Here Be Dragons: the quest for academic credibility

21 Monday Oct 2013

Posted by Jonathan in Critical Religion, University of Stirling

Tags

academia, BASR, EASR, Elder Scrolls, field research, Nine Divines, phenomenology, religious studies, Skyrim

At the recent BASR/EASR conference at Liverpool Hope University I spoke about dragons. My paper was on the application of Ninian Smart’s dimensions of religion to the Nine Divines. The Nine Divines is the principle “religion” to be found in the Elder Scrolls video game series and it has no meat-world presence. My argument was that the Nine Divines as a religion met all the dimensions that Smart detailed and that there were no logical grounds upon which we should not consider it a religion of as much legitimacy or reality as any meat-world counterpart (i.e. Hinduism, Islam, etc.). In short, the Nine Divines is an example of what Smart characterises as an Imperial religion: a ‘relatively loose’ organisation ‘with cities and regions for instance having their own priesthoods and cults’ (1996:237).

There was a certain amount of ludicrosity to the whole affair, something I felt acutely as I did my field research from the comfort of my own armchair. On more than one occasion I was forced to stop and ask myself “is this serious?” I mean, how many field researchers have had to deal with the problem of troll attacks as they travel to investigate what sort of items have been left as offerings at a shrine? It certainly doesn’t feel very phenomenological to bury your axe into a bandit’s face. However, this in itself was part of what fascinated me about the whole exercise. As ludicrous as it all was, going through Smart’s dimensions I found no impediment to say that the Nine Divines isn’t a real religion. The fact of the matter is that applying our scholarly assumptions and categories to the religion of a video game throws up interesting challenges that we might not have considered if we restricted ourselves to roaming the meat-world. The main question I raised in my paper was that despite the fact that there are various discussions about the reality or unreality of gods, spirits, or what have you, no scholar has every stopped to consider the reality or unreality of the practitioners. No definition of religion I can think of stipulates that the practitioners of that religion, however defined, have to have meat-world presence.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of a plethora of questions that are raised by treating the Nine Divines as a real religion. I didn’t have the time to mention them all in my paper and it is not my intention to go through them here. Rather, I want to comment on the “ludicrosity” of the whole affair. Being such a large conference with nearly eight panels running simultaneously at a time, the panel in which I presented my paper did not have a particularly large audience and none of them were prominent academics (as far as I was aware). That, and technical difficulties that led to a limitation upon discussion, meant that there wasn’t really a chance to get a feel for how other academics responded to my paper. While the other papers were also on video games I think I am the first to suggest this sort of study. So to a certain extent the ludicrosity of the study was passed by until later that evening.

Later I was among the contestants for a recording of the second RSP Christmas Special (you can hear me make a fool of myself at the first one here). During the game, which had a large audience definitely featuring some prominent academics, I was joking with my colleague David that unless he started asking questions on Skyrim (where the latest Elder Scrolls game is set) I wasn’t going to know very much. I had already fluked the question on the books of the Bible and was then stumped by a question on the Unification Church. It was during this aside that I happened to get a glimpse at some of the prominent academics who were listening to our brief exchange. It was then that the idea of ludicrosity returned to me. The looks I saw can only be summed up in one way: “Is this guy serious?” I don’t mean to criticise them for giving me those looks or thinking in that manner. I can completely sympathise with them because on one level if I had been in their position I would probably be thinking the exact same thing.

However, as a theory driven scholar driving home that we should all be phenomenologists I am both blessed and cursed by a generality in the academic market place. I can, in theory, be dropped into any number of locales and teach any number of introductory style courses for the study of religion. But, if the recent adverts for academic positions are anything to go by, no one wants the general theorist, they want specialists in a particular topic (Islam usually[1]). And as “theory and method” no longer seems to appear as a “concrete” specialism I would have to say that I specialise in video games. Yet if those looks were anything to go by then that specialism isn’t going to serve me very well either. We have supposedly proclaimed the death of the World Religions Paradigm, and yet academic post after academic post is advertised for positions framed on that very paradigm. “Don’t think in terms of WRP,” we are told, “but that’s how we’re going organise our departments.” Credible academia seemingly depends on an idea we’ve abandoned.

I do not wish to criticise those who would think that the study of video games in Religious Studies isn’t a credible activity. I understand their scepticism. We’re breaching new territory, charting a region on the social scientific map that we may very easily fall off. William Sims Bainbridge, for example, has already been writing on the topic for some time but his recent work has been descending into an apologetic transhumanism (see this blog post for example) which would incite many of us to use that most dirty of RS swearwords: “Theology!” And certainly the same could be said of treating the religions of video games in themselves if we are not careful. But I have no intention of promoting the Nine Divines as a religion – that is the province of a number of emerging Facebook groups – and I am instead intrigued by the analytic value of such a study. To give another example, another paper from the conference made heavy use of Lyons et. al’s concept of “overimitation” (2007) to explain religious rituals. Using this concept to compare ritual worship in the Nine Divines and other meat-world instances we can see just how problematic the idea of “overimitaiton” is for social science. In fact it is on the very demonstration of this point that credibility depends.

But in saying this two forms of credibility are beginning to emerge. On the one hand there is academic credibility, proving that the study of video games as I have gone about the task is valid social science. On the other hand there is employment credibility, proving that religion and video games is worth a teaching position in a university. And we cannot simply assume that appeasing one side will appease the other. There is a difficult and tentative line to be followed in reaching a sense of “credibility” that can satisfy both sides of the line. On the social scientific map, it seems, credibility can only be found on that part that reads: “Here be dragons”.

References

Smart, N. (1996); Dimensions of the Sacred; London, Harper Collins

Lyons, D. et al. (2007); “The Hidden Structure of Overimitation” in PNAS 104; pg.19751-19756

[1] It was somewhat depressing that one of the catalogues from the publishers present at the conference devoted a full fifteen pages to books on Islam where the nearest rival (Christianity) could only muster four as if all we talk about these days is the one religion.

Austerity and the Language of Sacrifice

15 Tuesday Oct 2013

Posted by Dr Brian W Nail in Critical Religion, University of Luxembourg

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austerity, Critical Religion, economics, global, market, sacrifice, unemployment

Journalists frequently invoke the language of sacrifice when describing the consequences of the austerity measures currently being implemented in Britain and across much of Europe. Similarly, politicians have long recognized the rhetorical force of the word ‘sacrifice’, but they often find more subtle ways of embedding the language of sacrifice within speeches by fusing their rhetoric with sacred symbols and ideals which derive their power from longstanding notions of national identity. Thus national symbols that have traditionally garnered powerful sentiments of loyalty to the state are rhetorically translated into an implied sense of fidelity to the prevailing political ideology of the present. In his recent speech at the opening of Parliament, David Cameron made a quick transition from acknowledging fallen British soldiers who “have made the ultimate sacrifice” while fighting in Afghanistan to applauding the government for cutting the national deficit by a third. The implication seems to be that, like the good soldiers who died for their country, British citizens must also be willing to make great sacrifices in order to secure the economic future of their nation. By juxtaposing the deaths of British soldiers with the supposed success of his economic policies, Cameron unwittingly reveals the extent to which the sacrificial rhetoric of austerity is invariably associated with very real human costs. In terms of the UK government’s current policies, these costs are directly linked to an erosion of socio-economic rights in Britain.

The erosion of socio-economic rights that is currently underway is perhaps difficult to detect in the political discourse of austerity because its rationale is framed within the language of economic recovery. In recent speeches, Cameron has continually referred to the need for Britain to regain its competitiveness in the global marketplace. Improving Britain’s competitiveness means making it into the sort of place where corporations and investment firms want to do business. Two of the most direct ways of accomplishing this aim are cutting corporate tax rates and creating what is often referred to as a ‘more flexible labour market.’ Although economists may suggest that there are complex theoretical and mathematical contingencies underlying these institutional policies, the sacrificial logic of these two issues is not difficult to ascertain. Within the so-called developed economies of the West, corporations do not equate to the job producing powerhouses of manufacturing that once drove the industrial economy. The most profitable industries are banking and finance, and thus corporate tax breaks equate to lightening the tax burdens for the very institutions that played a significant part in bringing about the financial crisis in the first place.

