Postmodern Ethnography in Standing Ground by Thomas Buckley

In his book, Standing Ground, Thomas Buckley uses postmodernist methods to understand and explain the culture of the Yurok Indians of Northern California. Central to his methodology is “the most ancient of intellectual strategies, storytelling” (Buckley 2002: 23). By privileging the stories told by native authors involved in the Yurok culture he was describing, Buckley allows the reader of this ethnography to wade through a larger pool of voices through which the reader may emerge with a changed understanding of the culture being investigated and explained. For Buckley, this approach “is, if nothing else, a more modest undertaking than constructing a line of data and argument...along which the reader is marched toward a foreordained, explanatory conclusion: ‘I have shown that….’” (Buckley 2002: 23).

By privileging storytelling as ethnographic strategy, Buckley embodies three postmodernist concepts of ethnography: (1) Ethnography as ‘Thick Description,’ (2) Ethnography as Discourse, and (3) Ethnography as a Process of Knowledge. This paper will examine how Buckley uses these three approaches in his ethnographic work.

Ethnography as ‘Thick Description’

Clifford Geertz, in his essay “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture,” argues that the concept of culture is essentially semiotic or shaded by nuances of multiple possible meanings (1973: 5). For Geetrz, an ethnographer is faced with a “multiplicity of complex conceptual structures, many of them superimposed upon or knotted into one another, which are at once strange, irregular, and inexplicit” (1973: 10). The ethnographer must first understand and then render these conceptual structures through a ‘thick description’ or narrative that allows for the multiple meanings that are present during observation. Geertz argues that the whole point of his semiotic approach to culture is “to aid us in gaining access to the conceptual world in which our subjects live so that we can, in some extended sense of the term, converse with them” (1973: 24).

Buckley acknowledges that his work is influenced by Geertz (2002: 21) and that he feels the best way to achieve a ‘thick description’ is to “let everyone tell stories” (2002: 23). Buckley uses this strategy throughout his ethnography but his treatment of the stories of “men doctors” may best exemplify his understanding of thick description.

According to Buckley, A. L. Kroeber insisted that the Yuroks always took for granted that a sucking doctor (kegey) was a woman (2002: 162). Kroeber seems to have disregarded the information provided to him by Native Authors such as Fanny Flounder and Robert Spott and in his quest to reconstruct Yurok culture, he negated the significance of men as kegey for five possible reasons ranging from a limited understanding of the word kegey to a predisposition to creating a hypothetical ethnographic present and a disregard for an emergent regional culture (2002: 162-163). In fact Buckley asserts: “I believe that Kroeber was wrong on several accounts and that his errors resulted precisely from his conception of cultures in northwestern California as having segregated ‘compartments’ of traits and his consequent failure to appreciate the complex integration of various domains and associational spheres in those cultures” (2002: 164).

In contrast, Buckley weaves the narratives of Lucy Thompson, Robert Spott, Fanny Flounder, and others to demonstrate that the kegey also included anyone, male or female, that “drew spiritual power from the upper world and applied it to the well-being of individuals and communities” (2002: 163). Kroeber expressed dismay at the term kegey being applied to men that contributed to the deerskin dance because he viewed the world renewal and doctoring activities as occupying separate compartments of culture. For Kroeber, culture was segmented and compartmental while Buckley understands that culture is a multiplicity of complex structures that are knotted and messy.

Ethnography as Discourse

James Clifford, in his essay “Partial Truths,” asserts “[e]thnography is actively situated between powerful systems of meaning. It poses its questions at the boundaries of civilizations, cultures, classes, races, and genders” (1986: 2). Because ethnography is inscribed as text, it is constructed, objectified, and subject to “the powerful lies of exclusion and rhetoric” (1986: 7). In order to accommodate native speakers, culture needs to be seen as “an interplay of voices, of positioned utterances” (1986: 12) and ethnographers should move towards a specification of discourses that addresses who is speaking and writing, who they are speaking with, and under what institutional and historical constraints (1986: 13). For Clifford, ethnographers no longer hold “unquestioned rights of salvage” (1986: 16) but must include native informants as co-authors while recognizing their own role as interpreting observer (1986: 17). In other words, cultures are not scientific objects but “contested, temporal, and emergent” (1986: 19).

Buckley recognizes Clifford’s call for a dialogical ethnography but struggles with the fact that an ethnographer acts as a final editor (2002: 22). Still, in his analysis of the Jump Dance, he opposes the scientific objectivism of the ‘world renewal cult’ by Kroeber and his student Gifford and casts world renewal as cultural discourse. He criticizes the ‘totalizing approaches’ of Kreober as excluding both individuals and history from ethnographic analysis by creating systems that are closed to individuals and change (2002: 266-267). Buckley argues that world renewal cannot be reduced to elements or structures but that fixing the world “is also the goal of a discourse into which these elements enter as central motifs or themes and is thus a process, something emergent, rather than a reduced ‘system,’ ‘pattern,’ or ‘organization.’” (2002: 267). For Buckley, although discourse theory may provide an interpretive mode for understanding what people do, “what they do is a mode of discourse, of oppositions simultaneously yearning toward wholeness” (2002: 268).

By listening to the dialogue of story telling, Buckley illustrates his point by using Kroeber’s own recorded narratives of two myths surrounding the deerskin dance (2002: 272-273). In both myth narratives, the parties involved negotiate on how and where to perform the dance and “[t]hus these myths suggest that the constant effort to get it right is of equal importance and interest to getting it right” (2002: 273). Kroeber, in order to classify a timeless closed system, missed the important evidence of an emergent, living process of negotiation into a native understanding of world renewal.

