Itamar Even-Zohar

Itamar Even-Zohar (Hebrew: איתמר אבן-זהר‎‎) (born 1939) is an Israeli culture researcher and professor at Tel Aviv University. Even-Zohar is a pioneer of polysystem theory and the theory of cultural repertoires.

Itamar Even-Zohar was born in Tel Aviv. He earned his degrees from the University of Tel Aviv (B.A., and PhD) and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (M.A). He also studied in Oslo, Copenhagen and Stockholm. He has been a guest scholar at universities and research centers in Amsterdam, Paris, Philadelphia, Reykjavík, Quebec City, Louvain, Santiago de Compostela, Santander, St. John's (Newfoundland), Barcelona and Santa Cruz, California. He has a working knowledge of Hebrew (mother tongue), Arabic, English, French, Swedish, Spanish, Norwegian, Danish, Italian, Russian, German, Icelandic, and other languages. In April 2014 he was elected Honorary Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Division of Humanities and the Social Sciences.

Since the early 1970s Even-Zohar has been working on developing theoretical tools and research methodology for dealing with the complexity and interdependency of socio-cultural ‘systems,’ which he views as heterogeneous, versatile and dynamic networks. In 1972, he proposed a multi-layered structural theory of text (Even-Zohar 1972), but soon became one of the first critics of “Static Structuralism” (Even-Zohar 1978) and what he saw as a reification flaw imposed on the Structuralist agenda by a rigid and ‘sterile’ interpretation of Saussure’s notions of structure and ‘linguistic system’. In order for these notions to be widely and fruitfully applicable to all living, complex cultural activities, he believes one must take into account the interplay of the (historical) and (contemporary) dimensions of a socio-cultural system”. He therefore introduced the idea of “dynamic Structuralism,” with the concept of an ”open system of systems,” to capture the aspects of variability and heterogeneity in time and place (Even-Zohar 1979).

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