Rachel Rinaldo

Rachel Rinaldo (PhD University of Chicago, 2007) is a cultural sociologist interested in gender, globalization, social change, religion, and qualitative methods, with a special focus on the developing world and Muslim societies in Southeast Asia. She has conducted fieldwork in Indonesia since 2002. Her first book, Mobilizing Piety: Islam and Feminism in Indonesia (Oxford 2013) is an ethnographic study of Muslim and secular women activists in the country with the world's largest Muslim population. She has published her work in journals such as Gender & Society, Qualitative Sociology, and Social Forces. Over the past decade, she has done research on changes marriage and divorce in urban Java, the contemporary art scene in Indonesia, and gender and family dynamics during the COVID-19 pandemic. She is also interested in the development of qualitative methods. In 2022-2023 she was a Fulbright Scholar in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, conducting a large-scale study of women and work. She is currently the Faculty Director of the Center for Asian Studies. 

Selected Publications: 

Rachel Rinaldo and Ian Michael Whalen. 2023. "Amplifying Inequalities: Gendered Perceptions of Work Flexibility and the Division of Household Labor during the COVID-19 Pandemic." Gender, Work & Organization (online first): https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/gwao.13026 

Elisabeth Becker, Rachel Rinaldo, and Jeff Guhin. 2023. "Classifying Muslims: Contextualizing Religion and Race in the United Kingdom and Germany." Journal of the Scientific Study of Religion (online first): https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/gwao.13026 

Rachel Rinaldo and Jeff Guhin. 2022. "How Interviews Work: Ethnographic Interviews and Meso-level Public Culture." Sociological Methods and Research 51(1): 34-67. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0049124119882471

Rachel Rinaldo and Jeff Guhin. 2019. "How and Why Interviews Work: Ethnographic Interviews and Meso-Level Public Culture. Sociological Methods and Research (online first): https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0049124119882471

Rachel Rinaldo. 2019. "Obedience and Authority among Muslim Couples: Negotiating Gendered Religious Scripts in Indonesia." Sociology of Religion 80(3): 323-349. https://academic.oup.com/socrel/article-abstract/80/3/323/5237457

Manisha Desai and Rachel Rinaldo. 2016. “Reorienting Gender and Globalization: Introduction to the Special Issue.” Qualitative Sociology 39/4. 
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11133-016-9340-9

Orit Avishai, Afshan Jafar, and Rachel Rinaldo. 2015. “A Gender Lens on Religion.” Gender & Society 29/1.
 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0891243214548920

Rachel Rinaldo. 2014. "Pious and Critical: Muslim Women Activists and the Question of Agency." Gender & Society 28(6): 824-246. 

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0891243214549352

Rachel Rinaldo. 2013. Mobilizing Piety: Islam and Feminism in Indonesia. New York: Oxford University Press.

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/mobilizing-piety-9780199948109?cc=us⟨=en&

Public Sociology:

• Working Mothers and the COVID-10 Pandemic in the US:
  • https://gendersociety.wordpress.com/2020/10/14/working-mothers-and-the-covid-19-pandemic-in-the-us/ 
• "How a Growing Number of Women Clerics are Challenging Traditional Narratives" The Conversation (2017)
  • https://www.bitchmedia.org/post/islam-and-feminism-are-not-at-odds
• An American in Jakarta" (2015) Gender & Society blog
  • https://gendersociety.wordpress.com/2015/03/20/an-american-in-jakarta/  
• "Islam and Feminism are not at Odds" (2015) Bitch Magazine Online
  • https://www.bitchmedia.org/post/islam-and-feminism-are-not-at-odds
• "Pious and Critical: Muslim Women Activists in Indonesia" (2015) Gender & Society blog
  • https://gendersociety.wordpress.com/page/41/?referrer=justicewire