Ethnography as a Process of Knowledge

George E. Marcus and Michael M. J. Fischer, in their book Anthropology as Cultural Critique, summarize interpretive anthropology as operating on “two levels simultaneously: it provides accounts of other worlds from the inside, and reflects about the epistemological groundings of such accounts” (1986: 16). In other words, “the effort to conceive of culture primarily as systems of meaning has come to focus on the process of interpretation itself, that is, on ethnography as a process of knowledge” (Ibid.).

Buckley casts himself as a witness with political, moral, and ethnographic commitments to his academic readers (2002: 20). Throughout his book, Buckley steps back to allow native authors to tell their own stories before stepping back into the narrative to explain the significance of those stories.

An excellent example of this strategy is in Chapter 4 (“Seeing With Their Own Eyes”) when Buckley explores the physical aspect of Yurok spirituality (2002: 90-101). Throughout this section Buckley weaves the words and perspectives on ‘training’ supplied by native peoples like Frank Douglas, Philip Drucker, Dewey George and others into a process of understanding how Yurok men trained both as an individual and as an actor community life (2002: 91). This training enabled those who practiced to achieve the social ideal of male (2002: 91), commune with past traditions of daily life (2002: 92), compete in the stick game in lieu of warfare (2002: 95), and compile spiritual power that may result in supernatural feats of strength, endurance, or mien (2002: 96-101). By weaving the narratives as seen through the eyes of multiple native informants, Buckley demonstrates that the distinctions of mind, body, and spirit within Yurok spirituality is a process that is messier and more interwoven than any closed classification can reflect in reality.

-Safari Bob


References Cited

Buckley, Thomas
2002 Standing Ground: Yurok Indian Spirituality, 1850-1990. Berkley: University of California Press.

Clifford, James
1986 Introduction: Partial Truths. In Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. James Clifford and George E. Marcus, Eds. Berkley: University of California Press, pp. 1-26.

Geertz, Clifford
1973 The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, Inc.

Marcus, George E. and Fischer, Michael M.
1986 Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Daughters of the Dreaming: A Précis

In the book Daughters of the Dreaming, Diane Bell examines the lives of Aboriginal women in Central Australia by focusing on the nature and structure of women’s ritual in the region. Her observations challenge the popular anthropological characterizations of women’s lives as male-dominated and centered in the life of the camp with small religious ceremonies of little community importance (229). Bell explores “women’s rights and responsibilities in land, the nurturance themes celebrated in ritual, and women’s power to exclude men” (230) and finds that they are not fantasies or lost positions of autonomy and independence. Rather, women operate as their own agents within the structure of all Aboriginal society. Central to her analysis is the Law of Dreamtime (or jukurrpa), the rituals used by women to maintain social structure through jukurrpa, and the complexity of social relations within the structure of Central Australian Aboriginal society.

The idea of jukurrpa is vast, subtle and complex as well as way beyond the scope of this précis to articulate. In short, it is The Law that all the social factions revere as authoritative and through the dreaming, each generation interacts with the past—and each other (91). Through the jukurrpa, women keep the land alive and nurture the relationships of the living within their society (94). In fact, for Bell, the land is truly the power base of women and through the maintenance of responsibilities and the exercise of the rights to maintain the land (via jukurrpa), women have long enjoyed autonomy within their society (59, 95). Important locations, such as ‘ring places’ (110), are sites located at intersecting ‘dreaming tracks’ (138) at which rituals can be preformed that reflect the authority of women to try social offenders and resolve disputes, to offer healing and refuge, and to discuss matters of importance or give and receive counsel (124).

If the land provides the power base of autonomy for women within the Aboriginal social structure, it is through ritual that this autonomy is expressed and reified—all within the context of jukurrpa. For instance, when the yawulyu, a ceremony comprised of ‘women’s business’ (11), is preformed no men are allowed to observe; in fact they fear it. This ritual affords a time for “distant people [to] come together to exchange and assert their common bonds of responsibility to country” (126). Women lead the ritual, through the positions of kirda (who is responsible for certain knowledge encoded in the various aspects of the ritual) and kurdungurlu (who is responsible for the safety of the ritual objects; 139), informing the participants of the country and enacting the dreaming story through dance and visual markers displayed on the sacred painted boards. These visual cues may instruct observers about the country but only if the observer in schooled in the dreaming (127). This ceremony embodies three major themes: land, love and health—all within the context of jukurrpa (128). Here, fat is the central symbol that links these three themes as the past heroes rubbed the fat on their bodies to inspire beauty and demonstrate ‘glowing health’ (130). Through ritual and women’s interaction with the land, the jukurrpa is reaffirmed and reactivated.

Through the social links established by women, knowledge of the jukurrpa is transmitted and ritual reciprocity is established. Yilpinji, or ‘love rituals’ (162), are means in which women may influence marriage arrangements and find a husband. Missionaries have maligned these complex rituals (such as Phillip Creek) as ‘love magic’ and some Aboriginal men have continued this hegemony in order to defuse the influence of yilpinji (162). Bell explores two inter-related myths that embody the yilpinji: the kurinpi (or old women dreaming) and the ngapa (or rain) dreamings (164). Both dreamings consist of the exploration of the fears of women as they marry: (1) the loss of autonomy and (2) the desire for social intercourse (174). In both dreamings, women are either seduced or compelled into leaving their land and becoming isolated from family. Yilpinji is preformed to establish correct unions between men and women “and this is why it is feared by men: it impinges upon the set relationships which men claim to control through marriage alliances” (176). Through this ritual, women can overturn the plans of men and establish male-female relationships deemed legitimate by their society (177). Bell argues that this ritual should be understood within the context of land and as achieving socially approved ends (178). “In acting out the responsibilities the Law confers upon them as women, women engage in work which is distinctly theirs” which also allows them “to control this world and exclude men from this domain” (179).

