A Table for One

Kinneret Lahad has provided a fascinating discussion on gender, singlehood, and social time. Challenged by temporal metaphors such as "biological clock" or "missing the train", single , urban, upper and middle class women have been portrayed as outliers of heteronormative social norms, where being married is equalled to being "normal." Using discourses from popular culture, everyday talk, and new media technologies in the Israeli context, Lahad dissects and challenges the long standing linear life course studies in sociology with a fresh, interesting and innovative perspective on the feminist reading of singlehood. It is a ground-breaking work on the sociology of gender and the sociology of time.

Gökce Yurdakul, Humboldt University, co-author of The Headscarf Debates: Conflicts of National Belonging


From the outset, the reader is drawn into a highly readable and theoretically engaging study of "long-term" single women. Drawing upon a wide range of sources, the author provides a detailed examination of a triple discrimination, in terms of age, gender and single status. Focussing upon but not confined to modern Israel, the study takes us through the numerous sites and temporal contexts where these discriminations occur. However, this is not just a study of a particular gendered status but it is also a major contribution to the understanding of everyday time; waiting time, time passing, commodified time. In her final chapter the author opens up possibilities of alternative definitions and practices of singlehood.

David Morgan, University of Manchester


A welcome contribution to the sociology of time, highlighting the implicit norms and expectations underlying such notions as being “on time” or “late” at the level of the life-course. Furthermore, the book provides a foundation for a sociology of singlehood, treating it as a major phenomenon in its own right rather than just as a transitional stage in anticipation of marriage, recognizing that “remaining” single is often a permanent rather than merely temporary state of being. The asymmetry between women’s lack of need to account for their decision to get married and need to justify why they have thus far not done so is the book’s most evocative finding.


Eviatar Zerubavel, Board of Governors and Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University