Agency Without Transcendence

Pritchard, Elizabeth A.

doi:10.1080/14755610601058096

Cited by 6 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Not only do they strive to enact these gendered standards, but, within this women's movement, they are part of creating them, albeit in interaction with men and patriarchal tradition. As the work of these ethnographically engaged theorists highlights, scholars can't have it both ways: that women are agents when dissenting, but victims when they embrace non-feminist values (Pritchard 2006).…”

Section: Feminist Theory In the Study Of Religionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Feminism and Religion: Intersections between Western Activism, Theology and Theory

Zwissler

2012

Religion Compass

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What is the relationship of religion in general, or of specific religions, to misogyny and the oppression of women? This article discusses Western feminism and religion, with a focus on North America, examining: 1) the relationship of religion to feminism as a political movement; 2) the role of feminism in religion, especially Western traditions; and 3) contributions of feminist criticism to the academic study of religion. The relationship between feminism and religion is multifaceted. Religion is important in feminist political activism, throughout first, second and third waves. Feminist activism is mutually influential to feminist theory, which approaches questions about gender not as optional, but as imperative to any rigorous analytic perspective. Feminist criticism of religion includes both feminist theology, which focuses on reforming religious traditions to be more egalitarian, and feminist scholarship in the academic study of religion, which challenges scholars to re‐evaluate dominant models, such as the category of religion itself.

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Section: Feminist Theory In the Study Of Religionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Feminism and Religion: Intersections between Western Activism, Theology and Theory

Zwissler

2012

Religion Compass

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“…1 Erstwhile paradigms of religious women as 'cultural dopes' or 'victims of false consciousness' have been superseded by the insight that they actively negotiate rather than passively submit to or reproduce patriarchal structures and ideologies. Generally, the Foucauldian insight that 'power accompanies resistance' and the reworking of ideas of submission and subversion through the notion of 'agency' are increasingly being employed in the feminist study of religionpotentially recasting secular and liberal conceptions of autonomy, empowerment and liberation (see Brink and Mencher, 1997;Mack, 2003;Mahmood, 2005;Pritchard, 2006). Whereas much of this research has dealt with topics such as activism, embodiment and piety in movements within religious traditions such as Hinduism, Christianity and Islam, in this article a case study in Orthodox Judaism is presented with the aim of making an additional contribution to the ongoing debate on the vexed relationship between feminism and religion.…”

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confidence: 99%

Sacrificing the Career or the Family?

Longman

2008

European Journal of Women's Studies

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This article addresses the question of women's agency in traditionalist religion, through a study of self-narratives by women in the Orthodox Jewish community of Antwerp, Belgium. Women who study or work outside the boundaries of their community were interviewed about their experiences in negotiating gender ideologies by moving in and between the `secular' and `religious' spaces of higher education, work and home. Various subject positions emerged in terms of either rejecting, separating or reconciling dominant community norms regarding women's proper role with personal trajectories of self-realization and individual autonomy. On the one hand, the results confirm the possibility of women's agency within religious-traditionalist settings and in that sense subscribe to some recent feminist theoretical challenges to secularism. However, it is argued that the younger generation faces more restrictions in negotiating religious and secular gender-role expectations in the Antwerp context. Their prospects depend on the dynamic between global fundamentalist tendencies and local liberal state policies of multicultural accommodation.

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