Although men and women do compete in displays of knowledge of the jukurrpa, Bell argues that both men and women are united in the maintenance of their society in accordance with the Dreamtime Law and each maintains both a symbolic and a physical presence in each other’s rituals (183). Ceremonies known as yungkurru enable men and women to “make public statements about their own rituals and to allow the other to approach and to handle ritual objects” (184). This forum allows women to demonstrate their knowledge of the jukurrpa without providing men the opportunity to gain control of women’s autonomous world. Each group is allowed to demonstrate their unique contribution to the jukurrpa while also being able to monitor the content of the other’s ritual world (191). Each prepared songs, boards, and designs but only brought a fraction of the knowledge they had prepared to the yungkurru. However, each knew something of what the other had practiced in their respective work areas. Bell observed that during this ritual, women were not only able to direct men but were often the initiators of ritual action (193). Each was afforded opportunities to observe the ritual activities of the other.

In addition to coeducational ceremonies within a given community, Bell observed a yungkurru in which “the dreaming was extended to the east” (195) and another community was invited to participate. The women navigated the complex structure of Aboriginal society in order to ensure that men from both communities were included in the yawulyu (or women’s business) component of the Neutral Junction gathering. This joint ritual allowed people to exercise their responsibilities in the jukurrpa and this make public their rights in country (198). Although women took a decisive roll in choosing how much knowledge was displayed, women celebrated the interdependence of the roles of kirda and kurdungurlu as well as the inter-relations of the dreamings of ngapa, wardingi and yawakiyi while sharing knowledge with another group—and receiving instruction in a different understanding of the jukurrpa (201).

By extending their dreaming range and organizing ritual relationships with one another, women attempt to consolidate their position within the structure of Central Australian Aboriginal society at large (231). For Bell, settlement life is the greatest impediment to this consolation of women’s power of autonomy within their society. In the past, women “enjoyed a complex set of rights which were validated by their direct access to the Dreamtime and the use to which they put the land” (95). As white settlers and Aboriginal peoples began competing for resources (such as water for cattle), conflict between whites and Aborigines escalated into massacre (Coniston; 67), fewer foodstuff and water resources (69), and active conversion attempts to Christianity (64). The Australian government began distributing food (65) and soon Aboriginal people found fewer opportunities to work and were forced into vocations that reflect white ideals of the roles of men and women (86). Once, women could depend on the resources provided by the land for subsistence but governmental institutions began to narrow the opportunities of women (70) and although aspects of settlement life is incorporated into the ritual lives of women (example: Warrabri dreaming; 147), the autonomy women once enjoyed is severely limited by life in the settlement.

In order to create some autonomy, Kaytei women created a jilimi (single women camps; 11) where women could escape bad marriages and socialize with other women (84). This separation of the sexes and women’s independence are no longer mutually reinforcing values (84) as women are denied the freedom of unlimited access to resources provided by the land. Shifts in marriage systems of kinship, ritual transformation and the strengthening of male links between generations result in disequilibrium whereby men’s domain intrudes into the autonomy of women. As Bell observes, “it is the shattering of the ritually maintained nexus of land as resource and spiritual essence that I have located a shift from female autonomy to male control, from independence to dependence” (247). Men and women once negotiated roles but now women’s autonomy is lessened due to the loss of land over which to forage. By looking at the historical record of the past century, Bell argues that the material conditions have changed dramatically and this change is “reflected in ritual, both in terms of the way in which ideas are incorporated within the Law of the dreaming and in terms of the opportunity to stage rituals” (249).

-Safari Bob

Bell, D. (1993). Daughters of the Dreaming. 2nd ed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN: 0-8166-2398-8

Pareidolia, Prototype Theory and Jesus on Toast

The other day I overheard a snippet of a conversation in the checkout lane of the local grocery. A group of young women were looking at a picture on their mobile phone of a slice of toast that supposedly depicted the image of Jesus. One young lady said, "That ain't Jesus! Jesus don't look nuthin' like that!"

Jesus on Toast

Of course finding an image of Jesus (or Buddha or Donovan McNabb or whoever) on a piece of toast is simple pareidolia which is a common phenomenon of perceiving random patterns as having significant meaning. So I asked the young lady, "What does Jesus look like?" Understandably, she looked away and the conversation ended (I am not pretty and she didn't know me from Adam). Still, I wonder what she sees when she thinks of Jesus.

Many people in the US, when they think of Jesus, instantly see this picture in their mind:

White Protestant Jesus

Catholic Americans are more likely to see a picture similar to this:

Catholic Jesus

Of course everyone has a slightly different image in their mind when they hear any word. Consider the word "dog." Most everyone knows what a dog is and most everyone can see a mental image of a dog when the word is understood. Of course, these images are always different (I always see my first dog, Rex, who was a black German shepherd). This phenomenon is anticipated by Prototype Theory and is just part of normal congnitive development.

