A Table for One a Critical Reading of Singlehood, Gender and Time
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A TABLE FOR ONE A CRITICAL READING OF SINGLEHOOD, GENDER AND TIME KINNERET LAHAD A TABLE FOR ONE A TABLE FOR ONE A critical reading of singlehood, gender and time Kinneret Lahad Manchester University Press Copyright © Kinneret Lahad 2017 The right of Kinneret Lahad to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 5261 1539 3 hardback ISBN 978 1 5261 1635 2 open access First published 2017 This electronic version has been made freely available under a Creative Commons (CC-BY- NC-ND) licence. A copy of the licence can be viewed at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-nc-nd/4.0/ The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Typeset by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited Contents Acknowledgements page vi 1 Introduction 1 2 The linear life-course imperative 26 3 Singlehood as an unscheduled status passage 40 4 Facing the horror: becoming an “old maid” 52 5 On commodification: from wasted time to damaged goods 66 6 Taking a break 81 7 Waiting and queuing 94 8 Time work: keeping up appearances 107 9 Discussion: another time 122 Bibliography 134 Index 151 Acknowledgements The publication of this book bears the imprint of many hands. First, I wish to thank my mentor Hanna Herzog for being an outstanding, kind and inspiring person in my life. Thank you for being my brilliant academic mother, for your warm encouragement, profound humanity, and for allowing me to learn alternative modes of doing feminist scholarship. Zeev and you have been true friends and role models. I am deeply indebted to Haim Hazan for our priceless intellectual exchanges, his unwavering support and belief in my scholarship along the way. Our meetings have always been an endless source of pertinent questions and theoretical sophistication. Thank you for your crea- tive ideas, for your bright and unexpected inputs and for formulating together some of the analytical threads of this project. I cannot thank both of you enough. I also thank Ilana Silber for her support, sharing with me her knowledge of socio- logical theory and for being one of the first scholars who made me realize how much I love sociology. My sincere thanks to Eviatar Zreubavel: his work on social time has provided a benchmark for my thoughts on temporality. I extend sincere thanks to Hanna Naveh, whose work on family life has sparked my interest in researching family and the mysterious organization of personal life. Avenr De-Shalit, Zeev Sternhal, Carola Hilfrich, Orly Lubin, Louise Bethlehem, and Hannan Hever provided me with critical guidance many years ago and opened my eyes to understanding the richness and beauty of textual analysis. My deepest thanks to my close and supportive circle of friends. I am indebted to Tal Kohavi for our special friendship and for her intellectual guidance, inspiration, warmth, and generosity. I particularly want to thank Karmit Haber, who is a rock of support and strength in my life, and Michal-Kravel Tovi, for her friendship, good humor and excellent advice and suggestions. I also want to thank Anat Hammermann Schuldiner and Lina Yassin for their affection and assistance in more ways than one. Special thanks to Orna Donath and Avi Shooshna for influencing my ideas and for their keen interest and enthusiasm at various stages of this project. I also want to express my appreciation to Carolin Aronis, Yaniv El-Ron, and Adi Moreno for offering thoughtful feedback on various versions of the chapters and for their unwavering support. I extend my thanks to Dafna Hirsch, Smadar Sharon and Omer Sharon Gabay ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii for their care, love, and encouragement. During the last phases of the book I was very fortunate to meet my brilliant friend Irit Dekel, whose support and encouragement are exemplary: thanks to you and Michael Weinman for inviting me to your home. At Tel-Aviv University I have been fortunate to work with exceptionally wonderful colleagues. A very special thanks to Daphna Hacker for her support and for being a model of personal scholarly integrity and feminist veracity. I am grateful as well to Ofra Goldstein-Gidoni for her friendship, faith, and many brainstorming sessions over good coffee and cake. For her goodwill, encouragement, and significant support I thank Smadar Shiffman, and I am sincerely grateful to Michèle Bokobza Kahan and Yofi Tirosh for their support and encouragement. I extend my warm thanks to my intel- lectual soulmate and friend Vanessa May. My warm thanks and appreciation go to Karen Hvidtfeldt Madsen for her special friendship, interest, and