“Being Jew is like Travelling by Bus”: Constructing Jewish Identities in Spain between Individualisation and Group Belonging
In: Journal of Religion in EuropeSearch for other papers by Julia Martínez-Ariño in
Current site
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Individualisation theory has mainly focused on the deregulation of religion and dissolution of traditional majority churches, but there is less evidence of its appropriateness for religious minorities. In this paper I contribute to this debate by analysing how Jews in Spain construct their Jewish sense of belonging in the context of a diverse, traditionally Catholic society. My main argument is that Jews, as a small and invisible minority, confronted by the exigencies of a secular and plural context, combine notions of religious choice and ethnic ascription in narrating their individual and collective identities. Consequently, while the theory of individualisation partly accounts for this identity construction, the specificities of the context and the minority condition require additional conceptual tools about collective identities and symbolic boundaries.
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1
Detlef Pollack, “Religious Change in Europe: Theoretical Considerations and Empirical Findings,” Social Compass 55/2 (2008), 168–186.
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2
Andrew K.T. Yip, “The Persistence of Faith among Nonheterosexual Christians: Evidence for the Neosecularization Thesis of Religious Transformation,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 41/2 (2002), 199–212.
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3
Karel Dobbelaere, “Towards an Integrated Perspective of the Processes Related to the Descriptive Concept of Secularization,” Sociology of Religion 60/3 (1999), 229–247.
-
4
Mark Chaves, “Secularization as Declining Religious Authority,” Social Forces 72/3 (1994), 749–774.; David Yamane, “Secularization on Trial: In Defense of a Neosecularization Paradigm,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 36/1 (1997), 109–122.
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5
Jocelyne Cesari, When Islam and Democracy Meet: Muslims in Europe and in the United States (New York & Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004); Nadia Fadil, “Individualizing Faith, Individualizing Identity: Islam and Young Muslim Women in Belgium,” in: Jocelyne Cesari & Seán McLoughlin (eds.), European Muslims and the Secular State (Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 2005), 143–154; Nadia Jeldtoft, “Lived Islam: Religious Identity with ‘Non-Organized’ Muslim Minorities,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 34/7 (2011), 1134–1151.
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6
Maite Ojeda-Mata, ““Spanish” but “Jewish”: Race and National Identity in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Spain,” Jewish Culture and History 16/1 (2015), 64–81; Daniela Flesler, Tabea A. Linhard & Adrián Pérez Melgosa, “Introduction: Revisiting Jewish Spain in the Modern Era,” Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 12/1 (2011), 1–11.
-
8
Martine Berthelot, “El Judaísmo en la España Actual,” Revista Española de Sociología 12 (2009), 67–83.
-
9
Wendy Cadge & Lynn Davidman, “Ascription, Choice, and the Construction of Religious Identities in the Contemporary United States,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 45/1 (2006), 23–38; Lynn Davidman, “The New Voluntarism and the Case of Unsynagogued Jews,” in: Nancy T. Ammerman (ed.), Everday Religion: Observing Modern Religious Lives (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 51–67.
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11
Grace Davie, “Believing without Belonging: Is This the Future of Religion in Britain?,” Social Compass 37/4 (1990), 455–469.
-
21
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-
22
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23
Steve Bruce, God Is Dead: Secularization in West (Oxford: Blackwell Oxford, 2008).
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25
Azria, “The Diaspora”; Martine Cohen, “Les Juifs de France. Modernité et Identité,” Vingtieme siecle. Revue d’histoire 66 (2000), 91–106.
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26
Thomas Luckmann, The Invisible Religion: The Problem of Religion in Modern Society (New York: Macmillan, 1967).
-
27
Stephen Sharot, “Judaism and the Secularization Debate,” Sociological Analysis 52/3 (1991), 255–275.