Still, I wish that young lady would have described what she saw when she thought of Jesus. If she watches a lot of TV, I wonder if she saw this:

South Park Jesus

Does she like movies? If so, maybe she saw this:

Buddy Christ

Maybe she secretly likes Steampunk and saw this:

Steampunkin' Jesus

I wonder how anyone can see this:

Extreme Jesus?

The moment is past to hear from the young lady, but what do you see?

-Safari Bob

Book Review: "The Sociology of Religion" by Max Weber

Central to Weber’s idea of religious and social change is “the integrations and discrepancies between expectation systems which are institutionalized in normative orders and the actual experiences people undergo" [1, pg. lvi] or, in other words, the sociological study of what people interpret to be consequences for themselves and the aspects of the human condition which they are apart in relation to conformity or nonconformity with an established normative order. This basic tension is how Weber defines and analyzes the progression of social and religious changes within a given society and the ensuing emergence of ‘breakthrough.’

At the beginning of his work, Weber is careful to state, “The essence of religion is not even our concern, as we make it our task to study the conditions and effects of a particular type of social behavior" [1, pg. 1]. He simply wishes to approach the study of religion from a ‘subjective’ standpoint or from the viewpoint of the religious behavior’s “meaning.” He posits that religion is rationally motivated by ‘the rules of experience’ and therefore should not be apart from the range of everyday conduct, “particularly since even the ends of the religious and magical actions are predominantly economic" [1, pg. 1]. Here, via perceived extraordinary powers which he describes as charisma, begins a process of abstraction based on experience in which they are rationalized, symbolized, and stereotyped into sacred law and, upon further reflection, into objective specialization of gods and numina which results in priests. These spirits reflect certain principles of order, which develop into an ethical attachment of individuals to a cosmos of obligations. Magic and adulation develop into obedience to religious law. Taboo is transformed into a systematization of ethics and the irrational immergence of hope for salvation. Prophecy and priesthood work to produce a centralization of ethics under the aegis of religious salvation.

This dynamic is played differently in divergent political, social, and economic classes. Certain religions developed in urban environments while others were mostly agrarian. Proletarian interests tend to be more irrational and display resentment while the concepts of sin and salvation tend to not be found in the political elite but are used for political control and legitimacy. The middle class tends toward a congregational rational ethical religion. Some Theodicy of disprivilege is a component of every salvation religion, which draws its adherents primarily from the disprivileged classes. Revolution may arise through the reinterpretation of stereotyped magical or ritual norms. Political and ethical communities intermingle to loose gods from political connection to become universal powers and ethical and economic rationalization clash resulting in a rejection of ‘the world’ and especially economic activities. Sex and art are also defined through ethical rationalization resulting in hostility indicative of every authentic religion of salvation.

Weber’s approach is basically evolutionary which reflects the times in which he lived and wrote. I find it notable that he, like Durkheim, both missed the influence that science would play in both society and religion even though they both used to some degree the evolutionary model provided by science. I did however find his three bases of authority or legitimization (charisma, traditionalism, and routinization) to be insightful. Although it could be seen as an oversimplification, this process does seem to be prevalent in the forms of most aspects of religion and politics. I am not so sure that “bureaucratic rule was not and is not the only variety of legal authority, but it is the purest [1, pg. 299]” but in his historical world this seemed to be the model for western society.

- Safari Bob

References

[1] Weber, M. (1991). The Sociology of Religion, E. Fischoff (Trans.). Boston: Beacon Press. ISBN: 0-8070-4205-6

Book Review: "The Construction of Religious Boundaries" by Harjot Oberoi

Central to the main theme of this book is the notion that there is nothing natural or self-evident about such religious categories as ‘Hindu’, ‘Muslim’, or, in particular, ‘Sikh’. Due to the nature of religion in Indian society, these categories are fluid and ambiguous in that they did not possess a pure form. “Historically, it is more precise to speak in terms of simultaneity of religious identities rather than distinct, universal, religious collectives" [1, p. 418]. By utilizing history and anthropology, Oberoi constructs an ‘ethnohistorical approach’; in which he explores the formation and distribution of ideologies which would coalesce into the Tat Khalsa episteme that would eventually be associated with the standard Sikh identity. The blurred boundaries became distinct in that the Tat Khalsa had ‘framed’ the modern Sikh community. By viewing this progression within the Sikh community, Oberoi hopes to reveal the “entire process underlying the rise and dissolution of a episteme" [1, p. 30].

He begins by recounting the first attempts by the Khalsa in the later eighteenth-century to establish boundaries by establishing concepts of self and other through life-cycle rituals, taboo behavior, transgressions, and the constitution of sacred space. Next he explores the displacement of the Khalsa episteme by the Sanatan Tradition and its transmission through the Dasam Granth; a sacred text that was used by and/or promoted the three major forces of change: guru lineage, holy men, and traditional intellectuals. The mixing of Khalsa and Sahajdhari texts, theology, and social practices formed a bricolage; which deeply transformed Sikh thinking and conduct. Whereas the Sanatan Tradition is viewed as belonging to the elite, rural Sikhs also participated in ‘popular religion’; which varied village to village and consisted of a plurality of religious beliefs and conducts. Despite the dissimilarities, these two forms of religious expression coexisted until the encroachment of Colonial Christianity forced a unification of the Sikh identity in lieu of a perceived decline of the Sikh population. In order to preserve the Sanatan Tradition from the repercussions of military defeat, the misidentification of Colonial census, and the inroads of Christian missionaries, the Singh Sabha formed to record and codify Sikh customs and practices. Most Sanatanists recognized a plurality of beliefs but in following the European logic the Singh Sabha strove to form a rational and uniform tradition. A new ‘elite sub-culture’ utilized the advantages of nineteenth-century modernization to influence the formation of the Tat Khalsa with which to purge the religious diversity within the Singh Sabha tradition. Puritanism, asceticism, and restraint were touted in the construction of a neo-Sikh moral community and the establishment of the Adi Granth as the sole religious text. In the ensuing struggle the elite Tat Khalsa and the non-elite Sanatan Sikhs demonstrated a clash of ideals reflecting divergent world-views. Faced with the prevailing attitudes that the Sikhs would not be able to compete with other religious communities for jobs and facing a possible loss of cultural independence, the neo-Sikhs established schools in which the Sikh community identified themselves with the Tat Khalsa and eventually this identity defined Sikhism.

