranger asks me a question i usually have "the impression" that they are interested in my answer as a factual statement.
I usually don't expect them expecting me to be a clown, a prankster or a relativist prick.
Except the respondents aren't even giving their own answers, so it's definitely not a trick to get them to say things with clumsy phrasing that can then be interpreted liberally. The statements are given to them, and if they fail to recognise the connotations of these statements, then that is itself something sociologically interesting.
Similarly, if some interviewees say that poor people tend to be lazy, even though they might mean it purely as a factual statement without necessarily indicating that they would pre-judge any poor person they met, that would be interesting to a sociologist studying popular perceptions on socio-economic class.
The important thing is not to bias the respondents or the interviewees towards agreeing with the statements given if they wouldn't normally do so.
metatron said:
You go from "it seems" to "therefore" to "people here don't understand".
You feel that sort of reasoning is a basis for any good dialoge?
Eh, if a thing appears to be a certain kind of thing, why would there be a basis for treating it as some other kind of thing, unless you have reason to believe that it is not what it appears to be?
metatron said:
You seem to fail to appreciate precisely the factors (context and circumstance) that you explained to be that important before.
Let me try again in more detail:
1. Many Germans, especially those without academic carriers, when interupted in their daily business (the way surveys usually do) usually equate "Jews" with "Israel".
Most of them know that's technically not correct.
But context somewhat justifies being used to that particular imprecision, the context being that there are virtually no "Jews" around in Germany for obvious reasons and 99% of the time when people are confronted with the existance of "Jews" it's about Israel (the other one percent being somewhat politically incorrect jokes on American TV shows).
2. Many Germans aren't very fond of Israel. It essentially represents everything they don't like precisely for the reason of their own history. They consider it a militaristic, racist, violent nation coated with some occasional (de facto) theocratic paint here and there.
Germans do get the practical necessity for some if not most of Israels policies - it's not that they are completely naive and ignorant about the middle east. But they are repulsed by those policies and by the tone Israel usually strikes in foreign affairs none the less.
Essentially many of them dislike Israel for being a bully among nations, for being a Prussia on steroids with a little less secularism.
The last thing they associate Israelis (-> Jews) with, especially while not liking them, is them being slackers or "parasitic" in some way. Germans have precisely the opposite impression of them and consider Israelis very industrious people.
3. The idea is somewhat salient among Germans that what i lined out in "2" is by and large the German's fault (not some heridentery character fault or anything obscure and nonsensical like that).
Especially German liberals think about the German Jews before the Holocaust as roughly the best people ever in existance: Sophisticated, decent people with high morals and values. Unsurprisingly they are quite disappointed with most Israeli public figures especially those involved in any way in foreign policy and diplomacy. They are viewed as blunt, rude, reckless and by and large people without morals and values and decency.
The salient feeling of the German liberal can be summed up by the statement (which i witnessed in private company frequently): "If it wasn't bad enough that we killed half of them, unfortunatly by doing so we also turned the other half of them into a bunch of Na.. erm... not so nice people."
3. a) Generally speaking Germans have no problem with giving Israel (more) money.
Most of the resistence is based on either the way Israel asks for it or the way Israel spends it.
Essentially the feeling is that what should be living up to a moral imperative has mutated into being coerced by a bully to pay for an even bigger baseball bat he can beat his wife with.
Even so (ignoring the fact that the exact phrasing of the relevant statements might make them less ambiguous than you think, as the statement on "benefits" seems to show), isn't the fact that some Germans conflate Jews and Israel interesting? It is perhaps even more interesting that the tendency to conflate Arabs and Muslims, and it does provide some evidence on a possible source of antipathy towards Jews in general.
metatron said:
True. But before you judge people for failing at that you should at least put up a minimal effort to understand where they are coming from and what they are actually talking about.
Given your comments on the "notion of parasitism" thingy you apparently didn't.
That's what the statement about "benefits" suggests. That kind of language evokes the notion of parasitism. Unless you're saying that the German version isn't what it looks like in English, I don't think you have a point here.
metatron said:
Ok, let me get this straight:
- The Federal Diet of the Federal Republic of Germany is going like "uhm, erm, let's look a bit into whther or not we are Nazis again, shall we" and sets up a commision to look into the matter and hire researchers and stuff and come up with a 204 page report.
- You don't read the report. Cause you don't speak German.
- You do read half page news articles on the web presences of Britsh, American and Turkish daily newspapers.
- You feel confident to know stuff about the study.
- So confident that you feel you can educate people on this forum about how they are stupid f***s that have no idea about scientific studies...
- ...including Germans who might potentially actually have read the 204 page report instead of the half page article* on the website of a some newspaper.
I did get all of that right?
Not that i'm commenting on that. I merely want to check if i understood all of that correctly.
You don't seem to understand. Have you taken a look at the report? Did you read the article? I have at least done those things. And having done those things, I know that the author of the study with the survey is, as mentioned in the article, Wilhelm Heitmeyer, who does not seem to be author of the report Power of Beer linked to because his name appears only in its citations and bibliography.
Since you apparently don't realise this, then I seem to have done more homework than you have.