Creating ‘a more flexible labour market’ is essentially economic jargon for reducing the employment protection legislation which ensures that employees are treated fairly and paid appropriately. A recent report from the OECD suggests that changes to employment protection legislation which make it easier for employers to terminate jobs should be accompanied by the development of public policies such as job-search assistance programmes and unemployment benefits that help to minimize the social impact of unemployment. A combination of public spending cuts and loosening of employment protection legislation has contributed to even greater economic uncertainty for many workers in Britain. If the current government’s policies are implemented, Britain will be according to one perspective a better place to do business, but it will be a rotten place to work.

As it stands, the conflict between society’s commitment to social welfare and the maintenance of the financial services industry is at the forefront of political debates in Britain and across the globe. And although it seems that these debates are more fierce than ever, from the earliest times the pursuit of money has had a polarizing effect upon society not simply because it goes hand-in-hand with the attainment of social status, but perhaps most importantly because the accumulation of wealth is also a means of securing political power. In his pseudo-historical novel Picture This, Joseph Heller explores the inherent antagonism that exists between the culture of speculative investment and the pursuit of the public good. In Heller’s own vitriolic fashion, the novel’s narrator describes the sociological and cultural consequences of the invention of money:

With the invention of money by the Lydians in the seventh century before Christ the possibility of profit spread, and as soon as there was profit, there were people who wanted to make it, more than they wanted to make anything else. And whenever there is more money to be made from money than from anything else, the energies of the state are likely to be devoted increasingly to the production of money, for which there is no community need, to the exclusion of those commodities that are required for health and well-being, and contemplation. . . . There will be many who flourish in this environment of finance, and a great many more who can go straight to hell (1989, 55–56).

Contrary to the fundamental doctrine of economic liberalism which maintains that in the free market everyone is a winner, Heller’s narrative highlights the ways in which the pursuit of monetary wealth within a society has a tendency to draw the energies of the state away from matters of social well-being and redirect its political energy towards the maintenance of financial institutions. The speculative activities that pervade the ‘environment of finance’ result not only in a highly unstable economic basis for society, but the inevitable costs associated with these activities, in the end, come at the expense of public funds formerly dedicated to the welfare of the state. Thus, according to Heller’s account, the ‘environment of finance’ that is made possible through the invention of money is not only presented as a risky basis upon which to build a nation’s economy, but most importantly, such speculative activity has a deleterious effect upon the socio-economic rights that are essential to a civil society.

The literary critic Ian Gregson suggests that a pervasive theme in Heller’s work is the “impact of institutions on what is conventionally taken to be ‘the individual’—how thoroughly the supposed autonomy of that individual is compromised by far larger political and cultural forces”(2008, 31). In Picture This, the narrator’s suggestion that those who do not flourish in a world dominated by the uncertainties of the environment of finance “can go straight to hell” could be considered more than merely a crass turn of phrase. In reality, those who end up the casualties of market forces not only suffer financially, but they also suffer a loss of political and social agency in a culture where wealth has become a measure of personhood. Falling off the bottom rung of the socio-economic ladder is tantamount to a descent into hell. Meanwhile the financial institutions and administrative overseers who facilitated these exchanges have only been subject to legal action in a handful of extreme cases. Their redemption, it seems, is predicated upon the fact of their irreplaceability—the environment of finance assumes the status of a self-perpetuating system that constantly seeks to transform every loss into a gain by shifting the sacrificial costs of its own existence onto a substratum of society to whom it bears no binding moral obligations.

Since the beginning of the credit crisis in 2008, austerity measures targeted at reducing public spending and supposedly stimulating economic growth have resulted in a substantial erosion of socio-economic rights in Britain and throughout the European Union. In his 1974 study of Third World socio-economic development and political ethics, Peter Berger claims that “The history of mankind is a history of pain” (1974, 163). And he describes the principles that guide politicians in the development of economic policy as a “calculus of pain.” Decisions that often result in actual physical and psychological trauma are considered “in terms of costs and benefits, of input and output.” According to Berger, “Such analysis is typically very technical, and generally borrows concepts and techniques from economics, even where non-economic phenomena are involved” (1974, 164). Most importantly, he points out the rather obvious but nonetheless crucial fact that underlying the economic data on unemployment and income distribution there is the reality of human suffering and death.

In a recent study of the impact of austerity on public health inequalities, researchers concluded that “the burden of budget cuts is falling most greatly on disabled, low-income and unemployed persons”(Reeves et al. 2013). Focusing primarily on already economically depressed parts of the United Kingdom, the study reports a substantial increase in suicide rates which correlates with increased rates of unemployment particularly among public sector workers. It also predicts that changes to disability allowances and housing benefits will have a detrimental effect upon individuals who are already among the most economically deprived in Britain. Consequently, the study concludes that “austerity policies can be expected to impact health in several ways, each difficult to reverse or avoid in the absence of strong social safety nets” (Reeves et al. 2013, 4). These findings point to the real costs underlying the sacrificial rhetoric of austerity. The socio-economic rights which have arguably served to define Britain as a civil society are currently under threat, but it remains to be seen whether or not the nation will seek a viable alternative to the risky sacrificial games that must be played in the ‘environment of finance.’ Reflecting upon the internecine conflicts that plagued Western Europe in the 16^th century, the narrator of Picture This notes that “If they were fighting over money, Aristotle could have told them that it was not worth the struggle” (Heller 1989, 186). If money alone is not worth the struggle, then perhaps it is time to ask Aristotle what is.

Works Cited:

Berger, Peter L. 1974. Pyramids of Sacrifice: Political Ethics and Social Change. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.

Gregson, Ian. 2008. “Joseph Heller’s Allegories of Money.” In Character and Satire in Post War Fiction, 31–53. London: Continuum.

Heller, Joseph. 1989. Picture This. London: Pan Books; Picador.

Reeves, Aaron, Sanjay Basu, Martin McKee, Michael Marmot, and David Stuckler. 2013. “Austere or Not? UK Coalition Government Budgets and Health Inequalities.” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine (September 11)

Critical Politics

07 Monday Oct 2013

Posted by Timothy Fitzgerald in Critical Religion, University of Stirling

≈ 2 Comments

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categories, church, Critical Religion, economics, India, Japan, John Locke, politics, religion, secular

Our blog ‘critical religion’ receives contributions from many people, and they usually have the terms ‘critical’ and ‘religion’ in them somewhere. Some are much more clearly theorised than that. My own understanding of ‘critical religion’ is specific. For me, ‘critical religion’ is always about ‘religion and related categories’, because I argue that religion is not a stand-alone category, but is one of a configuration of categories. On its own, ‘religion’ has no object; it only seems to do so. Religion is a category that is deployed for purposes of classification, but it does not stand in a one-to-one relationship with any observable thing in the world. In modern discourse, ‘religion’ works as half a binary, as in ‘religion and secular’ or ‘religion and [secular] politics’. When we talk about religion today, there is always a tacit exclusion of whatever is considered to be non-religious. If, for example, we talk about religion and politics, we have already assumed they refer to different things, and to mutually incompatible ones at that. Politics is secular, which means non-religious. Religion is separate from politics. If the two get mixed up and confused, then there is a problem.