support of this project. I also want to express my enduring gratitude to Gokce Yurdakul for her unflag- ging support. Special thanks for many stimulating conversations with my wonderful friends and colleagues Yvette Taylor, Charlotte Kroløkke, and Sarah Wilson. My heart- felt thanks to all of you. During my travels in and outside Israel I was lucky to meet such inspiring colleagues and friends as Niza Yanai, Lynn Jamieson, Rachel Reidner, Shelley Budgeon, Khalad Furani, Yehouda Shenhav, Aeyal Gross, Iris Rachmaniov, Yael Hashiloni-Dolev, Tami Herzig, Inna Leykin, Pnina Lahav, Niza Berkovitz, Miri Eliav Feldon, Christiane Brosius, Jeroen De Kloet and Laila Abu-Er-Rub. I wish to thank my colleagues and friends at Venice International University and Nili Cohen for providing me with a beautiful office and a stimulating environment to write my book. I thank Gil Eyal and Ynon Cohen from Columbia University for their hospitality. More thanks to Hedva Abu Hassira Marsh, Anat Lapidot Firilla, Zippi Hecht, Charlotte Whiting, Cecile Moskovitz, Nicolas Seutin, Tamsin Sanderson, Tea Stifanic, Siobhan Kattago, Sara Armstrong, and Lucy Pickering. My deep appreciation to Akin Ajayi, Maayan Shtendel, Neta Yodovich, and Yael Braudo-Bahat for their excellent editing, patience, diligence, and professionalism. I have learnt so much from you and I am sincerely grateful. It has been a great privilege to work with the staff of Manchester University Press: foremost thanks to Thomas Dark for his enthusiasm, belief, and support of this book, and to Robert Byron, Alun Richards, and Danielle Shepherd for shepherding me through the publication process. I also wish to express my gratitude to the anonymous reviewers, who provided insight- ful suggestions which have improved the final version of the manuscript. Thanks to the institutions that have funded my research and given me time to write. I received significant support from the Department of Sociology and Anthropology in Bar Ilan, the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Tel-Aviv, the Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics, and the NCJW women and gender program. This research was also supported by the Israel Science Foundation (grant 8/17). My heartfelt appreciation goes to Orly Lubin, Jenny Barak, Lisa Ben-Senior, Michal Shoef, Seffi Shtiglish, and Ariel Pridan. I owe gratitude to Qingling Guo for allowing me to use her beautiful artwork as the book cover, and Penn Ip for her kindness, significant help, and translation from Chinese to English. Earlier and different versions of Chapters 4 viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS and 7 have appeared in Sociological Forum and Women’s Studies International Forum: I thank the editors for their kind permission to reprint them here. Lastly, very special thanks to my family, who have endured the writing of the book at close range: I love you dearly. To my parents Judy and Gad Lahad for their energy, curiosity, and wild humor. Special thanks to my mom for instilling me with a love for travel, the value of female companionship, and an appreciation of literature and culture. My dad has taught me the value of being dedicated to something you love and has been a role model of goodness and candidness. This book was written in loving memory of my grandmothers and grandfathers, Menachem and Mirian Peled, Elisheva, and Yitzhak Lahad. I would like to extend special thanks to my kind and loving brother Yarden Lahad, whose faith in me is really priceless, and to Yael Lahad Gelfestein for their warm, deep care, and generous hospitality in my frequent visits in Berlin. Many thanks to my beloved sister Maayan Shanan for being in my life; I thank her and her partner Omri Shanan for their support and providing me with many hours of pleasant distractions. I thank my cousins and best friends Shirli Brosh, Tali Raveh and Gili Raveh, and their parents, Yehuda and Tami Raveh: heartfelt thanks for your love and encouragement. To my aunts Hani Ben-Ari and Malka Biron, Yoav, Neri, Amnon, and Ephrat Levi- Lahad and also in memory of Miriam and Shlomo Dinur, all of you have given me support to dream and write. Lastly, I thank my dear and beloved nieces and nephew Neta, Nitzan, Noam, Niri, and Yuval—always asking the most inquisitive questions and making my life so rich, funny, and colorful. I dedicate this work to you. 1 Introduction A few years ago a dear colleague of mine asked how it could be that a woman like me was still single. She simply couldn’t “figure me out,” she said; her facial expression was one of genuine concern. To her, it seemed that I was neither actively looking for a male partner nor concerned by my overly extended singlehood.