Through this account, Oberoi demonstrates that the reification of the Sikh religion is not the simple product of British policy or the compulsions of elite politics, but rather the result of a complex evolution within religious, political, and economical domains.

-Safari Bob

[1] Oberoi, H. (1994). The Construction of Religious Boundaries: Culture, Identity, and Diversity in the Sikh Tradition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ISBN: 0-226-61593-6

Book Review: "Lives of Indian Images" by Richard H. Davis

Central to the purpose of this book is the notion that the identities of Indian religious objects are not fixed or permanent but constructed and reconstructed by the religious, cultural, economic, and political circumstances in which they are found. Davis approaches this idea by adapting the reader-response theory of ‘interpretive communities’ into his notion of ‘communities of response’ in which one may consider “the plurality of ways viewers approach and encounter a visual object" [1, p. 9]. The location, presentation, and environment in which an object is encountered constitute a “frame” that guides the responses of a viewer in looking at and acting toward the object. The viewer also brings a second frame or “dispensation”, i.e. her own socially shared assumptions, ideas, needs, experiences, and hopes, to this encounter. This interaction between the icon and the viewer creates a series of responses or “reinterpretations” over time in which these objects may be animated as much by these encounters as by the deities they represent and support. By going beyond material creation, Davis argues for “an expanded frame for viewing Indian religious objects, one that accepts contingency, instability, and plurality in the identities of images" [1, p. 263]. This focus on the moment of creation restricts the meaningful possibilities of an object and distracts from the participation of the object in the ongoing social life of its communities.

To demonstrate his purpose, Davis examines a series of objects and sites to explore significant moments or shifts in response that affect these and other Indian objects. He begins with a bronze Siva to juxtapose how an American museum and its original temple setting would present this icon to the viewer. He then illustrates the range of rhetoric in the appropriation of select religious images such as the Calukya door-guardian by medieval Indian rulers. Next he uses Islamic iconoclasm and Hindu response to demonstrate the ways in which Indo-Muslim and Hindu texts narrated acts of image destruction and reconstruction, differing ways of interpretation and response to Indian religious icons, and the political and theological purposes behind them. After this Davis explores the transformation of Indian icons into ‘art’ vis-à-vis the acquisition of “Tipu’s Tiger” by British colonial forces and the altered political relationship of Britain and India. Next he traces the diachronical formations of meanings in relation to Somanatha and the efforts of diverse social groups to retell its story according to each group’s purpose. Finally he examines the current market in the West for ancient Indian art by following the bronze image of Siva Nataraja to illuminate the conflicting claims and views of Indian worshippers and Western collectors hold toward these objects.

In all of these “biographies” Davis demonstrates how historical, devotional, and cultural frames affect the meanings and interpretations of these objects by different viewers. I found his treatment of the bronze image of Siva Nataraja to be especially illuminating in that I also previously held the assumption with the Indian Government of “once a religious image always a religious image" [1, pg. 252]. By exploring the various layers of ‘the recovery of ritual selfhood’ he truly demonstrates the murky definitions of how we should approach these icons. The fluidity of how these ‘dispensations’ can subtly morph as well as the ever-changing environmental framework in which these icons are found truly form multiple complexities of the subjective imposed on the objective.

- Safari Bob

[1] Davis, R., H. (1997). Lives of Indian Images. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN: 0-691-00520-6

Depositum Fidei: Can Powerful Beliefs and Tolerance Coexist?

As I approach this question it appears to me that two major social contexts are being contested within scope of this problem, namely that of power and identity. Certainly the social conflicts are broad between cultures in a global environment and as we enter a pluralistic or multicultural setting, boundaries defined by proximity have become tighter or of little consequence. With temporal and spatial division shrinking, soon, it would seem, we may have to stop thinking of ourselves as a multicultural environment and more as one multiethnic culture. In order to survive within this context, issues of identity and power must be defined and addressed in the hopes that common ground may be found on which to live.

Power

One could argue that the world is still languishing under the effects of colonialism, the product of the first worldwide capitalist endeavor, in that the old colonial powers still have much of the global wealth. Voices and faces, previously caricatured, imposed, and invented, are emerging to speak for themselves. The traditional centers of ‘Western’ or colonial power are becoming decentered or postcolonial. As technological advances in the transmission of ideas and transportation increase, the world seems smaller in that it now longer takes days to travel distances it now takes hours to cross. Ideas, once taking months to circulate via the printing press now take seconds via the Internet. Space and time are now of small consequence.