One thing to notice here is that there has been a massive historical slippage from ‘ought’ to ‘is’. What started in the 17th century as an ‘ought’ – viz. there ought to be a distinction between ‘religion’ and ‘political society’ – has long become an assumption about the way the world actually is. In public discourse we have become used to talking as if ‘religion’ and ‘politics’ refer to two essentially different aspects of the real world, that we intuitively know what a religion is and what politics is, and we imagine that if we wanted to take the trouble we could define their essential differences. And yet of course the rhetorical construct of ‘ought’ keeps appearing, as for example when we insist that a nation that does not have a constitutional separation of religion and politics is undeveloped or backward; or when Anglican Bishops make moral pronouncements that seem uncomfortably ‘political’.

But what does ‘politics’ actually refer to? If the meaning of a word is to be found in its use, then we surely all know the meaning of ‘politics’. We use the term constantly. We have an intuitive understanding about what politics is. If we didn’t, how would we be able to deploy the term with such self-assurance? How, without understanding the term, would we be able to communicate about our shared and contested issues? We discourse constantly about politics, whether in private, or in the media, in our schools and universities, or in our ‘political’ institutions – and we surely all know which of our institutions are the political ones. Careers are made in politics. We join political parties, or we become politicians, or we enrol and study in departments of political science, and read and write textbooks on the topic. How could there be a political science if we did not know what politics is? There are journalists and academics that specialise in politics, journals dedicated to politics, distinct associations and conferences for its study, and thousands of books written and published about politics. Historians research the politics of the past. There is a politics industry. There are commercial companies that analyse and provide data on the topic of politics. Media organisations employ many people to produce programmes dedicated to politics and to political analysis, discussion and debate.

Yet the ubiquity of politics is our problem. For politics and the political is so universal that it is difficult to pin it down. Are there any domains of human living that cannot and are not described as being political, as pertaining to politics? If we try to find some definitive use of the terms ‘politics’ and ‘political’ by searching through popular and academic books, newspapers, TV representations, or the discourses on politics on the internet, it is difficult not to come to the conclusion that everything is politics or political. We can find representations of the politics of abortion, the politics of hunger, church politics, the politics of sectarianism, political Islam, the politics of universities and university departments, the politics of medieval Japan, the politics of the Roman or the Mughal empires, the politics of slavery, class politics, the politics of caste in colonial and contemporary India, the politics of Native Americans in the 16th century, the politics of ancient Babylon, the politics of marriage, the politics of Constitutions, and so on and on. And we surely know that politics is as ancient as the hills.

This apparent universality of the political, its lack of boundaries, seems to place a question mark around its semantic content. If we cannot say what is not politics, then how can we give any determinate content or meaning to the term? This lack of boundaries can also be seen in the problem of demarcating a domain of politics from other domains such as ‘religion’ and ‘economics’. If we try to find a clear distinction between politics and religion, we find a history of contestation, but one that only seems to go back to the 17th century – a point to which I return in a moment. We find claims that politics and religion have – or ought to have – nothing to do with each other, yet in contemporary discourse we find many references to the politics of religion, and also to the religion of politics.

The term ‘political economy’ also points us towards this problem of demarcation. Some universities have departments of politics, some have departments of economics, and some have departments of political economy. How are they distinguished? This is especially perplexing when one finds books written by specialists on the politics of economics, as well as on the economics of politics. Add in works on the religion of politics and the politics of religion; or the religion of economics and the economics of religion: we seem to have a dog’s dinner of categories. You notice these things when you read outside your normal disciplinary boundaries.

It is also of interest that all of these can and are described as sciences: viz. the science of politics, the science of religion, and the science of economics. We cannot in practice easily if at all distinguish between the categories on which these putative sciences are based. Yet all of them have their own specialist departments, degree courses, journals, associations and conferences.

Another point is that all these ‘sciences’, based on concepts so difficult to distinguish and demarcate, are ‘secular’, in the sense of non-religious. Describing a science or discipline as secular reminds us that we have another demarcation problem. If all secular practices and institutions are defined as non-religious and therefore in distinction to ‘religion’, we need to have some reasonably clear understanding about what we mean by religion to be able to make the distinction in the first place. Without such an understanding, how would we know what ‘non-religious’ means? This paradox is magnified when we consider that for many centuries ‘secular’ has referred mainly to the ‘secular priesthood’ in the Catholic Church, and the priesthood are hardly non-religious in the modern sense.

We thus find that in everyday discussions and debates, and also in the more specialist discourses, we deploy concepts with a largely unquestioned confidence that on further consideration seems unfounded. Speaking personally, I entered academic work through religious studies, also known as the science (or scientific study) of religion, the history of religions, or the plain study of religions. Yet I cannot tell you what religion is, or what the relation between [singular] religion and [plural] religions is. I have made it a point over many years of tracking down a wide range of definitions of religion, and found them to be contradictory and circular. There is no agreed definition of the subject that so many experts claim to be researching and writing about. I suggest this is the situation in politics as well. Attempts that I have read to define politics, for example in text-books written for students of politics, seem always to be circular in the sense that they define politics in terms of political attributes, just as religions are defined in terms of religious attributes.

I suggest that the perceived self-evidence of politics as a meaningful category derives from an inherent ambiguity – and in this it is a mirror-image to religion. On the one hand, the term ‘politics’ generally simply means ‘power’ or ‘contestations of power’, and since power is probably one of the few universals in human relations we can see why it might appear intuitively convincing. However, on that understanding, it is difficult to see what is not about politics, because it can surely be argued that all human relations have always been about contestations of power. We gain such ubiquity at the expense of meaning. Surely, political science has a more specific and determinate meaning than power studies? You might just as well say that the study of politics is the study of humanity.

Our sense that there is a more determinate nuance seems justified when we discover that the discourse on ‘politics’ has a specific genesis in the English language in the 17th century. Though we can find a few (probably very few) references to ‘politicians’ in Elizabethan drama, ‘politics’ is even rarer, and I cannot find a sustained discourse on politics as a distinct domain of human action earlier than John Locke’s late 17th century distinctions, developed in his Treatises on Government, between ‘man in the state of nature’ and ‘political society’. Here Locke explicitly distinguishes between man in the state of nature and political or civil society on the one hand; and also between politics and religion on the other. In his religion-politics binary, Locke links politics to the outer, public order of the magistrate and governance, and religion to the inner, private relation of the individual to God. (What he means by ‘god’ is itself a conundrum, for the evidence is that, like Newton, he was a heretic, either a Unitarian or a Socinian. ‘God’ is another of those endlessly contested categories. If you try to define ‘religion’ as ‘belief in god’, you find yourself in another infinite regress of meanings).

It seems significant that this politics-religion binary is a modern, Enlightenment one, because Locke was arguing against the dominant understanding of Religion at the time. For his own reasons he wanted to reimagine ‘religion’. When the term religion was used at all (rarer than today) it meant Christian truth, and there was no clear sense (despite Locke’s claims) that Christian truth was not about power, or that it was separated from governance. The King was the sacred head and heart of the Christian Commonwealth, and what fell outside religion in this dominant sense was not a neutral non-religious domain but pagan irrationality and barbarity. In other words, what fell outside religion in the dominant sense of his day was still defined theologically and biblically in terms of The Fall. His privatization of religion to make way for a public domain of political society was an ideologically-motivated claim about how we ought to think about religion, not a neutral description of some objective facts.

It was especially in his attempt to legitimate new concepts of private property, and the rights of (male) property owners to representation, that Locke needed to completely revise people’s understanding of ‘religion’ as a private affair of the inner man (women were not much in the picture), in order to demarcate an essentially different domain called political society. This new binary found its way into written constitutions in North America, and is now naturalised in common speech and common sense. Today it seems counter-intuitive to question the reality of politics as a distinct domain of human practice. But this rhetorical construction was deeply resisted. Even the French Revolution did not succeed in formally separating religion and the state until the end of the 19th century. England was an Anglican confessional state until well into the 19th century.

