Deep Structure in Community Cultures: The Revival of Religious Orders in Roman Catholicism

Recent research in organizational culture has emphasized in-depth analyses of the underlying processes of cultural "sensemakin~ ' and, especiaUy, of the influence ofan organizafum's larger socio-cultural environment in these processes. The present study investigates the "&ep structure " of the ideolo~es aclopted by newly-founded Roman Catholic reli~ous communities ~ groups which have self-consciously attempted torevive the long-standing tradition of religious virtuosity n that church. Despite their avowedly revivalistic goals, the groups ' reconstructed cultures differ from that of their traditional models in subtle but important ways. In the past decade, anew school of organizational theory has been developed in sociology, one which focuses on organizational culture. Influenced by anthro-pologists such as Clifford Geertz (1973) and Anthony Wallace (1956), researchers in this tradition have moved from "thin description " of specific organizational practices to "thick description " of the meanings which underlie these practices (Geertz 1973: 7). An organization's cukure serves as its "root metaphor, " the mutually-constructed cognitive patterns and taken-for-granted values which its members create to define and give meaning to their activitie