R.R. Ganzevoort
VU University Amsterdam
Network
Latest external collaboration on country level. Dive into details by clicking on the dots.
Publication
Featured researches published by R.R. Ganzevoort.
Mental Health, Religion & Culture | 2011
R.R. Ganzevoort; M. van der Laan; E. Olsman
Homosexuality has become a divisive issue in many religious communities. Partly because of that, individuals growing up in such a community and experiencing same sex attractions need to negotiate the messages about homosexuality with their own experiences. This paper explores the identity strategies of religious communities as the background of individual identity struggles. Following a discussion of Baumans grammars of identity/alterity, it describes four different discourses employed in conservative protestant and evangelical circles: holiness, subjectivity, obedience, and responsibility and four modes of negotiation: Christian lifestyle, gay lifestyle, commuting (compartmentalisation), and integration. By combining an analysis of discourses on the community level with individual strategies, this narrative research helps to better understand the interactions of (group) culture and individual coping.
Journal of Empirical Theology | 1998
R.R. Ganzevoort
This paper proposes a method of reading narrative interviews (and other texts). The focus is on the different story lines a narrator uses and weaves together to construct his or her personal narrative. The analysis combines qualitative and quantitative elements to discover the narrative structures. The method of reading is presented and illustrated using one interview from my research project on religious dynamics in male victims of sexual abuse (see appendix for a description). Within the field of empirical theology, the narrative approach is a promising one. As I will try to show, it offers possibilities for a systematic understanding of religious dynamics, while staying close to the religious individuals we study. Far from claiming it to be the only or even the best approach, I nevertheless believe narrative theories and method offer a unique contribution to the field. Before proposing a method of reading, however, I will first highlight some advantages of a narrative approach, outline my version of narrative theory, and discuss some methodological issues.
Archive for the Psychology of Religion | 2013
S. Sremac; R.R. Ganzevoort
The article examines how recovering drug addicts employ testimonies of conversion and addiction to develop and sustain personal identity and create meaning from varied experiences in life. Drawing on 31 autobiographies of recovering drug addicts we analyze conversion and addiction testimonies in two European contexts (Serbia and the Netherlands, including a sample of immigrants). The analysis shows how existing frames of reference and self-understanding are undermined and/or developed. We first describe the substance abuse in participants’ addiction trajectory. Next, we outline the religious aspects and the primary conception of recovering addicts’ conversions as an example of spiritual transformation and narrative change. Moreover, participants select and creatively adapt cultural practices in their testimonies. In many of these examples (mostly in the migrant sample) converts clearly employ elements from their personal and family histories, their ethnic and religious heritages, and their larger cultural and historical context to create a meaningful conversion narrative.
Journal of Adult Theological Education | 2008
R.R. Ganzevoort
Abstract This paper describes how practical theology may be taught in a relevant way, using an existing course on trauma and theology as a point of reference. The author sees praxis as a locus or source for practical theology. Theological themes are developed from actual experiences of (in this case) trauma. Consequences for teaching are identified in a programme that is praxis oriented, student centred, and experience near.
Journal of Empirical Theology | 2012
R.R. Ganzevoort; Nette Falkenburg
Abstract This is a study of parents’ spiritual experience of the loss of a child. Many parents experience continuing bonds with their deceased child as well as forms of posttraumatic growth. Twelve parents of children dying after severe illness were interviewed about their experiences. The interviews contain stories about premonitions, the intensity of the moment of the child’s death and the child’s presence after death. Thematically the stories reflect the dialectics of continuity and discontinuity in the relationship with the child. This is interpreted in terms of attributing meaning, significance and comprehensibility.
Journal of Homosexuality | 2017
Marianne Cense; R.R. Ganzevoort
ABSTRACT Young people who discover their sexual attraction to people of the same sex often go through a period of ambivalence or distress, especially when they grow up in an environment that condemns homosexuality. The Dutch sociopolitical context makes the expression of same-sex desires among those with non-Dutch roots even more complicated and risky, as prevailing schemes of interpretation render the two identities incompatible. This study explores the expressions of same-sex desires and identities as well as the different forms of agency of bicultural gay youth. In-depth interviews with 14 young adults reveal how young people negotiate bicultural identities in Dutch society that brings to the fore complexities in managing diverse sexual identities and strong religious and cultural affiliations in tandem. Their strategies have the effect of questioning dominant discourses and transcend the oppositional dichotomy between sexual and ethnic forms of sociocultural otherness.
