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'Younger People Want to Do it Themselves' - Self-Actualization, Commitment, and the Reinvention of Community
- Source :
- Qualitative Sociology. 42:181-203
- Publication Year :
- 2019
- Publisher :
- Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2019.
-
Abstract
- Current research indicates that younger Americans, driven by socioeconomic shifts and cultural trends prioritizing self-actualization, are increasingly disinclined toward traditional communal organizations. Yet a search for self-actualization may, in fact, lead religiously inclined young adults to traditional communal organizations, which are characterized by relatively strict organizational norms. To explore how such organizations respond to the tension between self-actualization and communal practices, this paper describes a multi-method study of an urban Jewish congregation that experienced a large influx of young adults. The paper demonstrates two related outcomes of the resultant tension: first, the strategic integration of self-expressive content into traditional organizational practices, in a manner that allows these practices to become vehicles for self-actualization; second, the leveraging of these young adults’ transience, in both formal and informal ways, in order to maintain organizational stability. These two seemingly paradoxical outcomes contribute to our understanding of how some communal organizations respond to young adults’ self-actualizing inclinations.
- Subjects :
- 050402 sociology
Sociology and Political Science
business.industry
media_common.quotation_subject
Judaism
05 social sciences
Younger people
Public relations
Cross-cultural psychology
0504 sociology
050903 gender studies
Order (exchange)
Self-actualization
Sociology
0509 other social sciences
business
Socioeconomic status
media_common
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 15737837 and 01620436
- Volume :
- 42
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Qualitative Sociology
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi...........7d62100f26c170ab2e7e68e3e74437fc