1.2.4 Theories for Synthesis and Explanation

After ending data collection in Israel in 1997, I set out at home in the Netherlands to analyse the material collected since 1995 and earlier. During analysis data continued growing with my perception and understanding of the movement. Besides, I continued obtaining new literature, searching web-sites and maintaining contacts. Continuing through the „hermeneutic circle” (Swanborn 1987: 21, Woldring 1991: 50) my need for social science theory increased, to perceive, interpret and understand what I found. So I returned to theories that I had read and concepts that I had studied before, to see if they could help my need for sense-making.

As mentioned before, the movement's contradicting subcultures and informal structure forbade studying it from only one cultural perspective (Martin 1992), or to trap it in one theoretical, organizational „image” (Morgan 1992). Before Martin, Morgan already questioned one-dimensional views on organizations (Morgan 1992: 336).

Contingency theory helps to perceive part of this griffin's „nature”. However, while Mintzberg explicitly claims that his „pure Missionary configuration” would „come close” to „ideological religious movements” (Mintzberg 1983: 295), it nevertheless appears to fall far short of the movement's complex social reality. I will explicate this in section 3.1.1.

Network approaches (Pröpper 1993: 295-343) and movement approaches (Koopmans en Duyvendak 1992: 11-38) also shed some light on the movement. I will explicate on a movement approach in section 2.6.3, and shortly on network approaches in section 3.1.2.

Notions of reciprocity (Wels 1997), considered also in section 2.6.3, help also to perceive aspects of the movement's external social structure. Still, even together the various approaches could not satisfy my attempt to perceive the movement in its external social structural context.

Martin, who moves on beyond a multi-perspective-approach, proposes postmodern analysis, considering any categorisation system „questionable” (Martin 1992: 190). In part two of this essay I compare appearances of the four types of the movement with another, especially considering absence and presence (Martin 1992: 138-141). Postmodern traces of my approach may there be considered. Still, I have no explicit postmodern intent with this essay anywhere. Since the movement is a religious one, considering it also in the light of religious anthropology appeared not only appropriate, but also approached to satisfy what mere organization theory seemed to frustrate.

In a sense, the movement appears like a griffin. It combines features and traces that one would not expect otherwise to occur together. Being „Neither Fish nor Fowl” (Kjær-Hansen 1996), Turner's considerations on „rites de passage” (Turner 1967: 93-111) appeared helpful to understand the movement's „monstrosity”, its particular internal organizational pluriformity and its liminal position „Between Church and Synagogue” (Benhayim 1992). Socially, the movement can appear as if moving through an ad-hoc initiation ritual towards a yet unpredictable end. I will develop this idea in section 3.2.1.

Mary Douglas' considerations on biblical purity appeared to shed light on ultra-Orthodox violence against the movement (M. Douglas 1976: 59-78). This thought I will explain in section 3.2.2. Cohen contributed to understanding the boundary construction between the movement's sub-parts and its environments (Cohen 1992). On various places I will refer to that. In section 3.2.3 I will consider the movement as an untimely late fruit of the Renaissance and Reformation.