Book Reviews

One question worth further exploration is the nature of self-selection of

the evangelical new monastics. Do their differing attitudes toward diver-
sity increase their affinity with holistic communitarianism, or does living in
a densely populated high-poverty area of the city require rethinking one’s
evangelical isolationism? Undoubtedly, there are reciprocal effects brought
to light by the pragmatism of the evangelical new monastics.
There are two critiques I have of New Monasticism and the Transfor-
mation of American Evangelicalism, one major and one minor. The major
critique can be found in the title itself. Part of this book (the first chapter and
the last four chapters) is a compelling look at a subset of American evan-
gelicalism that is showing significant growth, albeit from a small starting
point. But nearly half the book is taken up with the Bourdieusian analysis
of changes in American evangelicalism. Frankly, each of these would make
an excellent book all by itself. The ethnography is rich and illustrative. The
use of Bourdieu is very promising. But the connections between the two just
aren’t as significant as one might wish, in large measure because evangel-
ical new monasticism is still such a small piece of the larger evangelical
mosaic.
The minor critique is stylistic. There are several places where entire
passages are repeated or where a major evangelical figure is introduced
having been discussed at length pages before. The author also has a ten-
dency to use italics in ways that convey that the italicized concepts have
significance but without fully developing those concepts. The italics are
repeated every time the concept is used.
On balance, however, New Monasticism is an important addition to the
sociology of religion. It may try to do too much in one monograph, but the
ideas therein are significant. I am hopeful that Wes Markofski will con-
tinue the exploration of Bourdieu’s field theory with respect to American
evangelicalism in order to broaden our understandings of what remains a
major force in understanding religion in contemporary society.

From Yoga to Kabbalah: Religious Exoticism and the Logics of Bricolage.

By Véronique Altglas. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. Pp. x1393.
$99.00 (cloth); $35.00 (paper).

Marion Sherman Goldman

University of Oregon

According to Véronique Altglas, exotic religions are spiritual groups that are
in tension with mainstream religions and with their host societies. Through
case studies of neo-Hindu Siddha yoga centers and Sivananda yoga centers
in France and England and Kabbalah centers in Brazil, France, England,
and Israel, she implicitly illuminates the rise of religious “nones” in advanced
industrial societies by considering exotic faiths and their participants. Nones
are often bricoleurs drawing from several exotic religions to construct cus-

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 American Journal of Sociology

tomized, individualized spiritual practice, without fully identifying them-

selves with a specific faith.
Altglas makes an important theoretical contribution by examining and
refining Claude-Lévi Straus’s concept of bricolage in terms of contemporary
exotic religions in the West. She convincingly describes how exotic religions
are refined and restructured in order to appeal to affluent, educated spiritual
seekers. Western bricoleurs must have enough time, economic resources,
and social capital to participate in exotic religions, so each group’s doctrines
and practices reflect its privileged participants’ preferences. Bricoleurs help
determine the content of successful exotic faiths. Thus, a group’s religious
“truths” will reflect consumer demands. Exotic religions that are unattrac-
tive to Westerners will stagnate or vanish. The book suggests that religious
bricolage is less a creative individual assemblage than a set of limited choices
made within an informally restricted spiritual marketplace.
Over the course of two years, Altglas was a participant observer in the two
neo-Hindu faiths, informally interviewing a total of 80 of their devotees in
London and Paris. She used similar research strategies at Kabbalah centers
in Paris, London, Rio de Janeiro, and Tel Aviv. She explains that her choice
of locations and interview subjects “simply reflects my itinerary as a re-
searcher” (p. 19). Despite its limitations, her convenience sample generated
theoretical insights about bricolage and various other issues in the sociology
of religion.
All of the groups that Altglas considers lack the kind of cultural conti-
nuity that has allowed some initially stigmatized faiths, such as the 19th-
century Latter-Day Saints, to build on widely accepted religious traditions
in the United States and slowly move toward the mainstream. However,
their apparent associations with ancient non-Christian cultures were what
attracted affluent Western spiritual seekers who want to break with their
pasts. All three exotic religions claimed to have emerged from centuries-old
spiritual traditions. However, because of these claims, the two neo-Hindu
groups and Kabbalah all engendered criticism from official representatives
of the faiths that they had declared to be their progenitors. Clerics viewed
each nominally affiliated group’s teachings as transgressions, if not blas-
phemies. This fascinating boundary maintenance was particularly evident
when Orthodox Jewish officials in Israel and Europe vehemently denounced
Kabbalah and its opportunistic associations with Judaism.
Religious exoticism, according to Altglas, reflects fragmentation and re-
interpretation of non-Christian religious traditions so that they will reso-
nate with Western seekers. Because it revises and decontextualizes them,
this cultural appropriation involves idealization that simultaneously deni-
grates and romanticizes non-Western faiths. This version of Orientalism
extends to Kabbalah because of its ostensibly ancient Eastern mystical
origins. This close examination of exotic groups and their roots in neocolo-
nialism facilitates better understanding of the processes by which other non-
Western cultural resources, not only religions, are modified and appropriated
when they are adapted for consumers in advanced industrial societies.

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 Book Reviews

Spiritual seekers with prior religious affiliations look to spiritual traditions

that are as different as possible from the ones in which they were raised in
order to find their core identities and connect with a higher power. Seekers
aspire to freedom from old social constraints and pressures for conventional
economic success, so they look for exotic religions that represent breaks with
every aspect of their pasts. For example, Altglas found that most Kabbalah
members had no previous connection with Jewish communities.
Individuals who become affiliated with exotic religions dedicate them-
selves to self-discovery and spiritual expansion by every means necessary,
and they are pragmatic in judging spiritual paths by their immediate re-
sults. It is not surprising, according to Altglas, that the exotic religions that
she has studied offer workshops and customized courses that are modeled
on Western personal growth therapies. She fails, however, to discuss the
ways that the Internet has become an important means for exotic religions
to deliver personalized plans for emotional and spiritual growth.
Few of the people that Altglas interviewed devoted their lives to an
exotic religion or developed a full-time career within it. Moreover, even
those deeply committed members had tried out other exotic faiths, and
some stated that they might join a different group at some point in their
lives. More casual members engaged with more than one spiritual group at
the same time because a number of exotic religions intrigued them. For ex-
ample, someone might study Kabbalah, engage in Sufi dancing, and attend
a Kundalini yoga class at a Siddha center during the same week. Or a bri-
coleur might be a serial seeker, trying out different exotic groups.
Altglas’s many rich ethnographic descriptions and the theoretical in-
sights that they stimulated make this book a compelling contribution to the
sociology of religion and the sociology of culture.

Women without Men: Single Mothers and Family Change in the New
Russia. By Jennifer Utrata. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2015.
Pp. xvi1269. $79.95 (cloth); $29.95 (paper).

Judith Record McKinney

Hobart and William Smith Colleges

In this engaging, deceptively unassuming work, Jennifer Utrata manages to

challenge several bodies of scholarship and offer a persuasive argument for
rethinking many key assumptions underlying theories of family life, poverty,
and gender. Although, as the subtitle indicates, the book focuses on post-
Communist Russia, Utrata’s ultimate goal is to broaden the way in which
we view single motherhood more generally, with particularly important
potential consequences for poor women of color in the United States.
Setting herself the task of explaining why single motherhood is not “prob-
lematized” in Russia as it is in the United States, despite the enormous chal-
lenges faced by women in contemporary Russia trying to raise a child without

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