Breaking Down Status

Life at the Margins: Religious Minorities, Status, and the State

“…It follows, therefore, that the identity categories on which status depends, whether defined by state or communal vernaculars, "can become contested or rendered obsolete," making the "mandatory, bundled nature" of status, including its mandatory rules, subject to debate. 28 In Representing God and American Shtetl, I find actors who challenge ideas about progressive society as one constituted by autonomous individuals freed from communal bonds; they also skillfully advance communal visions through state institutions-whether legislatures or courts or public education boards-that valorize this view of the modern political subject. However, the two sets of authors arrive at different conclusions about what their interlocutors are doing when they engage the state; the conclusions I reach based on the evidence presented also sometimes differ from what an author claims that evidence shows.…”