Journal of Youth Studies | 2018
Marianne Cense; R.R. Ganzevoort
ABSTRACT Young women tell different stories about teenage pregnancies. Their stories are embedded in the storyscape of their environment, which offers a limited set of narratives. Normative discourses influence the stories young women tell about their pregnancies. Social norms and stigma play an important role in the construction of the meaning of teenage pregnancies. However, the embodiment of being pregnant constitutes meaning as well. This paper draws on findings from a qualitative study conducted in 2015 among 46 young Dutch women who got pregnant before their 20th birthday. Our study explores how young women navigate the moral arena when they are confronted with a teenage pregnancy and which role the embodiment of pregnancy plays in the construction of social meanings. The concept of storyscapes visualises how young women are constrained by their embeddedness in multiple storyscapes, defined by different and often contrasting audiences. Nevertheless, our study indicates that the momentum of pregnancy can offer agentic possibilities to take up another position towards their social environment and develop narrative agency.
Religion and the Social Order | 2015
S. Sremac; Z. Popov-Momčinović; M. Jovanović; M Topic; R.R. Ganzevoort
During the last decade, the public perception of religion and (homo)sexuality has undergone fundamental change in the countries of the former Yugoslavia. The rights and liberties of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transexual (LGBT) people are still marginalized in the societies of the post-Yugoslav space. 1 The ethnic construct, specifically ethno-nationalism, as the attendant ideology of the states newly established after the breakup of Yugoslavia, is inherently based on principles of exclusion. 2 The vacancies in its cultural and social semantic are performatively filled with rhetorical claims and constructs in order to establish “universality” (Butler 2000: 35). LGBT issues are included in this, and radical separation is sought for them. For this to be achieved, however, they must be recognized as a troublesome factor in relation to the ideal of all that is ideal in the false universality and substantiality of ethno-nationalism. Thus the practice resorted to is one of translating opposing concepts into one’s own terms using Žižek’s (2000: 103) syntagm of “false disidentification” for the purposes of hegemonistic policy. In doing so, the supposedly radically ‘Other’ and different is integrated into one’s own symbolic network and order of things with the use of oppressorimposed designations, which have ontological force since they give rise to subordination. This performativity, as Butler notes (2006: xv), is never an individual act; rather it is a ritual repetition which achieves its impact by way of naturalization in the context of the body, which has a temporal aspect and cultural support.
Brill | 2013
R.R. Ganzevoort; M. Scherer-Rath; Maaike Haardt
This is the introductory chapter presents an overview of how the other chapters in the book are organized. The book contains four sections: biblical studies, empirical studies, systematic studies and historical studies. The first section focuses on the Old Testament, novel Cain , which is a gruesome story of gang rape, and the women in the Samson narratives. The second section deals with personal stories and the (religious) identities people construct through those stories, narrative construction of identity among Muslim women and interpretation of life stories. The third section offers an introduction to narrative approaches in systematic theology and passion narrative. The final section presents a parallel description of a protestant narrative community, that of Reformed Pietism, conflicting story-telling between individual, community, and society, and the artwork and texts by Charlotte Salomon. Keywords: Charlotte Salomon; Muslim women; Old Testament; passion narrative; Reformed Pietism; religious stories; Samson narratives; systematic theology
Archive for the Psychology of Religion | 2000
R.R. Ganzevoort
The impact of sexual abuse on religious functioning is an underresearched area, notably with male victims. We are in need of comprehensive theories and sound research. Based on research by the author on religious coping and the religious dynamics in male survivors, this article outlines parts of a narrative theory, provides a case study, and concludes with implications for research on religious coping with sexual abuse. It is claimed that research should take into account the effect of sexual abuse on religious constructions and the plurivocal nature of the personal narratives.