Seriality and Agency in the Religious Collective

While it is common to think of "women" as a "group" of people, this is a problem, because it leads to essentialism, that is, it leads to thinking of all women as though they have a certain aim or project in common simply by virtue of being female. Iris Young writes, “’Woman’ is a reasonable social category expressing a certain kind of social unity. At the same time, conceptualizing of gender as a serial collectivity avoids the problems that emerge from saying women are a single group” (728).

While religious groups are not an absolute parallel – membership is generally elective, and members do consciously join the group – this concept of seriality is helpful. On a basic level, religious groups have characteristics of both a serial collective and a group (as Young defines them). However, using seriality as a lens for a religious groups brings to light more levels of collective dynamics and the roles of those who study these groups.

Young writes, “Seriality designates a level of social life and action, the level of habit and unreflective reproduction of ongoing historical and social structures. Self-conscious groups arise from and on the basis of serialized existence, as a reaction to it and an active reversal of it anonymous and isolating conditions” (728).

Hasidic women have properties of both a seriality and a group. A “seriality” is defined as “a social collective whose members are unified passively by the objects around which their actions are oriented or by the objectified results of the material effects of the actions of the others” (Young 724). A group is “a collection of persons who recognize themselves and one another as in a unified relation with one another” (723). Members of a group share a common project or aim. While Young offers these definitions as oppositions mainly as oppositions to one another (although groups can rise out of serialities), I argue that these definitions are less polarized.

It is perhaps that there is a continuum of “group-ness” within a seriality. For example, gathering for a time of worship might be a time at which members are more cognizant of their unified relationship with one another. This is a time where the common project is explicit and concrete. However, while members of a religious group, especially one as separatist as the Hasidim, would probably identify themselves as a group because of their major difference from surrounding communities, using Young’s group definition to examine agency within this group limits the kinds of agency that can be examined. By using seriality as a lens to examine a certain collective, it is possible to both avoid essentialism and, more importantly, to notice a more kinds of agency – agency that is collective, individual, assigned, created, and agency that is on the collective, that is, agency of those outside of the collective that act on the women. Examining Hasidic women simultaneously as both a group and a serial collective allows us to see both the agency of individuals as well as group agency, and to avoid essentialism while coming to a deeper and more nuanced understanding of agency of religious communities.