Still hegemony exists in the form of capitalist interests, no longer only for the colonial powers but also a possibility for territories that once were occupied by these colonial powers. By offering the Western idea of success many former colonies see the possibility of wealth and education for themselves as a viable reality. This ideological control can even be seen in the idea of tolerance, which carries with it the notion of a position of power that deigns to grant clemency out of magnanimity rather than acceptance out of graciousness as a coequal. One problem seems to be that hegemony no longer is working and control, as recent events demonstrate, must be re-exerted by means of arms. The western ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of the ubiquitous Big Mac no longer offer the same allure for those former colonies. Why not?

Identity

Although I do not accept all the finer points of Mary Douglas’ system of understanding social pressures, I do find her model of Grid/Group useful in describing and understanding the social conditions in which we find ourselves [1, p. 60]:



Within this system we can see that we have an increasingly privatized system of classification with the construction of democracy and the and an increasing amount of group as the world gets smaller and we are confronted other people’s beliefs as well as social pressures of style, consumerism, and whatnot. Those that identify with this egalitarian worldview fit in and feel accepted. Those that do not are marginalized and isolated from the culture. These isolates are unpredictable in that their voice is not heard within the context of the prevalent culture. These isolates are not necessarily counter-cultural, they are just unheard, invisible, and unpredictable. This environment of isolation, I believe, allows for the formation of views that within the prevailing social context seem counter-cultural and extremist. Here is the pool of persons waiting to be exploited as human bombs in terrorism as well as any other counter-cultural activity whether violent or not.

We are, of course, speaking in broad sweeping generalities with this or any other model but I believe that it does allow a means for study. The question now becomes what happens when different cultures compete for the same space? Or even, what happens when a new idea or personality is introduced into the grid/group ratio of a given culture?

Adversarial Mode

When different or competing cultures or systems of beliefs encounter on another, a mad scramble for power ensues, often in the form of what Bourdieu [2] would describe as ‘cultural capital’ or perhaps those items that constitute each culture’s idea of the moral high ground. This perception of risk or threat often gets focused into political and religious sayings such as “God is on our side” or “Don’t tread on me!” This heightened sense of defense allows for a period of justification, accusation and social galvanization against the other culture. This can also happen within the same culture with the introduction of a new idea into a socially charged environment ready for its acceptance to create division and social revolution.

We can certainly see this at work in the broad reformations that swept Western Europe in the sixteenth-century. The competing factions will feel threatened, defensive, and will justify acts that may not have been thinkable earlier in the name of religion or politics. This is also the context for war in an egalitarian society such as the West. Because our values, interests, and worldview are threatened, aggression can be justified even when dialogue could be able to solve matters. Liberal views, hitherto seen as socially progressive, are criticized as idealistic and weak. Conservative viewpoints, hitherto criticized as narrow-minded and mean, can be seen as practical and necessary.

Conclusion

So can powerful beliefs and tolerance coexist? I believe that they can if they exist outside of an adversarial mode under the aegis of commonality. In a religious context, I am not speaking necessarily of ecumenism or as Westhelle describes as a depositum fidei in which an imaginary cathedral works to store and display all “proofs of faith" [3, p. 7]. And politically, I am not speaking of a ‘one-world government’, of which the mere thought would inspire revolutions, both political and religious, the world over. So how do we do we provide an environment where all beliefs and cultures can coexist, perhaps even peaceably?

I believe that we have to address the notion of power to include gracious acceptance in coequal terms. A universal ‘live and let live’ must be adopted and practiced by all cultures in this increasingly shrinking world, in which all inhabitants can practice systems of belief without infringing or being infringed on by others. Within a given culture the social isolates must be given the opportunity to express their voices if they so chose. The problem is that this is practically untenable. As borders constrict conflict arises until one cultural identity is fashioned.

I suppose the only answer to this question is yes it can but not until everyone’s powerful beliefs include the notion that every person has the right to hold divergent positions and ideas. This position of difference cannot be perceived as threatening or conflict, war, and terrorism will always exist. The Catholic and Protestant institutions that battled within the reformations have made a quiet peace with only minor hostilities in the form of bigotry from the extreme fundamentalists in each camp. Each has its own identity and each respects the differences in the other. With Vatican II the Catholic Church even made major overtures toward a lasting, peaceful respect. Perhaps the rest of the competing cultures can do the same.

-Safari Bob

References

[1] Douglas, M. (1996). Natural Symbols. New York: Routledge.

[2] Bourdieu, P. (1998). The State of Nobility. Lauretta C. Clough (trans.). Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

[3] Westhelle, V. (2003). “Multiculturalism, Postcolonialism, and The Apocalyptic” in Theology and The Religious: a Dialogue, Viggo Mortensen (ed.). Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, pp. 3-14.

Book Review: "Colors of the Robe" by Ananda Abeysekara

Central to this book is a “study of the formations and deformations of contingent relations between ‘religious’ identity and difference" [1, p. 4]. Here Abeysekara seeks to demonstrate how the relation between what comes to count as religion or difference alters in varying “minute contingent conjunctures” in which diverse persons, practices, discourses, and institutions conjoin to form competing definitions of self/other identities within a period of a few years, months, or days. In order to do so, one needs to “locate the central visibility of the emergence and submergence, authorization and unauthorization [sic] of specific knowledges [sic] about what does and does not count as [identity] in conjunctures of debates" [1, p. 4]. Disciplinary deconstructions of colonial knowledge of Indian religion, culture, and difference result in a static conception of Indian identity and therefore propagate colonial assumptions. It is only “the examination of such contingent conjunctures that should form the basis for disciplinary works seeking to understand religion, identity, and difference as historically varying ideas" [1, p. 16]. In fact Abeysekara wants to demonstrate that “if we can have no a priori epistemological guarantee of, a privileged access to, the altering relation between religious identity and difference, we must explore those conjunctions of debates in which authoritative persons, practices, and institutions that counted as religious identity yesterday become vulnerable to being thwarted, deauthorized [sic], as difference today" [1, p. 25].

