https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444816649920
new media & society
2017, Vol. 19(1) 81 –95
© The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/1461444816649920
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Negotiating agency: Amish
and ultra-Orthodox women’s
responses to the Internet
Rivka Neriya-Ben Shahar
Sapir Academic College, Israel
Abstract
This study explores how women in two devout religious communities cope with the
Internet and its apparent incompatibility with their communities’ values and practices.
Questionnaires containing both closed and open-ended questions were completed by 82
participants, approximately half from each community. While their discourses included
similar framings of danger and threat, the two groups manifested different patterns of
Internet use (and nonuse). Rigorous adherence to religious dictates is greatly admired
in these communities, and the women take pride in manipulating their status in them.
Their agency is reflected in how they negotiate the tension inherent in their roles as
both gatekeepers and agents-of-change, which are analyzed as valuable currencies in
their cultural and religious markets.
Keywords
Agency, agents-of-change, Amish, gatekeepers, Internet, nonuse, religious
communities, ultra-Orthodox, women
Introduction
While contemporary research regarding Internet use and religion mostly explores how
the Internet functions as a tool for religious communities, their practices, and experi-
ences (Campbell, 2013, 2015), this article focuses on how the non (or limited) use of the
Internet creates valuable cultural and religious capital for women from two devout reli-
gious communities—Amish and ultra-Orthodox Jewish (Haredi).
1
It explores these
Corresponding author:
Rivka Neriya-Ben Shahar, Sapir Academic College, D.N. Hof Ashkelon 79165, Israel.
Email: rivka.nbs@gmail.com
649920
NMS0010.1177/1461444816649920new media & societyNeriya-Ben Shahar
research-article2016
Article
82 new media & society 19(1)
women’s media use and perceptions regarding the Internet, tracing how they negotiate
the incongruence between the Internet’s advantages and their communities’ values.
Findings show that this constant negotiation strongly relates to women’s conflicting roles
as gatekeepers and agents-of-change. Navigating between these conflicting roles through
nonuse, control, and limitations on the Internet constitutes a valuable currency in these
women’s cultural and religious markets, offering subtle ways through which they can
build their agency.
This study thus shifts the spotlight from Internet use to Internet non (or limited) use,
highlighting, perhaps counter-intuitively, the added value of the latter in religious con-
texts. The focus on women from strict and bounded religious communities could help us
find new answers to complicated questions about the multifaceted composites of reli-
gion, modernity, technology, and gender.
The study of new media among religious communities
The individualism, autonomy, personal empowerment, and networking that characterize
new media pose a challenge to the core values of religious communities: traditionalism,
cultural preservation, collective identity, hierarchy, patriarchy, authority, self-discipline,
and censorship (Campbell, 2004, 2007). Campbell (2010) developed a model for analyz-
ing the complex relationship between religious societies and new media based on four
dimensions: the history and tradition of the community, core beliefs and patterns, the
negotiation process, and communal framing and discourse. Audience research studies
the relationship between the consumer, and media technologies and content in mass
communication (Press and Livingstone, 2006). Hoover and Lundby (1997) argued that
audience research enables investigators to deal with important aspects of the daily rela-
tionships between religious people and media: the making of meaning (Hoover, 2006).
Comparative audience studies ascribe importance to social, economic, political, and cul-
tural differences, underscoring various conceptual limitations that result from ignoring
these distinctions (Esser and Hanitzsch, 2012; Stausberg, 2011).
Feminist theories and methods created a critical point of view at the juncture between
media and religion studies (Lövheim, 2013). Agency will be used as a key term in this
article and will rely on Mahmood’s (2005) insight that defines agency “not simply as a
synonym for resistance to social norms, but as a modality of action that specific relations
of subordination create and enable” (pp. 17–18). She expanded on feminist views of
agency by showing its multiple forms and modalities and suggested changing the view
that obedience–empowerment and surveillance–independence are dichotomies.
According to Campbell (2010) and Lövheim (2011), individuals’ exercise of agency
in religious communities can be understood as their ability, as active actors, to use and
shape the media according to their values and needs. Religious women’s uses of new
media can change or even shift their religious identity in terms of authority, authenticity,
and agency (Hess, 2013). The specific important connection to this research stems from
the insight that Internet nonuse could enable control, empowerment, and agency among
the nonusers who choose not to use it (Hakkarainen, 2012; Wyatt et al., 2005).