Locke’s formulation was thoroughly ideological but has become naturalised through repeated rhetorical construction until now it seems to be ‘in the nature of things’. I suggest that, whenever we use the term politics with intuitive ease we catch ourselves and ask, in what sense am I using the term? Am I using it in the universal sense of ubiquitous power and contestations of power in all human relations? Or as referring to a specific ideological formation of modernity underpinning a historically-emergent form of private property-ownership and representation of (male) property interests? The elided slippage between the historically and ideologically specific formulation, and the empty ubiquity of ‘power’ as a universal in all human relations, lends the term its illusory quality of intuitive common sense.

The Undergraduate Religious Studies Major as Preparation for a PhD in the Humanities and Social Sciences

13 Friday Sep 2013

Posted by Angela Sutton in Critical Religion, Vanderbilt University

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Tags

Africa, capitalism, Critical Religion, culture, economic theory, gender, global, interdisciplinarity, undergraduates

Undergraduate students who are sold on the Religious Studies major for their undergraduate education are often promised that they will become better writers, critical thinkers, and that they will leave university with a mastery of oral communication and presentation skills. These skills serve them well in any job or other postgraduate endeavor. But a degree in Religious Studies confers so much more than that. As Religious Studies encompasses every facet of the human experience, the scholar of religion by necessity becomes fluent in the humanities and social sciences as a whole. The interdisciplinary degree prepares students for postgraduate work in any of the humanities and social sciences in a way that enriches the student’s background and allows them the lateral thinking necessary to figure out the best approaches for their proposed project.

I did not understand this when I started my undergraduate degree in History and Religious Studies at the University of Stirling, Scotland, back in 2002. I quickly learned that my history courses all followed a similar format consisting largely of textual analysis, historiography, and that certain way historians are taught to think and write. My Religious Studies courses, on the other hand, were as different from one another as they were from the subject of history. These courses had very few methodologies in common. While in one class we depended on a wide variety of economic theory to analyze the role religion plays in global economies, in the next we spent the entire semester reading just a few dense texts very closely to uncover the gendered philosophies behind major world religions.

At the time I couldn’t see how this degree could help me on my quest to become a historian. Our classes read some histories, sure, and discussed historiography when we read theorists and philosophers in the order of publication, but there was so much other, well, stuff.

Instead of comparing religions, classes consisted of thorough exposure to the foundations of theoretical work in the humanities. They were hard-hitting and emphasized thematic, interdisciplinary study. Now that I am in my final year of the PhD at Vanderbilt University in the United States, I can see just how much time this other stuff has saved me. My dissertation project uses the written sources of mainly seventeenth-century European slave traders (the British, Dutch, Prussian, and Swedish), to investigate how coastal West Africans asserted influence in the mercantile culture of the Atlantic slave trade. This will uncover their role in contributing to the early modern capitalist economy. Like Religious Studies, it too is by necessity interdisciplinary.

The work I had done as an undergraduate in the Religious Studies program introduced me to the fields of inquiry I need to be familiar with in order to complete this project. For example, in a course on religion and postcolonialism, our class poured over the works of Homi Bhabha, Edward Said, and Gayatri Spivak, which introduced me to the trajectories of the developing world, and the role Europeans played in this. Reading Karl Marx and Adam Smith in the religion and economy course introduced me to economic theory, and piqued my interest in the very fascinating debate on the connections between slavery and capitalism, at which Eric Williams is the center. Exegesis of religious texts like the Quran sharpened my skills in close readings of primary sources. This skill is essential for my project, as studying the history of Africans through European documents requires the most critical eye.

In addition to this, the language of many great philosophers of religion was German, and reading these texts in the original language (which was optional of course- my professors at Stirling were not sadists) improved my language skills and my readiness to learn further languages, such as Dutch and Swedish, for my project. Not to mention that all the theory we read (Freud, Kristeva, Foucault, just to mention a few) as part of larger writing projects in the Religious Studies department showed me how to apply theory, and how to know when to apply (and more importantly, when not to apply) it. In my honors year, writing an ethnography for my Religious Studies undergraduate dissertation conferred familiarity with the discipline-specific language of anthropologists and archaeologists, which I now make use of to get at historical issues of pre-colonial West Africa about which the Eurocentric texts are silent.

This is but one example of how the interdisciplinary nature of the Religious Studies degree at the undergraduate level readies students to branch out to challenging PhD projects in virtually any area of the humanities and social sciences. The very cutting edge of the field is increasingly concerned with matters of interdiscliplinary inquiry, and some departments are changing their name to “Religion” in recognition of this shift. The critical study of Religion, with a capital “R,” gave me the confidence to tackle a complex project that draws on multiple methodologies, and I can’t recommend this type of critical program enough to any undergraduates who wish to continue in academia.

Marian apparitions – a challenge to established categories

02 Monday Sep 2013

Posted by Melanie Barbato in Critical Religion, Ludwig Maximilians University Munich

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Tags

Christian, Critical Religion, market, modernity, pilgrimage, religion, strong religion

Emile Zola noted in 1892 about the newly built Lourdes basilica that its effect was “very shimmering but not especially religious”. The aesthetics of the Lourdes complex, with its mix of architectural styles and generous use of electric lights, was only one of many elements of the Marian apparitions that did not sit well with critics. Interestingly it was not only the reactionary politics behind the Marian cult but particularly the modern aspects like the consumerism or use of mass media at Marian apparition sites that were criticized by many liberal and progressive observers as unworthy of a true religious spirit.

But it would be misguided to simply continue the 19th century tradition and label these aspects as aberrations of an otherwise pure religiosity. As Suzanne K. Kaufman has shown, republicans used the controversy around Lourdes to construct a dichotomy between an acceptable private, nostalgic religiosity and its debased modern public forms in order to “relegate its practices to the margins of modern political and economic life”. (80)

The background for this was that the developments at Lourdes and other Marian apparition sites challenged the monopoly of the secular world view for presenting viable visions for modernity and progress. Marian apparitions showed that reactionary values could go very well with modern technology, mass media and the market. The apparitions themselves were also highly political, not only in the sense that they brought existing tensions to the fore as in the case of violent clashes between Catholics and state troops following claims of Marian apparitions during the German Kulturkampf, but innately through the messages conveyed by the seers to the people.

Academia is increasingly taking “strong religion” (Almond et al. 2003) into account, yet the preconceptions about what the term is supposed to designate are strongly influenced by militant Islamism and its scripture based forms of fundamentalism that dominate the news since 9/11. Marian apparitions, however, are not primarily rooted in scripture but distinctively modern. Mary, the mother of God, appears in the here and now with a message tailored to the circumstances of the time, often choosing places undergoing drastic transformation: Fatima called for a bulwark against communism, La Salette summoned to a disciplined Christian life on the brink of the 1848 revolution. The still on-going messages at Medjugorje that started a decade before the Balkan war spread the message of peace as did the apparition of Mary in Kibeho, where one of the major genocides of the Rwandan war took place.

At Lourdes, the Assumptionists realized the political potential of the Marian apparition site when they chose the National Pilgrimage as their key instrument for driving forth their mission of re-Christianizing French society from individual to government. Also, what is overlooked when speaking in derogatory terms about the devotional kitsch associated with Marian apparition shrines is that these mass produced items could powerfully forge and express identity as they served as “a rival set of emblems” (Blackbourn, 1993: 27) to the omnipresent national symbols of allegiance like the Tricolour.

Of course, the status of Marian apparitions is highly contested. Catholics are not obliged to believe in any of the accepted apparitions, and not only rationalists may find it difficult to believe that God sends Mary today to speak on day-to-day politics. Yet one should keep in mind that those who write off Marian apparitions as degenerated forms of religion and hence as imagined have an agenda, too. Religion, politics, modernity and the market do not come in neat boxes, and we should be wary of anyone trying to package these terms according to their needs. Marian apparitions are an underestimated phenomenon of modernity that can shed new light on the contested conceptualisation and construction of religion from the 19th century onwards.