By exploring the volatile political landscape of Sri Lanka and the prominence of Theravada Buddhism centered there, Abeysekara explores his thesis. First he demonstrates that authoritative narratives that contend to represent Buddhism should not be used as “readily available ethnographic examples” of the relation between religion and society as they are part of “altering ideological conjunctures” by investigating competing narratives about Dhammananda. Next by using the debate surrounding the construction of the BPU he demonstrates how “different conceptions of Buddhism and politics, the religious and the secular, religious identity and difference, become authorized and deauthorized [sic], come into central sight and disappear from sight, in contingent conjuctures of debates" [1, p. 107]. Next by examining Sri Lanka’s economic relationship with Japan and the ensuing construction of a ‘new economy’ that authorized a particular image of Buddhism and monkhood, Abeysekara locates the “dynamics of a particular epistemic space" [1, p. 27] in which debate as to the relations of self (Theravada) and other (Mahayana) “came into central view and faded from view” through competing discourses. He affirms this phenomenon in his explorations of religion and violence and how these categories are “discursively produced, and hence shift within the conjunctures of different debates" [1, p. 234].

I found his argument to be compelling in that categories I had held to be, more or less, static, such as ‘Buddhism’ or more specifically ‘Theravada Buddhism’, are not self-evident but continually being contested in “specific conjunctures of debates” that define and recast these terms. His insightful use of Foucault in defining identity as not only an effect but also as an instrument of discourse/power helps in establishing the notion of movement and shifting in the meanings of identity in religion and society.

-Safari Bob

[1] Abeysekara, A. (2002). Colors of the Robe: Religion, Identity, and Difference. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press. ISBN: 1-57003-467-2

Book Review: Open Boundaries; John E. Cort (Ed.)

In this collection of essays the contributing authors “seek to locate Jain materials in a more dynamic, reciprocal, and interactive relation to South Asian society" [1, p. 3]. These essays examine the Jains not in isolation, but rather in situations where they interact with “the larger non-Jain social, cultural, and intellectual world of South Asia" [1, p. 2]. The traditional boundaries of western categorization are explored within the confines of archaeology, philology, and epigraphy to expose the possible influence of Jainan thought on other South Asian cultures. In his introduction Cort posits that a “social group is never constructed in isolation, but rather is always a contextualized process, in which the sense of ‘self’ is in a dialogue, opposition, or dialectical relationship to a sense of what is ‘not-self’ or ‘other’" [1, pp. 2-3]. Here he demonstrates that there is neither a single Jain sense of self nor a single sense of other. Categories of self and other can be both contradictory and encompassing but form a fundamental dualism at the “heart of Jain ontology and soteriology" [1, p. 10]. Jainism should not be viewed as a ‘thing’ but as one style in a family of styles in South Asia, which can only be understood fully by understanding Jainism.

Explorations of the impact of Jainism on others includes Haribhdra and his juxtaposition of several forms of Yoga with key aspects of Jainism to provide a better understanding of issues under debate within the religious and philosophical communities of his time, the influence of Jain mantra experience into South Asian sanctified language, the importance of Hemacandra in the illustration and preservation of Indian literary theory, the skill of Tevar in his ‘skillfully poisonous parody’ still considered one of the great classics of the Tamil tradition and so on. All these essays seek to dissuade the reader from marginalizing Jains by demonstrating that they are a growing, changing, innovating, internally diverse religious group that has effected change in the historical circumstances and situations in which they have found themselves. As Davis says in his essay, “The challenging, borrowing, contradicting, polemicizing, appropriating, and modifying that goes on across religious boundaries, and even the constructing and subverting of these boundaries, are ongoing dynamic processes that give both form and content to the religious history of India" [1, p. 223].

Personally, I found the article by Babb on ritual culture to be the most fascinating in that he exposes the similarities of structures within Hindu and Jain ritual and posits as possible “deeper structure that is simply South Asian" [1, p. 161]. I found his idea of ‘transaction’ in ritual culture to be telling as to the nature of 'the sacred other.'

-Safari Bob

[1] Cort, J., E. (Ed.). (1998). Open Boundaries: Jain Communities and Cultures in Indian History. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. ISBN: 0-7914-3786-8

Book Review: Marx on Religion by Karl Marx

Central to Marx is the idea of the alienation of humanity from nature, labor, satisfaction and ultimately, from humanity itself. Humanity becomes objectified through ‘estranged labor’ which “… reduces spontaneous and free activity to a means, it makes man’s species-life a means of his physical existence” [1, p. 123] This condition is a result of global capitalism that, in the quest to find the cheapest workers, reduces all freedom to a function of itself. A dualistic class structure of bourgeoise (capitalists) and proletariat (workers) arises in the tension of labor and capital; which reduces humanity to a commodity in the formation and flow of capital. Capital is realized in money and perfected in credit with the organization of the banking system. Religion is but a reflex of reality and “[e]very history of religion…that fails to take account of this material basis, is uncritical” [1, p. 165]. Because humanity makes religion it is the “fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality” [1, p. 171]. History, with philosophy in its service, must unmask the self-estrangement of humanity by dismissing the ‘other-world truth’ of religion and establish the ‘truth of this world’. This will create a society “which can no longer lay claim to a historical [i.e. based in the mythical] title, but merely to a human one…” [1, p. 181]. Christianity, developed by the bourgeois, creates a society of cowardice, abasement, submission, humility which is opposite to the required attributes of the proletariat and innately hypocritical. Religion can vanish “only when the relationships of practical everyday life offer men daily visible and reasonable relationships to each other and to nature” [1, p. 196].

