Michal Pagis
Biographic Data
| ID | 207341 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Michal Pagis |
| GIVEN NAMES | Michal |
| FAMILY NAME | Pagis |
| SIGNATURE | PAGIS M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Bar-Ilan University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5192-4719 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 180 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
The Paradoxes of the Spiritual Self: Disidentification as a Marker of Identity
This study examines how practitioners of self‐spirituality conceptualize their spiritual identity. On the basis of 62 in‐depth interviews with secular Jewish Israelis engaged in various spiritual practices, we find that spiritual identity is constructed through a distinctive cultural logic we term disidentification—a systematic resistance to conventional markers of identity. Although participants affirm spirituality as central to “who I am,” they…
Enacting religious submission: Between doing religion and being done by religion
This paper sheds light on the interactive process in which religious practitioners work to achieve states that appear to contradict individual agency. Drawing on ethnographic studies of Buddhist meditation retreats and Torah study in a Haredi yeshiva, we track the delicate balance between ‘doing religion’ (active engagement) and ‘being done by religion" (experiencing religious forces as taking over). In Torah study, students move from vigorous te…
The Different Faces of Religion in Therapy: An Exploratory Qualitative Study of a Religion-Based Therapeutic Community for Addiction Recovery in Israel
This article examines the impact of the integration of religion and psychological treatment in a religion-based therapeutic community for persons in recovery from addiction in Israel. Based on an exploratory qualitative study that includes participant observation in a Jewish forgiveness therapy training course and in-depth interviews with counselors working in the community, we identify three themes that characterize the therapeutic process. Firs…
The reflexive affirmation of tradition: Popular psychology in conservative regimes
The modern culture of the self is propelled by popular psychological practices and discourses. This sphere, animated by the spirit of therapy and self-help, is regarded as a substitute for religious and communal worldviews, and its spread is associated with global processes of neo-liberalization and individualization. Yet research on pop psychology has predominantly focused on groups that sanctify personal autonomy, with limited scholarly attenti…
Cultural Discrepancies in Interaction: Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Men Encounter Popular Psychology
Drawing on Goffman’s frame analysis, we utilize the encounter between two relatively foreign cultural worlds, the ultra-Orthodox Jewish (haredi) perspective and Western popular psychology, to examine how actors manage cultural discrepancies in situ. Based on an ethnographic study of an NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) training course for haredi men in Israel, we highlight the interactive dimension of framing processes in cultural diffusion, sho…
Prefigurative Occupational Activism: How Religion-Inspired Psychologists Transform Their Profession as a Means for Social Change
This study examines a distinctive form of occupational activism among psychologists who draw on religious traditions to reconstruct their profession as a vehicle for societal transformation. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with two Israeli psychotherapist communities that integrate Jewish or Buddhist traditions into clinical practice, we track how practitioners within an individually focused profession pursue a broader social and moral vision w…
Public/Private Religion in Context: When Psychologists Use Religion to Invigorate Therapy
Previous studies have tracked how the penetration of psychological discourses into the religious sphere turns religion into a private, individual matter. These studies, however, overlook a process that is moving in the opposite direction-the influence of religion on psychology. Based on ethnographic research among licensed psychotherapists who integrate Buddhist or Jewish traditions into their clinical practice, we demonstrate that processes of p…
Glitches in the Aspirational Discourse: Between Enterprise and Compromise 1
In recent years, the sociology of culture has turned its gaze to future aspirations. This gaze is in line with contemporary future‐oriented culture, which encourages young people to aspire to fulfill their dreams. A leading carrier of future orientation is the aspirational discourse, which has become prominent in the educational field and among youth. Sociological inquiry is conflicted regarding the outcomes of this discourse. While it is critici…
Collective mindfulness: Somatic attention to group and self in meditation practice in Israel
Mindfulness is commonly portrayed as a solitary practice in which one turns attention inward to notice feelings, thoughts and sensations that arise in the mind and body. Yet the training and practice of mindfulness often take place in a group setting, indicating that the process of turning inward is dependent on an intersubjective space. Based on an extended ethnography of Israelis who train in body-based mindfulness in the context of Vipassana m…
