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The book analyses the development of Israel's national identity through the world of local Jewish Zionist historiography. Inspired by Norbert Elias' historical and figurational sociology, the book examines the different phases and generations in Israel in light of the collective habitus and the nation-state survival unit, set by Zionism. It does so by putting in relation the intellectual profession of history-writing and the processes of state and identity building. It processually pursues the autonomization of the historiographical field in Israel from its socio-genesis in pre-state Israel to recent decades. By combining together well-established literature on the relations between nationalism and statehood and on the particularity of the Israeli case, the book updates the state of the art and opens new debates on Jewish\\Israeli exceptionalism, while shedding light on continuity and change in Israeli statehood vis-à-vis the supposed uniqueness of Jewish history, as reinterpreted and codified by Zionism. As it examines the interconnections between local intelligentsia and politics, the enquiry avails of the sociological concepts of \"generation
