Doing Family, Doing Gender, Doing Religion: Structured Ambivalence and the Religion-Family Connection

Bulanda, Jennifer Roebuck

doi:10.1111/j.1756-2589.2011.00093.x

Cited by 28 publications

(46 citation statements)

References 82 publications

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“…Direct measures assume that people are aware of ambivalence and that simultaneous positive and negative feelings or behaviors are experienced as mixed feelings or feeling torn. Bulanda () questioned the merits of direct quantitative measures because “contradictory expectations or feelings may be subconscious and beyond the scope of an individual to recognize” (p. 186).…”

Section: Where Have We Been?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring Ambivalence in Family Ties: Progress and Prospects

Connidis

2015

J of Marriage and Family

135

158

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The 2002 exchange on ambivalence in the Journal of Marriage and Family (Vol. 64, No. 3), published under the editorship of Alexis Walker, prompted an impressive array of research on family ties, in particular intergenerational relationships. Following a discussion of the concept's theoretical underpinnings, the author argues that advancing the concept of ambivalence rests on realizing its multilevel potential by addressing the interplay of shifting contradictions experienced by individuals and in relationships and embedded in social institutions and in macro‐level arrangements and processes. She considers progress and limitations in a critical review of predominant applications of ambivalence and then investigates research that advances ambivalence as a bridging concept across multiple levels of analysis. Work on atypical family ties, dependency, contradictory cultural expectations due to migration and social change, families and the welfare state, and on climate change and disability promotes the multilevel potential of ambivalence and points to ways to advance its promise in theory and practice.

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Section: Where Have We Been?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring Ambivalence in Family Ties: Progress and Prospects

Connidis

2015

J of Marriage and Family

135

158

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…In comparison, conservative Protestantism's emphasis on the home focuses more on the gendered relationship between the husband and wife within it (Bartkowski ; Beaman ; Brasher ; Gallagher ). Regardless of the aspect of the particular theologies, studies of women across conservative religions find that while they tend to espouse support for ideologies that stress domestic obligations and submission to their husband, women actually live their lives in more nuanced and complicated ways (Avishai ; Beaman , ; Bulanda ; Burke ; Chen ; Gallagher and Smith ; Griffith ; Longman ; Manning ; Predelli ). Gallagher and Smith () refer to this distinction among evangelicals as “symbolic traditionalism” and “pragmatic egalitarianism.” When they asked their respondents about gender and family, they found that the majority advocated neotraditional rhetoric that emphasized men's material and spiritual responsibility as the head of the family.…”

Section: Gender and Marriage In Conservative Religionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Moving Beyond Agency: A Review of Gender and Intimate Relationships in Conservative Religions

Irby

2014

Sociology Compass

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Studies of gender regimes within conservative religion have often focused on the dynamics of intimate relationships to separately analyze women's agency and men's authority. By bridging studies of men and women in a variety of intimate relationships, this article provides a relational analysis of how gender and religion intersect in daily life. Given the importance of marriage within conservative religions, I first review studies of married women and married men to illustrate the varied ways these institutions intersect. Next, I present findings from the limited but burgeoning scholarship on those who have not yet or cannot live up to the religious goal of heterosexual marriage: unmarried heterosexuals and gay and lesbian relationships.In recent decades, sociologists have been both intrigued and puzzled by gender regimes in conservative religion. Initially, scholars were confounded by women who chose to remain in or join conservative religions that perpetuate women's subordination; thus, early work in this area asked "how and why…women are attracted to religious communities that offer such traditional definitions of gender" (Davidman 1991:43). As ethnographic studies turned to the lived experiences of these women, scholars realized that women did, in fact, face subordination but that they also felt empowered by their religions and were able to subvert, resist, and even use gender ideologies to their own advantage (Beaman 2001a;Brasher 1998;Chen 2005;Chong 2006;Davidman 1991;Griffith 1997). This tension between practice and rhetoric led many scholars to draw on agency theories because "these women's agency [represents] an interesting phenomenon to study, since agency is typically defined through intention and autonomy and those are characteristics not typically used to describe religious women" (Burke 2012:122, emphasis original).Recently, however, scholars have begun to critique these analyses of women's religious agency for their tendency to "juxtapose agency and complicity" (Avishai 2008: 410) and operate from a "tacit assumption…[that] religious women are oppressed or are operating with a false consciousness" (Avishai 2008:411). This paper extends these calls for more nuanced analyses of women's agency in conservative religion (Avishai 2008; Burke 2012) by drawing attention to how an additional theoretical lens on gender may be useful for deconstructing how religion and gender intersect as social institutions. Sociologists have refined our theorizing of gender to recognize how it operates as a system or structure that positions men and women in socially significant and often unequal ways (Connell 2009;Lorber 1994). Importantly, however, gender becomes meaningful in how it emerges through interactions and how it involves holding oneself and others accountable to cultural understandings of gender (West and Zimmerman 1987). Furthermore, as Connell (2009) notes, "gender arrangements are…at the same time, sources of pleasure, recognition and identity, and sources of injustice and harm" (7). While the agency approa...

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“…Voor vrouwen uit een conservatief religieus milieu hoeven de genderconcepten niet per definitie onderdrukkend te zijn (Bulanda, 2011;Gallagher & Smith, 1999). In studies naar de deelname van vrouwen aan conservatieve bewegingen onderscheidt Bracke (2003) (Bracke, 2008).…”

Section: Agency In Religieuze Contextunclassified