Sensing the Sacred: Religious Experience, Somatic Inversions, and the Religious Education of Attention
While previous work has focused largely on discourse, contemporary sociological research has started to examine how the embodied, sensory dimensions of religious practice matter in the construction of religious experience. This paper contributes to this development by drawing sociological attention to the religious cultivation of a particular class of embodied experiences: somatic inversions. Somatic inversions, as we define them, are experiences…
American JewBu: Jews, Buddhists, and Religious Change, by Emily Sigalow
In this beautifully written ethnography, Emily Sigalow takes the reader on a journey through the lives of American Jews who engage in Buddhist practice and belief. She begins with an empirical puzzle—why are American Jews attracted to Buddhist practice? How can we explain the fact that among Americans involved in Western Buddhism, one out of three has a Jewish background? This empirical puzzle serves as the springboard to a theoretical puzzle—how…
Aesthetic Engagement
Recent work in culture and cognition breaks cognitive processing into two types—automatic, implicit, and nondeclarative processes are labled “type 1” and controlled, explicit, and declarative processes are labled “type 2.” We suggest that this dual processing model cannot account for some types of experiences central to the embodied aspects of culture. In this paper, we lay out a theory of experience based on aesthetic engagement with the world, …
Inhabiting the Self-Work Romantic Utopia: Positive Psychology, Life Coaching, and the Challenge of Self-Fulfillment at Work
Much has been said about the rise of work as a central identity marker in modern society. With the recent popularization of self-help and positive psychology, this identity marker broadened its signification to include new emotional needs such as love and passion, creating a new cultural imaginary: the 'self-work romantic utopia.' Sociological studies have criticized this utopia as a myth that serves capitalist neoliberal structures, leading to f…
Translating Spirituality: Universalism and Particularism in the Diffusion of Spiritual Care from the United States to Israel
Research on the transnational diffusion of ideas and practices shows how cultural objects go through translation, adaptation, and vernacularization when implemented in new localities. Less attention is given to the translators themselves and their heterogeneous and often conflicting visions. Drawing on the notion of transnational social fields ( TSF s), this article investigates how cultural objects get vernacularized differently in different par…
What do Non-clergy Spiritual Care Providers Contribute to End of Life Care in Israel? A Qualitative Study
The Paradoxes of Self-Branding: An Analysis of Consultants’ Professional Web Pages
Research has demonstrated the growing preoccupation with self-branding among professionals struggling with the precarious labor market. Much of this work has considered self-branding a commodification process turned inward, blurring the distinction between self and market. Yet, little attention has been paid to self-branding implementation. Conceptualizing self-branding as a rhetorical genre, the authors analyze the webpages of 100 self-declared …
Fashioning Futures: Life Coaching and the Self‐Made Identity Paradox
Contemporary processes of individualization push people to construct single‐handedly their own identities. This urge runs counter to a fundament of sociology, which proposes that identities are social products that must be validated through social relations. Based on participant observation and in‐depth interviews with life coaches and their clients, I investigate life coaching as a social institution that aims to resolve the paradoxical nature o…
Evoking Equanimity: Silent Interaction Rituals in Vipassana Meditation Retreats
Enhancing the spirit of entrepreneurship: African labor migrants returning from Israel
Journal Article Enhancing the spirit of entrepreneurship: African labor migrants returning from Israel Get access Galia Sabar, Galia Sabar †Department of African Studies, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, 6997801, Israel; Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Michal Pagis Michal Pagis * ‡Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, 52900, Israel. *Corresponding author. Email: michalpagi…
Society Without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us about Contentment. By Phil Zuckerman
Society Without God is an important contribution to the growing study of secularism. By turning to one of the most secular societies in the world, Scandinavia, Phil Zuckerman offers an empirically grounded account of a successful society where people are happy and content and help their neighbors without believing in God. As such, it challenges the endless theoretical discussions on the necessity of religion for the maintenance of a moral and sat…
The Promise of Salvation: A Theory of Religion
Journal Article The Promise of Salvation: A Theory of Religion Get access The Promise of Salvation: A Theory of Religion, by MARTIN RIESEBRODT. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010, 248 pp.; $37.50 USD (hard). Michal Pagis Michal Pagis The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Sociology of Religion, Volume 72, Issue 3, AUTUMN 2011, Pages 375–377, https://doi.org/10.1093/socre…
From Abstract Concepts to Experiential Knowledge: Embodying Enlightenment in a Meditation Center
Producing intersubjectivity in silence: An ethnographic study of meditation practice
The 'problem of other minds' is central to sociological theory and of immediate importance to contemporary research on subjectivity and interiority. How do we cultivate and maintain an intersubjective space during silent, private, experiences? Drawing on Alfred Schutz's phenomenology, this study challenges the common view which regards silence as an obstacle to social relations. The data consist of two years of participant observation of vipassan…
Embodied Self-reflexivity
Drawing on G. H. Mead and Merleau-Ponty, this paper aims to extend our understanding of self-reflexivity beyond the notion of a discursive, abstract, and symbolic process. It offers a framework for embodied self-reflexivity, which anchors the self in the reflexive capacity of bodily sensations. The data consist of two years of ethnographic observations and in-depth interviews of vipassana meditation practitioners in Israel and the United States. …
Producing intersubjectivity in silence: An ethnographic study of meditation practice
The 'problem of other minds' is central to sociological theory and of immediate importance to contemporary research on subjectivity and interiority. How do we cultivate and maintain an intersubjective space during silent, private, experiences? Drawing on Alfred Schutz's phenomenology, this study challenges the common view which regards silence as an obstacle to social relations. The data consist of two years of participant observation of vipassan…
Embodied Self-reflexivity
Drawing on G. H. Mead and Merleau-Ponty, this paper aims to extend our understanding of self-reflexivity beyond the notion of a discursive, abstract, and symbolic process. It offers a framework for embodied self-reflexivity, which anchors the self in the reflexive capacity of bodily sensations. The data consist of two years of ethnographic observations and in-depth interviews of vipassana meditation practitioners in Israel and the United States. …
From Abstract Concepts to Experiential Knowledge: Embodying Enlightenment in a Meditation Center
Evoking Equanimity: Silent Interaction Rituals in Vipassana Meditation Retreats
Fashioning Futures: Life Coaching and the Self‐Made Identity Paradox
Contemporary processes of individualization push people to construct single‐handedly their own identities. This urge runs counter to a fundament of sociology, which proposes that identities are social products that must be validated through social relations. Based on participant observation and in‐depth interviews with life coaches and their clients, I investigate life coaching as a social institution that aims to resolve the paradoxical nature o…
Sensing the Sacred: Religious Experience, Somatic Inversions, and the Religious Education of Attention
While previous work has focused largely on discourse, contemporary sociological research has started to examine how the embodied, sensory dimensions of religious practice matter in the construction of religious experience. This paper contributes to this development by drawing sociological attention to the religious cultivation of a particular class of embodied experiences: somatic inversions. Somatic inversions, as we define them, are experiences…
Inhabiting the Self-Work Romantic Utopia: Positive Psychology, Life Coaching, and the Challenge of Self-Fulfillment at Work
Much has been said about the rise of work as a central identity marker in modern society. With the recent popularization of self-help and positive psychology, this identity marker broadened its signification to include new emotional needs such as love and passion, creating a new cultural imaginary: the 'self-work romantic utopia.' Sociological studies have criticized this utopia as a myth that serves capitalist neoliberal structures, leading to f…
The Paradoxes of Self-Branding: An Analysis of Consultants’ Professional Web Pages
Research has demonstrated the growing preoccupation with self-branding among professionals struggling with the precarious labor market. Much of this work has considered self-branding a commodification process turned inward, blurring the distinction between self and market. Yet, little attention has been paid to self-branding implementation. Conceptualizing self-branding as a rhetorical genre, the authors analyze the webpages of 100 self-declared …
Aesthetic Engagement
Recent work in culture and cognition breaks cognitive processing into two types—automatic, implicit, and nondeclarative processes are labled “type 1” and controlled, explicit, and declarative processes are labled “type 2.” We suggest that this dual processing model cannot account for some types of experiences central to the embodied aspects of culture. In this paper, we lay out a theory of experience based on aesthetic engagement with the world, …
Translating Spirituality: Universalism and Particularism in the Diffusion of Spiritual Care from the United States to Israel
Research on the transnational diffusion of ideas and practices shows how cultural objects go through translation, adaptation, and vernacularization when implemented in new localities. Less attention is given to the translators themselves and their heterogeneous and often conflicting visions. Drawing on the notion of transnational social fields ( TSF s), this article investigates how cultural objects get vernacularized differently in different par…
Glitches in the Aspirational Discourse: Between Enterprise and Compromise 1
In recent years, the sociology of culture has turned its gaze to future aspirations. This gaze is in line with contemporary future‐oriented culture, which encourages young people to aspire to fulfill their dreams. A leading carrier of future orientation is the aspirational discourse, which has become prominent in the educational field and among youth. Sociological inquiry is conflicted regarding the outcomes of this discourse. While it is critici…
Collective mindfulness: Somatic attention to group and self in meditation practice in Israel
Mindfulness is commonly portrayed as a solitary practice in which one turns attention inward to notice feelings, thoughts and sensations that arise in the mind and body. Yet the training and practice of mindfulness often take place in a group setting, indicating that the process of turning inward is dependent on an intersubjective space. Based on an extended ethnography of Israelis who train in body-based mindfulness in the context of Vipassana m…
Enhancing the spirit of entrepreneurship: African labor migrants returning from Israel
Journal Article Enhancing the spirit of entrepreneurship: African labor migrants returning from Israel Get access Galia Sabar, Galia Sabar †Department of African Studies, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, 6997801, Israel; Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Michal Pagis Michal Pagis * ‡Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, 52900, Israel. *Corresponding author. Email: michalpagi…
Prefigurative Occupational Activism: How Religion-Inspired Psychologists Transform Their Profession as a Means for Social Change
This study examines a distinctive form of occupational activism among psychologists who draw on religious traditions to reconstruct their profession as a vehicle for societal transformation. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with two Israeli psychotherapist communities that integrate Jewish or Buddhist traditions into clinical practice, we track how practitioners within an individually focused profession pursue a broader social and moral vision w…
Public/Private Religion in Context: When Psychologists Use Religion to Invigorate Therapy
Previous studies have tracked how the penetration of psychological discourses into the religious sphere turns religion into a private, individual matter. These studies, however, overlook a process that is moving in the opposite direction-the influence of religion on psychology. Based on ethnographic research among licensed psychotherapists who integrate Buddhist or Jewish traditions into their clinical practice, we demonstrate that processes of p…
The Promise of Salvation: A Theory of Religion
Journal Article The Promise of Salvation: A Theory of Religion Get access The Promise of Salvation: A Theory of Religion, by MARTIN RIESEBRODT. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010, 248 pp.; $37.50 USD (hard). Michal Pagis Michal Pagis The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Sociology of Religion, Volume 72, Issue 3, AUTUMN 2011, Pages 375–377, https://doi.org/10.1093/socre…
Embodied Self-reflexivity
Drawing on G. H. Mead and Merleau-Ponty, this paper aims to extend our understanding of self-reflexivity beyond the notion of a discursive, abstract, and symbolic process. It offers a framework for embodied self-reflexivity, which anchors the self in the reflexive capacity of bodily sensations. The data consist of two years of ethnographic observations and in-depth interviews of vipassana meditation practitioners in Israel and the United States. …
From Abstract Concepts to Experiential Knowledge: Embodying Enlightenment in a Meditation Center
Producing intersubjectivity in silence: An ethnographic study of meditation practice
The 'problem of other minds' is central to sociological theory and of immediate importance to contemporary research on subjectivity and interiority. How do we cultivate and maintain an intersubjective space during silent, private, experiences? Drawing on Alfred Schutz's phenomenology, this study challenges the common view which regards silence as an obstacle to social relations. The data consist of two years of participant observation of vipassan…
Society Without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us about Contentment. By Phil Zuckerman
Society Without God is an important contribution to the growing study of secularism. By turning to one of the most secular societies in the world, Scandinavia, Phil Zuckerman offers an empirically grounded account of a successful society where people are happy and content and help their neighbors without believing in God. As such, it challenges the endless theoretical discussions on the necessity of religion for the maintenance of a moral and sat…
The Promise of Salvation: A Theory of Religion
Journal Article The Promise of Salvation: A Theory of Religion Get access The Promise of Salvation: A Theory of Religion, by MARTIN RIESEBRODT. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010, 248 pp.; $37.50 USD (hard). Michal Pagis Michal Pagis The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Sociology of Religion, Volume 72, Issue 3, AUTUMN 2011, Pages 375–377, https://doi.org/10.1093/socre…
Enhancing the spirit of entrepreneurship: African labor migrants returning from Israel
Journal Article Enhancing the spirit of entrepreneurship: African labor migrants returning from Israel Get access Galia Sabar, Galia Sabar †Department of African Studies, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, 6997801, Israel; Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Michal Pagis Michal Pagis * ‡Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, 52900, Israel. *Corresponding author. Email: michalpagi…
Evoking Equanimity: Silent Interaction Rituals in Vipassana Meditation Retreats
Fashioning Futures: Life Coaching and the Self‐Made Identity Paradox
Contemporary processes of individualization push people to construct single‐handedly their own identities. This urge runs counter to a fundament of sociology, which proposes that identities are social products that must be validated through social relations. Based on participant observation and in‐depth interviews with life coaches and their clients, I investigate life coaching as a social institution that aims to resolve the paradoxical nature o…
What do Non-clergy Spiritual Care Providers Contribute to End of Life Care in Israel? A Qualitative Study
The Paradoxes of Self-Branding: An Analysis of Consultants’ Professional Web Pages
Research has demonstrated the growing preoccupation with self-branding among professionals struggling with the precarious labor market. Much of this work has considered self-branding a commodification process turned inward, blurring the distinction between self and market. Yet, little attention has been paid to self-branding implementation. Conceptualizing self-branding as a rhetorical genre, the authors analyze the webpages of 100 self-declared …
Translating Spirituality: Universalism and Particularism in the Diffusion of Spiritual Care from the United States to Israel
Research on the transnational diffusion of ideas and practices shows how cultural objects go through translation, adaptation, and vernacularization when implemented in new localities. Less attention is given to the translators themselves and their heterogeneous and often conflicting visions. Drawing on the notion of transnational social fields ( TSF s), this article investigates how cultural objects get vernacularized differently in different par…
American JewBu: Jews, Buddhists, and Religious Change, by Emily Sigalow
In this beautifully written ethnography, Emily Sigalow takes the reader on a journey through the lives of American Jews who engage in Buddhist practice and belief. She begins with an empirical puzzle—why are American Jews attracted to Buddhist practice? How can we explain the fact that among Americans involved in Western Buddhism, one out of three has a Jewish background? This empirical puzzle serves as the springboard to a theoretical puzzle—how…
Aesthetic Engagement
Recent work in culture and cognition breaks cognitive processing into two types—automatic, implicit, and nondeclarative processes are labled “type 1” and controlled, explicit, and declarative processes are labled “type 2.” We suggest that this dual processing model cannot account for some types of experiences central to the embodied aspects of culture. In this paper, we lay out a theory of experience based on aesthetic engagement with the world, …
Inhabiting the Self-Work Romantic Utopia: Positive Psychology, Life Coaching, and the Challenge of Self-Fulfillment at Work
Much has been said about the rise of work as a central identity marker in modern society. With the recent popularization of self-help and positive psychology, this identity marker broadened its signification to include new emotional needs such as love and passion, creating a new cultural imaginary: the 'self-work romantic utopia.' Sociological studies have criticized this utopia as a myth that serves capitalist neoliberal structures, leading to f…
Collective mindfulness: Somatic attention to group and self in meditation practice in Israel
Mindfulness is commonly portrayed as a solitary practice in which one turns attention inward to notice feelings, thoughts and sensations that arise in the mind and body. Yet the training and practice of mindfulness often take place in a group setting, indicating that the process of turning inward is dependent on an intersubjective space. Based on an extended ethnography of Israelis who train in body-based mindfulness in the context of Vipassana m…
Sensing the Sacred: Religious Experience, Somatic Inversions, and the Religious Education of Attention
While previous work has focused largely on discourse, contemporary sociological research has started to examine how the embodied, sensory dimensions of religious practice matter in the construction of religious experience. This paper contributes to this development by drawing sociological attention to the religious cultivation of a particular class of embodied experiences: somatic inversions. Somatic inversions, as we define them, are experiences…
Glitches in the Aspirational Discourse: Between Enterprise and Compromise 1
In recent years, the sociology of culture has turned its gaze to future aspirations. This gaze is in line with contemporary future‐oriented culture, which encourages young people to aspire to fulfill their dreams. A leading carrier of future orientation is the aspirational discourse, which has become prominent in the educational field and among youth. Sociological inquiry is conflicted regarding the outcomes of this discourse. While it is critici…
Public/Private Religion in Context: When Psychologists Use Religion to Invigorate Therapy
Previous studies have tracked how the penetration of psychological discourses into the religious sphere turns religion into a private, individual matter. These studies, however, overlook a process that is moving in the opposite direction-the influence of religion on psychology. Based on ethnographic research among licensed psychotherapists who integrate Buddhist or Jewish traditions into their clinical practice, we demonstrate that processes of p…
The Different Faces of Religion in Therapy: An Exploratory Qualitative Study of a Religion-Based Therapeutic Community for Addiction Recovery in Israel
This article examines the impact of the integration of religion and psychological treatment in a religion-based therapeutic community for persons in recovery from addiction in Israel. Based on an exploratory qualitative study that includes participant observation in a Jewish forgiveness therapy training course and in-depth interviews with counselors working in the community, we identify three themes that characterize the therapeutic process. Firs…
The reflexive affirmation of tradition: Popular psychology in conservative regimes
The modern culture of the self is propelled by popular psychological practices and discourses. This sphere, animated by the spirit of therapy and self-help, is regarded as a substitute for religious and communal worldviews, and its spread is associated with global processes of neo-liberalization and individualization. Yet research on pop psychology has predominantly focused on groups that sanctify personal autonomy, with limited scholarly attenti…
Cultural Discrepancies in Interaction: Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Men Encounter Popular Psychology
Drawing on Goffman’s frame analysis, we utilize the encounter between two relatively foreign cultural worlds, the ultra-Orthodox Jewish (haredi) perspective and Western popular psychology, to examine how actors manage cultural discrepancies in situ. Based on an ethnographic study of an NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) training course for haredi men in Israel, we highlight the interactive dimension of framing processes in cultural diffusion, sho…
Prefigurative Occupational Activism: How Religion-Inspired Psychologists Transform Their Profession as a Means for Social Change
This study examines a distinctive form of occupational activism among psychologists who draw on religious traditions to reconstruct their profession as a vehicle for societal transformation. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with two Israeli psychotherapist communities that integrate Jewish or Buddhist traditions into clinical practice, we track how practitioners within an individually focused profession pursue a broader social and moral vision w…
The Paradoxes of the Spiritual Self: Disidentification as a Marker of Identity
This study examines how practitioners of self‐spirituality conceptualize their spiritual identity. On the basis of 62 in‐depth interviews with secular Jewish Israelis engaged in various spiritual practices, we find that spiritual identity is constructed through a distinctive cultural logic we term disidentification—a systematic resistance to conventional markers of identity. Although participants affirm spirituality as central to “who I am,” they…
Enacting religious submission: Between doing religion and being done by religion
This paper sheds light on the interactive process in which religious practitioners work to achieve states that appear to contradict individual agency. Drawing on ethnographic studies of Buddhist meditation retreats and Torah study in a Haredi yeshiva, we track the delicate balance between ‘doing religion’ (active engagement) and ‘being done by religion" (experiencing religious forces as taking over). In Torah study, students move from vigorous te…
Sociology (20 works) · Psychology (14 works) · Aesthetics (10 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Social Psychology (10 works) · Epistemology (9 works) · Meditation (7 works) · Political science (7 works) · Religion and Society Interactions (7 works) · Social science (7 works)