Marx is writing in a time when Germany was trying to validate its existence in history as a great nation. Romanticism is the backlash against the enlightenment. The brothers Grimm are codifying fairy tales into a uniquely German document of legend. Attempts are being made to connect the fair-skinned Aryan peoples of Vedic India, the ‘blonde haired’ (a mistranslation that should have been red-headed) warriors of the Teutonic woods of Germania reported by Caesar in his Commentaries and parroted by Gibbons in his Decline and Fall of The Roman Empire, and the “Indo-European” people of 19th Century Germany. This, coupled with the rise of the Industrial Revolution and the exploitation of humanity as well as the new German criticism of natural history, theology and Christianity, provides the backdrop for his arguments.

Marx utilizes the idea of the objectification of humanity, posited by Feuerbach, to apply not only to Christianity but to economics and politics as well. His weakness is in his treatment of the middle class. Although he posits that the lower middle class would be forced to adopt the views of the proletariat [1, p. 152] he declares that the middle class is based on being “the general representation of the philistine mediocrity of all other classes” [1, p. 180]. Even though the proletariat and the bourgeoisie are beginning to struggle the middle class has no concept of emancipation and antiquated. Here is the difficulty of his political views: the middle class acts as a buffer between the two poles. Instead of joining in on one side or the other, the middle class gives the laborers something to aspire to outside of revolution, and the capitalists a source of indirect (and less offensive) control with the advent of middle management. Although I will concede that greed is the basis of capitalism, the gradients are less severe than have vs. have not.

Politics has certainly used religion for its own purposes throughout history but Marx is also manipulating it for a desired effect: confrontation. Although he does not address other religious beliefs than Christianity, he, like Feuerbach, presents Christianity as and object made in man’s image. This object is used as a tool of the minority bourgeoisie to control the majority proletariat. By destroying basic social beliefs, new social structures based in communism can arise. Instead of arguing for new interpretations of Christian Theology, which may lead to gradual changes, Marx strikes at the basic belief structures of Christendom in the hopes of rapid revolution.

-Safari Bob

[1] Marx, K. (2002).Marx on Religion. John C. Raines (Ed.). Philadelphia: Temple University Press. ISBN: 1566399408

Post-Postmodernism and Jediism

Recently, I encountered an an article in which a practitioner of "Jediism" won the right to wear a "hoodie" over his head in public. According to this article, a Jedi was removed from a job center in Sussex England because he refused to expose his head at a job center. This quickly became a religious freedom issue:

Chris is a member of the International Church of Jediism - based on the sci-fi films - whose doctrine states that followers should be allowed to wear hoods [1].

Yes, there exists an International Church of Jediism that is based on the Star Wars fantasy world created by George Lucas. Their basic tenets are:

There is one all powerful force that binds the entire universe together. It is "an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together". This is a concept that most religions of the world concur with. Some refer to it as their deity, some refer to it as a life force, but the one thing nearly all religions agree with, is that there exists a single unifying force.

There are 2 sides to the force, the dark side and the light side. "Beware of the dark side... The dark side leads to fear. Fear leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering". Good versus Evil is a common element through most religions. The issues of good versus evil, right versus wrong permeate through the doctrines of all religions. Most religions attempt to state what is right and wrong, to establish their moral code. Sometimes religions make codes that don't reach a great consensus. Outsiders, and sometime insiders, begin to judge their religious code by something more powerful, something more innate, an innate ability to know what is right and wrong. This is the Jedi's belief, that morality, good and evil, are all axioms of the force, and that we must listen to the force so that we will know the right thing to do.

Can good exist without evil? The Jedi believe that good and evil are only axioms of the all powerful and unifying force. The force contains all that is good and all that is bad. We all are free and sentient beings who have the capability to do good or evil. It is our choice of direction that determines if we do good or evil. The existence of good and evil is necessary for freewill.

So in summary, listen to the force, and beware the dark side! [2]

After reading this article, I asked myself this question: How can a religion exist based solely on a fantasy universe? Is this satire like The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster? Apparently not. Mmm... spaghetti...

A Post-postmodern World?

I wonder if religions like this demonstrate that we are moving beyond Postmodernism into a new way of looking at "truth." Although "postmodernism" is a complex term to define, it is essentially a way of looking at truth--specifically that no absolute truth exists [3]. So if no absolute truth exists, competing religions, philosophies, art, and literature all express truth relative to their adherents. An expression of Christianity may be true for one person while Albert Camus can truthfully argue that it may be absurd [4]. Both positions can exist as truth in a postmodern world. Still, how can a made-up fantasy world be seen as truth--even in a postmodern context?

I wonder if we are moving beyond postmodern epistemological relativism into a new age of whatever you want to be true is true? