Studying Close to Home: The Intersection of Life and Work

Sociology of Religion, Winter, 2000 by Lynn Davidman

Lynn Davidman [*]

My research in sociology spans several substantive fields--religion (in its institutional and extra-institutional manifestations), gender, and family--but it is united by my continuing theoretical interests in the creation of narratives of identity in circumstances of biographical disruption, and the epistemology of social scientific "knowledge." Methodologically, I have primarily relied upon ethnographic methods of participant observation, in-depth interviewing, and textual analysis in order to understand how the interplay of individual lives with social structures and ideological systems -- especially those related to gender -- shapes the narratives individuals construct about their lives in a variety of diverse situations. A continuing fascination with the ways that people experience the sacred in their everyday lives also animates much of my work.

My books, Tradition in a rootless world (1991), and Motherloss (2000) are based on narratives created by individuals whose experiences of biographical disruption shattered their culturally derived expectations of their life course. In the first instance the study highlighted the ways that people who adopt a religious way of life that is distinct from their parents' attempt to create consistent narratives that incorporate these changes into their ongoing sense of self. Motherloss focuses on the accounts of adults whose mothers died when these adults were early adolescents. Analyzing biographical disruptions such as motherloss and religious transformation reveals that people who live through these sorts of momentous changes are uniquely situated to engage in the narrative production of identity and the reinscription of meaning. The particular forms and substance of these stories reveal the ways that individuals' life stories are shaped by the larger social structures and cultural meanings of the society in whi ch they live.

GENDER AND THE STUDY OF RELIGION

Tradition in a rootless world is an ethnographic representation and analysis of two groups of Jewish women who, in the context of two distinct Orthodox communities, move to Orthodox Judaism as a way of resolving dilemmas of female existence in contemporary society. The two communities, modern Orthodox and Hasidic, illustrate divergent strategies -- along the continuum of accommodation and resistance -- for constructing traditional religious communities in the face of the challenges of modernity. The focus on gender and on religion allows each topic to illuminate the other, revealing the gendered nature of religious beliefs, practices, and socialization, and the ways that religious institutions constitute themselves in order to attract gendered, secular individuals and offer them pertinent solutions to the predicaments of modern life.

A close case study of a particular community, even a small, minority group, allows us to see more general stresses and strains in the culture. Although few women in US society choose to search for fulfillment in Orthodox Jewish communities, the concerns of the ba'alot teshuvah (newly Orthodox Jewish women) are common nonetheless. Many women in our society similarly struggle to identify desirable models for nuclear families and to find partners who will help them create these families; puzzle about the place of work and family in a woman's life; and express more generalized needs for certainty and fulfillment. Similarly, although these Orthodox communities are marginal, they are confronted by those same features of modernity that challenge other contemporary religious communities, such as pluralism, differentiation, and the changing nature of gender and the family. Therefore, the religious communities' strategies for meeting these challenges and constructing new forms of religious worlds in secular society ar e instructive and actually provide relevant models for comparison with fundamentalist Christians and other contemporary "traditional" religious groups.

This study grew out of a deep personal curiosity: I had grown up Orthodox and had rebelliously left Orthodoxy, and my Orthodox family, at age nineteen. I originally undertook this research to find out why women would make a life choice that was so different from my own. I had experienced Orthodox Judaism as sexist; it had clearly limited my options of study and participation in ritual. I wondered why women who were my peers in many ways would willingly choose a traditional religious way of life in which they (literally and metaphorically) sat in the back of the synagogue. The project taught me to not assume that other women experience gender issues in the same way I do and to recognize that there are many women who seek a socially legitimated alternative to feminism, which Orthodoxy offers. By revisiting this site of earlier loss in my life, and recognizing that Orthodoxy provides other women with a profound sense of meaning and connection in their lives, I found new ways to come to terms with, and reintegra te, my own Orthodox background into my narrative of identity.