-
28
Jonathan Webber, “Jews and Judaism in Contemporary Europe: Religion or Ethnic Group?,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 20 (1997), 257–279, 265; Arnold Dashefsky, Bernard Lazerwitz & Ephraim Tabory, “A Journey of the ‘Straight Way’ or the ‘Roundabout Path’,” in Handbook of the Sociology of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
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31
Andrew Buckser, “Secularization, Religiosity, and the Anthropology of Jewry,” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 10/2 (2011), 205–222; Davidman, “The New Voluntarism.”; Horowitz, Connections; Ori Schwarz, “Praying with a Camera Phone: Mediation and Transformation in Jewish Rituals,” Culture and Religion: An Interdisciplinary Journal 11/3 (2010), 177–194; Asaf Sharabi, “‘Teshuvah Baskets’in the Israeli Teshuvah Market,” Culture and Religion: An Interdisciplinary Journal 13/3 (2012), 273–293.
-
32
Susan A. Glenn, “In the Blood? Consent, Descent, and the Ironies of Jewish Identity,” Jewish Social Studies 8 (2002), 140; Yulia Egorova, “The Proof Is in the Genes? Jewish Responses to dna Research,” Culture and Religion: An Interdisciplinary Journal 10/2 (2009), 159–175; Shelly Tenenbaum & Lynn Davidman, “It’s in My Genes: Biological Discourse and Essentialist Views of Identity among Contemporary American Jews,” The Sociological Quarterly 48/3 (2007), 435–450.
-
34
Alfonso Pérez-Agote, “Religious Change in Spain,” Social Compass 57/2 (2010), 224–234.
-
37
Fransisco Díez de Velasco, “The Visibilization of Religious Minorities in Spain,” Social Compass 57/2 (2010), 235–252; Martínez-Ariño, Julia, Mar Griera, Gloria García-Romeral, & Maria Forteza. “Inmigración, Diversidad Religiosa y Centros de Culto en la Ciudad de Barcelona.” Migraciones 30 (2011), 101–133; Mar Griera, “New Christian Geographies: Pentecostalism and Ethnic Minorities in Barcelona,” in Ruy Blanes & José Mapril (ed.), Sites and Politics of Religious Diversity in Southern Europe (Boston: Brill, 2013), 225–249.
-
44
David Yamane, “Narrative and Religious Experience,” Sociology of Religion 61/2 (2000), 171–189.
-
46
Pamela A. Patton, Art of Estrangement: Redefining Jews in Reconquest Spain (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012).
-
47
Jessica A. Boon, “Violence and the “Virtual Jew” in Castilian Passion narratives, 1490s-1510s,” Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 8/1 (2016), 110–129.
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48
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54
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55
Isaac Caro, “Comunidades judías y surgimiento de nuevas identidades: El caso argentino,” Persona y Sociedad 20/3 (2006), 43–72; Damián Setton, “Recomposiciones identitarias en la modernidad. Acerca de la visita de Régine Azria a la Argentina,” in: Museo del Holocausto-Shoá, Nuestra memoria, (Buenos Aires: Fundación Memoria del Holocausto, 2006), 247–250.
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58
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1990).
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| Abstract Views | 541 | 67 | 7 |
| Full Text Views | 420 | 8 | 3 |
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“Being Jew is like Travelling by Bus”: Constructing Jewish Identities in Spain between Individualisation and Group Belonging
In: Journal of Religion in EuropeSearch for other papers by Julia Martínez-Ariño in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Individualisation theory has mainly focused on the deregulation of religion and dissolution of traditional majority churches, but there is less evidence of its appropriateness for religious minorities. In this paper I contribute to this debate by analysing how Jews in Spain construct their Jewish sense of belonging in the context of a diverse, traditionally Catholic society. My main argument is that Jews, as a small and invisible minority, confronted by the exigencies of a secular and plural context, combine notions of religious choice and ethnic ascription in narrating their individual and collective identities. Consequently, while the theory of individualisation partly accounts for this identity construction, the specificities of the context and the minority condition require additional conceptual tools about collective identities and symbolic boundaries.
| All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 541 | 67 | 7 |
| Full Text Views | 420 | 8 | 3 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 71 | 18 | 8 |