—

Strong Religion: The Rise of Fundamentalisms Around the World, by Gabriel A. Almond, R. Scott Appleby and Emmanuel Sivan. University of Chicago Press, 2003

Marpingen: Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Nineteenth-Century Germany, by David Blackbourn. Alfred A. Knopf, 1994

Consuming Visions: Mass Culture and the Lourdes Shrine, by Suzanne K. Kaufman. Cornell University Press, 2005

Chauvinism and constructivism in contemporary Scotland

04 Thursday Jul 2013

Posted by Michael Marten in Critical Religion, University of Stirling

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categories, constructivism, Critical Religion, essentialism, independence, nationalism, Scotland, unionism

On 18. September 2014 a referendum will take place in Scotland that will decide whether or not Scotland should become independent of the rest of the United Kingdom: the referendum was a key manifesto pledge of the Scottish National Party that won the last elections in the devolved Scottish Parliament. The question – “Should Scotland be an independent country?” – will allow the vast majority of people resident in Scotland the opportunity to choose independence for Scotland, or reaffirm their commitment to the three centuries-old union.

The two opposing campaigns are already hard at work on the issue. The unionist movement consists of the three major UK parties: the ruling Westminster coalition Conservative (Tory) and Liberal Democrat parties, along with Labour (all are now essentially neoliberal parties, though it is worth noting many grassroots Labour activists – marginalised by the party hierarchy – are not). They are campaigning under the banner of Better Together, though divisions in the campaign are emerging as Labour activists in particular struggle with the Tories. The independence movement consists (unsurprisingly) of parties with their roots firmly in Scotland: the Scottish National Party, the Scottish Greens, and Scottish Socialist Party and others (along with numerous elements of civil society, the arts and more – broadly, though not exclusively, a movement that tends towards the left and centre-left). They are campaigning under the banner of Yes Scotland.

My own positionality on this issue is important before discussing further detail: I expect to vote ‘yes’ in 2014, though I would never identify myself as a Scottish nationalist, as will become clear. This is why I feel Eric Hobsbawm’s warning does not apply to me (that it is impossible to seriously study the history of nations and nationalism as a committed political nationalist because ‘Nationalism requires too much belief in what is patently not so.’(1)). What I want to do here is look briefly at the categories being discussed. My position in this debate has arisen in part from these reflections.

The unionist side are British nationalists. This is not how they tend to describe themselves, and those who do so can expect to be vilified (the novelist Alan Bissett describes this happening to him when he uses the term; see also Gerry Hassan‘s writing). Instead, the unionists expend much effort at deriding what they see as a narrow nationalism that the SNP (in particular) are supposed to represent. And yet, in arguing for a united country, the No campaign – whose website homepage has the heading ‘The patriotic all-party and non-party campaign for Scotland in the UK’ – espouses a very clear form of chauvinistic nationalism. The Better Together website’s About page explains that they think ‘Scotland is a better and stronger country as part of the United Kingdom… [retaining the existing devolved parliament but also keeping] the strength and security of the United Kingdom.’ This is a point reiterated in several ways on another page that supposedly argues ‘The +ve case‘, including embarrassing comments about the British armed forces being ‘the best in the world’. The case being made is largely an essentialist one about greater strength, unclearly defined, in a world that is a threat (indeed, internally they call their own campaigning strategy ‘Project Fear‘). There is little self-reflection here. For example, we might want to ask: wherein lies this ‘strength and security’? As Simon Gikandi (e.g. in Maps of Englishness) and many others have described over the years, English identity in the colonial era was created largely on the basis of empire and the domination of peripheral neighbours (Wales, Ireland, Scotland), indeed, the novelist James Kelman argues that ‘Britain is not a country, it is the name used by the ruling elite and its structures of authority to describe itself.’ The growth of empire and the growth of global British trade are intimately linked, and this has played a role in post-World War II British foreign policy too. Even with the independence of most of Britain’s colonial possessions overseas, military engagement since the war has often been at least in part about securing trading advantages for Britain. Apart from 1968, Britain has been engaged in military conflict somewhere in the world in every single year since World War II. Many of these conflicts have been of dubious legality (the 2003 invasion of Iraq is simply the latest in any such list), but in any case, given the evidence of abuse at the hands of the British from 1950s Kenya to 2000s Iraq, those on the receiving end have rarely felt warmly about British military adventurism, even when cloaked in a mantle of ‘liberation’ or ‘freedom’. Britain is also – against the consistently expressed will of the vast majority of Scots in whose territory they are based – one of a handful of states with nuclear weapons of mass destruction (making no obvious move towards disarmament as they are obliged to do, in fact, quite the reverse). There are increasing numbers of Scots who do not see in such indicators a ‘strength and security’ they want to be associated with. And yet much of Better Together‘s rhetoric is about such forms of chauvinist nationalist identity.

In contrast, the Yes Scotland movement is light on identity issues, but strong on the opportunities for positive change that a ‘yes’ vote would bring. Whereas the Better Together campaign worries about the ‘threats’ that would face an independent Scotland, the Yes Scotland website (‘the campaign for an independent Scotland’) speaks of the opportunities that would arise, and does so in a positive way, as their Why vote Yes page argues: ‘This is an exciting and historic opportunity for our nation. We can choose a different and better path.’ Independence, they argue, is about ensuring that ‘decisions about Scotland’s future are taken by the people who care most about Scotland – that is by the people of Scotland. It is the people who live here who will do the best job of making our nation a fairer, greener and more successful place.’ Such an emphasis on opportunity, self-determination, fairness, environmentalism and success is not about essentialist interpretations of the past. There is no Braveheart here (such twee nonsense is left to the Tourist Board!): instead, there is a positive image of what Scotland could be in the context of self-determination. Yes Scotland is treading a fine line here: on the one hand, they want to extol the virtues of positive opportunity, whilst on the other, they seek to address some of the fears that the ‘no’ campaign is seeking to raise. The difficulty Yes Scotland have with this – and they have at times failed to recognise it – is that the ‘no’ campaign will mostly seem to ‘win’ such arguments, since they are demanding facts about the future, something that is patently impossible to provide (and Better Together know this). The alternative to the unrelenting negativity of the ‘no’ campaign cannot be unremitting optimism, however, since voters will simply regard that as naïvety. That is something that Yes Scotland have sought to avoid, with reassurances about Scotland ‘the day after’ the referendum. There is probably more they need to do in relation to thinking about the future, particularly in looking at other countries of similar size and context such as the Nordic countries (Lesley Riddoch’s Nordic Horizons does some of this; see also recent National Collective blog postings). The international context will, I think, become more important as time goes on, and offers Yes Scotland the possibility of meaningful insights into what an independent Scotland could be.

Why is all this important or of interest in the context of a project like the Critical Religion Association, which is seeking to understand categories of analysis?

It seems to me that the referendum debate offers us an insight into the interaction between categories which have a very definite end-point in the form of a referendum on 18. September 2014. Ostensibly, both the Better Together and the Yes Scotland campaigns are addressing the same issue, and yet the debate is happening in terms that mean they are effectively talking past one other:

The tendency for the British nationalists is to connect to a chauvinist nationalist identity that emphasises the place of Britain above all else. There is little recognition of what might need to change: no sense that British nationalism is a contaminated brand, or that the Scottish place in Britain is marginal, not only in relation to England, but especially in relation to the de facto city-state of London. The liberal use of the language of ‘patriotism’ and ‘pride’ and similar terms reflects an emphasis on identity based on a particular understanding of ‘tradition’ (or, as Scots might say, ‘it’s aye bin!’), rather than a future of potential and possibility. Of course, it is a truism to say that it is always harder to campaign positively for any kind of ‘no’, but whilst there is support from corporate sources for Better Together (some profoundly problematic), there simply does not appear to be a creative or inspiring hinterland underpinning the Better Together campaign, as Joyce McMillan recently noted. A negative referendum result would (in the short-term at least) almost certainly curtail any moves towards alternative possible futures for Scotland – the Westminster neo-liberal parties would see no incentive to give the devolved Scottish parliament additional powers, and the head of Better Together has made clear that is not how they see their role.
The Yes Scotland approach tends towards a constructivist perspective, one that argues for creating something by taking the steps that are necessary for that creation. What Yes Scotland and other independence campaigners want to do is ‘Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation’ (paraphrased by Alasdair Gray from Dennis Lee), or to refer to Hobsbawm again: ‘Nations do not make states and nationalisms but the other way round.’(2) Independence, in the eyes of Yes Scotland – and the various energetic and creative think-tanks and artistic movements that support independence (such as Bella Caledonia and National Collective, both, in different ways, models of creative civic engagement) – is not the end of a process, but the beginning of something new, something that allows for the creation of a state that will, ideally, be congruent with the developing national identity that Scots want to pursue, but cannot at the moment. The journalists Lesley Riddoch and Joyce McMillan have both argued in different ways that this idea of constructing a better society is what will motivate them to vote ‘yes’. In such a vision, voting for independence is not an end in and of itself, but a step on the way towards a society that more closely reflects what it is that Scots want. What the ‘yes’ supporters are aiming to excite is the imagination, in the belief that a community of people that can imagine a better future can also bring it about. This involves building on the past but not being held hostage to it, as Dominic Hinde puts it: ‘The historically rooted aspects of Scottish identity will not vanish, but they must be selectively built upon… Self determination for Scotland has the potential to be a Stunde Null, and that involves reimagining parts of the national consciousness which have no place in a modern society.’

Of course, there are chauvinists on the ‘yes’ side and constructivists on the ‘no’ side, but the overall tendencies are pretty clear. Perhaps it is the incongruence of categories of discussion here – chauvinistic essentialism vs. optimistic constructivism – that is one of the reasons why the debate itself has been characterised as negative.

Finally, in thinking about categories of analysis when considering responses to a question such as independence, we might be able to point to essentialism and constructivism as alternative approaches, but what this means for the vote itself next September is unclear: fear and chauvinism have often defeated creative and inspirational constructivist approaches – but there are also examples of the reverse happening, and I am hopeful a more positive approach will win out, and continue to work for such an outcome. Certainly, Yes Scotland’s case that the people of Scotland should decide Scotland’s future has an undeniable logic to it, and the fact that Scotland is even debating independence is met with bemusement by many outsiders. What is clear is that were it not for the common date of the referendum in 2014, many observers might struggle to realise that the two sides are even discussing the question of Scottish independence, so different are the categories with which they engage.

——

(1) Nations and Nationalism Since 1780. Programme, Myth, Reality, London, 1990, 1992: 12.
(2) ibid, 10.

The elephant in the room – religion and the peace process in Northern Ireland

10 Monday Jun 2013

Posted by Francis Stewart in Critical Religion, University of Stirling

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Catholic, Critical Religion, culture, Northern Ireland, peace, Protestant, religion, violence

Since its legal inception in 1921 Northern Ireland has been plagued with violence and dispute. This blog does not provide the forum or indeed space to fully explore the myriad causes for the violence. Suffice it to say that it is a conglomeration of perceived imperial action by the UK through both military and political means, a monochromatic entrenchment of the past, cultural clashes and a severe identity crisis. Conspicuous by its absence from the list appears to be the question of ‘religion’.

Certainly when the Good Friday Agreement was created, and subsequently voted in within two referenda in both the North and South of Ireland, religion was not a factor in what was to be the proposed peace process. In fact religion is mentioned once, in the third section of the lengthy agreement under the headline of ‘human rights’. The salient part of the sentence confirms ‘the right to freedom and expression of religion’, frankly so vague as to be virtually useless given the situation it was linked with and intended to move beyond.

Inferences from this statement would seem to indicate two things, the first being that religion has no part to play within the peace process or indeed any lasting peace within the province, and second, that religion is a homogenous construct and practise within Northern Ireland. Both are significantly problematic and both will, ultimately, ensure that peace remains nothing but a cracked glass waiting for the final knock to shatter it (see also, Susan Mckay, Northern Protestants: An Unsettled People, (Blackstaff, 2006)).

Removing religion from a peace process that has in part, certainly within the media, been explained (away) as a violent, religiously-motivated conflict, seems naïve at best and disingenuous at worst. Paramilitaries on both sides of the divide frame their actions and indeed perspective through their religious understandings. Republican paramilitaries who died were given the last rites where possible and a Catholic funeral (with military overtones). Loyalists paramilitaries often utilised mottos such as ‘For God and Ulster’.

John Brewer, David Mitchell and Gerard Leavey have just released a book (Ex-combatants, Religion and Peace in Northern Ireland, London: Palgrave, 2013) that documents the role religion played in the lives of paramilitaries from both sides of the divide. It focuses on religion as a motivating factor in choosing to pick up a weapon or join a paramilitary organisation, religious experiences of imprisoned paramilitaries, and the relationship between paramilitary members and the churches.

Various religious ideologies are wrapped up in the conflict: loyalist wall murals quote Old Testament scripture, whilst Republican murals espouse New Testament ideas such as that of laying down one’s life for another in connection with the hunger strikers. The interviews by Brewer et al reveal the range of religious ideologies and personal faith that existed for paramilitary members (chapter 4 in particular). Ignoring the role of religion and the religious dimension in the conflict prevents a full understanding of what actually happened and why. By extension it prevents the development of a useful model to understand the ongoing concern of extremism within certain interpretations of Islamism.

So why is religion, and its varying interpretations, not discussed more substantially in the Good Friday Agreement, nor addressed seriously – or even included – within the ongoing peace process? Brewer posits that the answer may lie in the source of the structure of the agreement itself, that is within the field and purpose of transitional justice, which is often not amenable to religion playing a role (pp 160) as it interferes with the American cold-war triumphalism in which it was created (pp vii). I don’t disagree, but it does not provide enough of an answer.

Let’s push the idea further; perhaps its exclusion is also based on the possibility that inclusion of religion within both the reality of the conflict and the peace process would necessitate an acknowledgement that religion is significantly more important to identity construction and defence than is perhaps comfortable. Religion is intangible, difficult to understand and virtually impossible to define. Other factors that cause or contribute to conflict are significantly easier to categorise and even develop pathways to either re-route or correct or legislate for or against.

A uniform concept of ‘religion’ is in itself problematic and erroneously assumes a common understanding and agreement as to what constitutes religion. Fitzgerald has argued that the term ‘religion’ is a Western construct with a particular agenda that includes exclusionary aspects regarding what is and is not ‘religion’. It has the potential to exclude those who hold strong opinions on both ethical matters and issues of faith yet would not self-identify as ‘religious’. In other words the term ‘religion’ is both constructed and constrictive, and in a situation such as that in Northern Ireland it is arguable that the problematic nature of the term is a contributing factor to the conflict.

The tantalising question arises: if we allow for a less constrictive understanding of religion within a situation such as Northern Ireland, what possibilities for reconciliation emerge? To answer that, even partially, requires a clear framework on which to set about addressing the question of religion. Refusing any boundaries or encouraging a general relativism is just as damaging and problematic as assuming too narrow an understanding.

A framework which enables a broad critique of religion and a variety of religious understandings and approaches is a necessity. Understandings of religion in Northern Ireland are so intrinsically linked to the character of the people and the very landscape itself (not just the murals but also how cities such as Belfast are physically carved up through permanent peace lines) it is possible to overlook the place of religion outside of institutions so vocal and prominent during the conflict. A study of grassroots organic approaches to peace is called for, but it cannot be limited to one framework or approach, it must be made from a variety of different approaches and ideas. In Northern Ireland we have a saying, ‘grasp the nettle’, which means do what needs to be done – a very apt approach that studies into the peace process need to take on board with regards to the place of religion.

Tibetan self-immolation between religious practice and political statement

20 Monday May 2013

Posted by Sihaya in Critical Religion, Erasmus University of Rotterdam

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Critical Religion, moral, politics, religion, self-immolation, Tibet

The first self-immolation in Tibetan society in the modern era took place in exile in Delhi, India in 1998 as a Tibetan Youth Congress hunger strike was broken up by Indian police. Since then, five more Tibetans have set fire to themselves in exile and a growing number continue to do so in what is considered the occupied territory of Tibet. Since February 2009 more than 100 Tibetans have set themselves of fire within the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR). The slogan gathering all these acts of self-sacrifice are gathered in the image in an article published in The Economist last year of ‘Tibet on Fire’. According to such a view self-immolations enact the ‘burning issue’ of the Tibetan issue in order to remind the world about the situation of Tibetans and their long history of exile. But are self-immolations political acts or are they the expression of religious ideals? While the self-immolations have a clear political goal, dramatically calling for attention towards Tibetans from the western world they are also religious acts, deeply embedded in Tibetan Buddhism. That seems to be a paradox, because how can a religion that deeply discourages of violence agree with such an extreme form of suicide?

It cannot be contested that self-immolations are political in nature. Indeed many initiators of such acts call for unity within Tibet: You must unite and work together to build a strong and prosperous Tibetan nation in the future. This is the sole wish of all the Tibetan heroes. In the view of those who agree with this political statement unity is needed in front of the divisive policies of the Chinese government and also in front of the disagreement of how to approach Tibetan independence from exile. The latter extrapolates between the non-violent approach which for the past half of a century has been advocated and implemented under the authority of the Dalai Lama and the more impatient approach of Tibetan youth who feel that non-violence is not an answer.

Violence committed towards the self is not only the middle way between these two options, as it might at first seem. It is a practice that is embedded if not encouraged by Tibetan Buddhism and its ideas of ultimate giving, selflessness, sacrifice of the self for the others. The religious expression of these ideas is the ritual of gCod where the symbolic sacrifice of the body is used as a way of severing attachment to existence (Stott 1989). But an even more pronounced expression of the value of self-sacrifice can be found in Shatideva’s Bodhisattvacharyavatara, a text often taught at public occasions by the Dalai Lama. This text explains in details the attributes and actions of a bodhisattva, the enlightened being who is working for the benefit of other. Here the exchange of the self for others is a main idea:

At the beginning, the Guide of the World encourages/ The giving of such things as food’ Later, when accustomed to this,/One may progressively start to give away even one’s flesh. (Shantideva and Batchelor 1999:63)

In this perception the renunciation to the body and to the flesh symbolizes the renunciation to the self. The self, accompanied by a feeling of individuation is considered the highest impediment on the spiritual path. In order to reach enlightenment the self and its importance must be diminished, destroyed. This can be done through meditative practices but also rather literal forms of self-sacrifice. While in order to attain spiritual benefit renunciation to the self must take place as an offering to the benefit of other, it is foremost the one who makes the sacrifice who reaps the benefits. In this way, as the Dalai Lama turns the argument around, caring for others is the way of being truly selfish. Thus, by sacrificing oneself one can be truly selfish: through thinking only of others and sacrificing the self for other, one can actually reach high spiritual attainments (The Dalai Lama and Cutler 1999).

However, it is not the promise of spiritual attainment that motivates Tibetan self-immolators. Rather it is the ideal of collective freedom and independence that motivates these acts. Although these two seems like articulating a political goal, transforming self-sacrifice into a political act, once more religious and political goals are crossfertilizing each other. Many Tibetans who have contributed to a burning Tibet express a wish for Tibetan unity, wishing to be free to practice Tibetan Buddhism and listen to the teachings of the Dalai Lama. Meanwhile, however, they become heroes who apply in practice the ideal of the bodhisattva while fighting for their rights towards religious practice. With this attitude self-immolations make a superior moral claim upon collective freedom and independence, making it difficult for the Chinese to respond.

Although self-sacrifices through fire are not unique either to Asian cultures nor to Buddhism, the specific intersection of political and religious goals in the Tibetan context is unique. Tibetan self-immolations are actions taken for the welfare and benefit of others. This presents a special case to Talal Asad’s approach in which he considers the religious and political as mutually defining each other (Asad 2003). The case of Tibetan self-immolations throws light on the way categories of religion and politics are constructed and implemented as a transnational political statement made with the help of acts of compassion. The heroism of Tibetans rests on moral superiority of their political statements backed up by religious principles of ultimate giving.

Bibliography

Asad, T (2003) Genealogies of religion, The Johns Hopkins University Press: Baltimore and London
Santideva and Batchelor, S. (1999) The Bodhisattva’s way of life, LTWA: Dharamsala
Stott, D. (1989)  Offering the body: The practice of gCod in Tibetan Buddhism, Religion  19:3
The Dalai Lama and Cutler, H. (1999) The art of happiness, Hodder Paperbacks: Londonreligion

Critical Religion and Economic Discourse

06 Monday May 2013

Posted by Dr Brian W Nail in Critical Religion, University of Luxembourg

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crisis, Critical Religion, economics, sacred, secular

In Britain and throughout much of Europe, the “age of austerity” persists. Likewise in America the economic future remains enveloped in political turmoil and fiscal uncertainty. It appears that the western world has begrudgingly entered a new economic age. The ever-changing predictions of economic advisers and politicians have in many cases proven to be little more than fruitless surmising. Like Samuel Beckett’s Estragon, who removes his boot anticipating some hidden object to appear from the emptiness within, politicians in Britain and America have desperately sought to relieve themselves of the collective weight of national deficits and public spending only to find that despite these efforts—“There is nothing to show.” As difficult economic decisions are contentiously deferred in the hope of better times to come, it is perhaps worth considering the possibility that like Godot the economic stability we long for is not destined to arrive. Notwithstanding our present difficulties, now is not the time to adopt a position of economic apocalypticism.

While political factions in Britain and America struggle to reassert the social and economic hierarchies of the past, scholars from numerous disciplines have begun to vigorously investigate alternatives to the prevailing ideologies which have underwritten western society’s approaches to managing the costs of existence. If scholars working in the humanities have something to say about cultural production and the values of contemporary society, then it seems more than reasonable that they may be capable of making important contributions to current economic debates. Critical Religion may be able to offer certain intellectual resources for critiquing the political and economic models which are currently being outstripped. But in order to open up the field of economics to alternative modes of discourse, it is necessary to challenge the intellectual and disciplinary boundaries which have historically served to distance modern socio-economic theory from other forms of intellectual inquiry.

In an essay entitled “Knowing Our Limits” (2010), Rowan Williams suggests that executing a theological incursion into the field of economics entails a critical investigation of the language and epistemological assumptions which constitute the study of economics:

In asking whether economics and theology represent two different worlds, we need to be aware of the fact that a lot of contemporary economic language and habit doesn’t only claim a privileged status for economics on the grounds that it works by innate laws to which other considerations are irrelevant. It threatens to reduce other sorts of discourse to its own terms—to make a bid for one world in which everything reduces to one set of questions (2010, p.20).

Williams’ assessment of the totalizing force of economic discourse may just as easily be applied to his own discipline of theology—formerly known as the “The Queen of the Sciences”. To avoid a mere inversion of the relationship between economics and theology, the notion of Critical Religion provides a vital starting point for examining the heterogeneity that exists between seemingly disparate modes of secular and religious discourse. One way of challenging the privileged status of economic theory is to excavate the theological and religious principles upon which this supposedly secular science has been established. In doing so it may be possible to uncover the ways that religion and secularity are at times complicit in western society’s efforts to construct and justify social and economic hierarchies.

It is not coincidental that the field of Critical Religion has emerged during a time of religious as well as economic crisis. Times of crisis have the potential to instigate positive cultural and intellectual transformations. Presently, the absolute triumph of so-called secular reason over religious faith has not only failed to come to pass in western society; religion and secularity have found themselves in a common state of disarray. Over the past decade, the secularization thesis has not been proven false because religious thinkers and secularists have somehow made peace with one another; instead, the economic and political foundations underlying the conflict between these mimetic foes have shifted dramatically.

Influential thinkers such as Jürgen Habermas and numerous others have already begun to explore the notion of post-secularity as a way of describing not simply the historical epoch which has followed postmodernity, but rather the specific challenges that religious and secular institutions currently face as they renegotiate their claims to moral truth and political authority. Noting the frustration which many theorists, critics, philosophers, and economists experience when faced with the problem of religion’s survival, Hent de Vries argues, “The post-secular condition and its corresponding intellectual stance consist precisely in acknowledging this ‘living-on’ of religion beyond its prematurely announced and celebrated deaths” (2006, p.7). Because religion survives within contemporary society in increasingly spectral forms, De Vries suggests that “In order to track its movements, new methodological tools and sensibilities are needed” (2006, p.7). In his recent book On the Sacred (2012), Gordon Lynch takes up the task of elaborating a new approach to detecting the continuing presence of religion in society. Lynch reconfigures the traditional opposition between religion and secularity by arguing that various manifestations of the sacred form the basis of all social life. The sacred, according to Lynch, may be defined “by what people collectively experience as absolute, non-contingent realities that exert unquestionable moral claims over the meaning and conduct of their lives” (2012, p.32). He argues that human rights, the responsibility of caring for children, and nationalism, may all be considered sacred forms which are common to both religious and secular life.

However, the category of the sacred does not simply represent that which society seeks to protect or preserve—as the work of René Girard has so effectively evinced, the sacred also represents that which is unquestionably sacrificable. In a sacrificial economy, the individuals who are most likely to suffer at the expense of prevailing notions of the sacred are those who exist on the margins of society. The practice of Critical Religion not only offers certain intellectual benefits which comes from exploring the boundaries between various disciplines; but it also offers an opportunity to respond to a pressing social responsibility to critically question the strategies by which religious and secular communities have sought to secure for themselves a tomorrow which is less than certain for many. By acknowledging the heterogeneity of religion and the ambivalence of so many cultural manifestations of the sacred, Critical Religion is capable of bringing to light the myths and rituals which underwrite our most problematic forms of economic decision-making.

In his contemplation of the future of religious poetry in a post-secular age, the poet Michael Symmons Roberts suggests that the intellectual relativism that characterized much of the literary and academic discourse of postmodernism has declined in recent years—“Politically and financially the world is a volatile place, and relativism will no longer do. Above all, perhaps, our exit from the hall of mirrors is driven by ecological concerns. Relativism simply collapses in this context” (2008, p.71). Moral and intellectual relativism is of course not the solitary contribution of those various strands of cultural and critical theory which have come to represent postmodernism. However, Roberts’ larger point remains important: the most significant epistemological questions of our time are inspired by all too real ontological challenges. In this regard, the field of Critical Religion is uniquely positioned to apply the modes of critique and cultural analysis, which are the legacy of postmodern discourse, to the task of elaborating alternative ways of inhabiting a world where existence costs.

Some (Mainly) Very Appreciative Comments on Brent Nongbri’s “Before Religion”

06 Monday May 2013

Posted by Naomi Goldenberg in Critical Religion, University of Ottawa

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Arabic, Bengal, Brent Nongbri, Critical Religion, Greek, India, Khasi, religion, review, Roman

Some (Mainly) Very Appreciative Comments on Brent Nongbri’s Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept (New Haven and London: Yale, 2013).

In Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept (Yale: 2013, Brent Nongbri makes a significant contribution to Critical Religion that will be useful to both students and theorists. This is a clear and carefully written book, well researched and informatively referenced. Nongbri’s strength lies in his feeling for antiquity. With precision and skill, he reviews English translations of the word religion in influential early Greek, Roman and Arabic texts to argue that the term is an anachronism supporting the conventional notion that ‘religion’ refers to a recognizable and timeless phenomenon. Although such insight will be familiar to readers of the works of Timothy Fitzgerald, David Chidester, Richard King, Russell McCutcheon et al., Nongbri’s account is particularly notable for its sustained clarity and judicious selection of ancient source material.

Nongbri tells us that his questioning of the universality of “religion” began when he realized that the word did not exist in the Khasi language his father grew up speaking in northeastern India. Instead of referring to specific “religious” ideas or behavior that could be distinguished from “secular” varieties, “ka niam”, the Khasi term his father offered as an equivalent to religion, simply means “customs” in a broad sense. Further inquiry revealed that niam is actually a Bengali term signifying “rules” or “duties.” This discovery about his paternal tongue forms the paradigm that Nongbri identifies again and again in his investigation of ancient sources. As he leads his readers through myriad texts of early history, he points to the absence of “the modern concept of religion” and how the insertion of the word misrepresents authorial intentions.

Nongbri structures his arguments memorably around a few well-articulated themes. His chapter titled “Some (Premature) Births of Religion in Antiquity” is especially effective. Under this heading, he refutes claims that “religion” emerged in reference to the Maccabean revolt, in Cicero’s rhetoric, in Eusebius’ texts, or in Muhammed’s innovations. He also does an impressive job of showing that the tenets Tomoko Masuzawa identifies in the nineteenth century as formative for a discourse of world religions are actually well underway in the seventeenth century in the work of Alexander Ross et al.

Nongbri is convinced that the study of antiquity could be improved if “students of the ancient world [were] … to work on generating a better vocabulary for talking about the various ways that ancient peoples conceptually carved out their worlds, a better means of describing the clusters of practices and beliefs outlined by ancient authors…”(p.53). He writes that the task is not one of finding a better word for “it” – i.e. of uncovering what “religion” meant in antiquity – but rather of realizing that there never was an “it” in the first place. Nongbri believes that if his advice were heeded, we would not wind up with more “slightly tweaked” books about early religions, but rather with more specific and insightful studies on such subjects as “Athenian appeals to ancestral tradition, Roman ethnicity, Mesopotamian scribal praxis, Christian and Muslim heresiological discourses, and other topics that will encapsulate and thoroughly rearrange those bits and pieces of what we once gathered together as ‘ancient religions’ ”(159).

I suggest that Nongbri’s counsel for reforming the study of ancient history should be applied throughout the field of Religious Studies. Nongbri hesitates to recommend such an approach to scholars of contemporary “religions.” Instead, he concludes his book with what I find to be a contradictory and confusing call to “think outside of our usual categories” (159) by being aware that whenever we use the word ‘religion’ we are employing a “second-order” redescriptive concept. Surprisingly, Nongbri says that such a conscious – yet, to my mind, impossibly acrobatic – use of the term could even have some benefits in the study of antiquity. Thus, he momentarily argues against the thrust of his own conscientious analysis in his conclusion.

Despite this brief retreat from the implications of his critique, Nongbri succeeds in building a solid case for historians of antiquity to purge their intellectual toolbox of a distorting anachronism. In addition, his book also points to similar confusions and misrepresentations that occur with the use of ‘religion’ in reference contemporary times when the word is imposed on non-Western cultures like his father’s or when scholars continue to use rhetorical ploys such as “embedded religion” to reinscribe religion as “eternally present” (152).

The argument that Nongbri frames so clearly and competently in relation to ancient history is applicable in present times and possibly more urgent. By assuming that religion is an eternal and universal “it” that identifies a bounded sphere of human life, distinct from what we term “politics” or “economics” or “the secular,” we are doing more than hampering our understanding of epochs in the past. We are also obscuring our ability to see through the veils of ideologies that currently surround us. The task of lifting these veils, or, at least, of making them less opaque is one way to conceive of an objective for “Critical Religion” – an aim that Nongbri’s work helps to further.

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Some (Mainly) Very Appreciative Comments on Brent Nongbri’s “Before Religion”