The present research looks into questions relating to gender, technology, and agency
through the focal point of two communities: Old Order Amish and ultra-Orthodox
Neriya-Ben Shahar 83
Jews. The Amish are an ethno-cultural religious group affiliated with the Anabaptist
Church, residing in the United States and Canada. They number close to 300,000, or
less than 0.001% of the American population (Kraybill et al., 2013). Their religious
and social lives are dictated by the Ordnung (literally, order), a set of rules that stresses
humility, simplicity, and obedience (Hostetler, 1993; Kraybill, 2001). The Israeli ultra-
Orthodox are a Jewish religious group that constitutes 9.1% of Israel’s adult popula-
tion (Central Bureau of Statistics—Israel, 2015). Their religious and social life is
bound by a rigid interpretation of Jewish religious law, a commitment to the study of
Torah, and unquestioning faith in rabbinic authority (El-Or, 1994; Friedman, 1991).
Henceforth, the term “devout orthodox communities” will be used to describe the two
communities.
The few comparative studies of the two groups conducted to date (Neuberger, 2011;
Neuberger and Tamam, 2014; Spinner, 1994) pointed to differences in levels of school-
ing and to attitudes toward state involvement in health and education. For this article, the
relevant comparative dimensions are that they are both devout orthodox communities
that live among secular, Western, modern populations and differ from them in values
(Almond et al., 2003; Douglas, 1966). Amish are an agrarian working society (Kraybill,
2001), while ultra-Orthodox are a society of scholars (Friedman, 1991). Ultra-Orthodox
make pragmatic uses of technology, while Amish reject innovations, do not use electric-
ity, and travel by horse and buggy. The reality of their use of technologies is in fact much
more complex in both communities, involving an intricate combination of acceptance,
rejection, and adaptation (Caplan, 2007; Cooper, 2006; Hurst and McConnell, 2010;
Kraybill et al., 2013).
The leaders and ideologies of both communities may reject the Internet, fearing it will
damage the souls of their followers, but they have made some accommodations that
permit cautious use under strict limitations (Barzilai-Nahon and Barzilai, 2005;
Campbell, 2010, 2015; Cohen, 2012; Cohen et al., 2008; Deutsche, 2009; Kraybill et al.,
2013). The similarity of the communities is reflected not just in their responses to the
Internet, but by their divergence from other strict religious communities: while evange-
lists (Hendershot, 2004), Sephardic Haredi rabbis, and the ultra-Orthodox Jewish Habad
sect (Campbell, 2010) use the Internet as a tool to spread their mission, the communities
this research focuses on want to keep themselves outside of the world.
The literature on Amish women is sparse.
2
It includes historic aspects (Schmidt et al.,
2002), discussions about their status and discourse in different Amish societies (Johnson-
Weiner, 2001; Schmidt and Reschly, 2000; Van Ness, 1995), and their home births (Jolly,
2007). None have dealt with the Internet. The literature on ultra-Orthodox women is rich
(e.g. Davidman, 1991; El-Or, 1994; Feder, 2013). Studies about ultra-Orthodox women
and the Internet showed that they expressed ambivalence toward the Internet (Lev-On
and Neriya-Ben Shahar, 2012; Livio and Tenenboim-Weinblatt, 2007; Neriya-Ben
Shahar and Lev-On, 2011; Tydor Baumel-Schwartz, 2009).
This study focuses on what we can learn by comparing the uses and perceptions of
the Internet by these women from two devout orthodox communities and how they cope
with the associated tensions. More specifically, the research questions are (RQ1) what
are the exposure patterns regarding the use of the Internet among Amish and ultra-
Orthodox women; (RQ2) what are their perceptions regarding the use of the Internet;
84 new media & society 19(1)
and (RQ3) how do the women negotiate the incongruence between the advantages of
the Internet and their community’s values?
Methods: the sampled population
From the wide spectrum of Amish and ultra-Orthodox societies, two mainstream groups
were chosen as the appropriate populations for this research: Old Order Amish and
Lithuanian and Hassidic ultra-Orthodox. The focus here is on “mainstream” sub-com-
munities that are generally familiar with the Internet but limit their use of it. While the
scope of this study did not allow comparisons between more stringent (Nebraska
Amish/“Mea Shearim” ultra-Orthodox) or more liberal (New Order Amish/Modern
Orthodox) sub-groups, such investigations would constitute important future follow-ups
of this study.
The study included 82 participants: 40 women of the Old Order Amish community
living in Lancaster, PA, and 42 ultra-Orthodox women from various places in Israel.
3
The
study relied on “snowball” (or networking) sampling, which is particularly well-suited to
closed communities (Lee, 1993). In order to overcome the internal homogeneity of each
community, the research assistants, women from the respective communities, were
instructed to approach individuals with different demographic characteristics and to set
a number of “snowballs” in motion. Nevertheless, to ensure that the diversity of their
answers was due to cultural rather than demographic differences between the samples,
the women’s ages and number of children were compared. No significant differences
were found between Amish and ultra-Orthodox participants in terms of age or number of
children.
Modes of analysis
Women who agreed to participate in the study were explained its purpose and assured
there were no correct or incorrect answers to the questions. They were paid US$10 for
their time. Assistants hired from the community participated in the recruitment of sub-
jects and administered the questionnaires, usually in the homes of the subjects.
The questionnaire consisted of yes/no and open-ended qualitative questions. Although
it included questions about various media—newspapers and magazines; radio; televi-
sion; Internet; corded, mobile, and smart phones—this article focuses only on answers
related to the Internet. The Amish were inexperienced in responding to written question-
naires, partly because they receive only 8 years of schooling, in comparison with the
ultra-Orthodox women, who had an average of 14 years of formal education. For pur-
poses of comparison, they were given similar questionnaires, with some adjustments in
the Hebrew version. The questionnaires were completely anonymous
4
and were formu-
lated with sensitivity to language and values. The data were analyzed quantitatively and
qualitatively. Because most of the answers to the quantitative questions were “yes/no,”
the quantitative analysis included descriptive statistics. The qualitative analysis used a
grounded-theory approach (Strauss and Corbin, 1990).
Some of the difficulties and issues I encountered while working on this project stem
from the challenges associated with research on cloistered communities (Kraybill, 2008;
Neriya-Ben Shahar 85
Lee, 1993; Rier et al., 2008; Steinmetz and Haj-Yahia, 2006). My entry into the Amish
community came from a personal connection with a family from Lancaster, PA, which
led to my residing on their farm for six separate periods, during which I mainly washed
dishes, worked in the fields, and ran errands for them with my car. The many hours of
working side by side with the women yielded numerous interviews and insights, and
even willingness to help in the distribution of the questionnaires. As I have much closer
personal ties to the ultra-Orthodox population, entering it was not as challenging.
Results
Only 20% (8) of the Amish women had ever used the Internet, compared to 50% (21) of
the ultra-Orthodox women. While both communities reported using the Internet for
information-searching and shopping, the ultra-Orthodox use it mostly for work. These
findings indicate that both communities reported a low but significant level of use; in
contrast to eating pork among the ultra-Orthodox or car ownership among the Amish, the
Internet is not completely prohibited, only restricted.
The key to understand the women’s agency, which will be discussed below, is the
combination of low usage levels and the main goal of use—fulfilling a basic value of
their community: supplying the various needs of their families. The women manage their
conduct by acting as agents-of-change when they use the Internet, and simultaneously as
gatekeepers, by keeping their usage rates low, limited, and in keeping with the communi-
ties’ restrictions.
The communities’ overall media consumption shows that whereas newspapers and
magazines are read by most of the women on a daily basis, television and radio exposure
patterns are limited and are mostly out-of-home. Marvin (1988) noted that technologies
like the telephone and electric light were considered threatening in the 19th century by
some populations in the United States. Although the Internet is not unique in this sense,
its ability to undermine the boundary between the holy home/community and “the world”
(Zimmerman-Umble, 1992) could be conceived as being more dangerous than the old
technologies. More than the problem of content, the fact that new technologies enable
Internet connection without visible signs has limited the communities’ ability to control
their members’ exposure to the world.
The complex relationship these women have with the Internet is reflected in their
perceptions regarding the use of the Internet and how they negotiate the discrepancy
between their needs and its advantages, on one hand, and their community’s values and
their leaders’ positions, on the other. Their answers to the question “What do you think
about the internet?” identified two main tensions as central to these reactions: ideology
versus practice and social surveillance versus self-control.
When ideology meets practice
The Internet is a critical crossroad between two powers: from the ideological perspec-
tive, devout orthodox women are supposed to internalize—and then externalize—the
prohibitions and their elders’ warnings about the Internet. From the practical perspective,
they know this is an important and helpful tool with many advantages. Their answers to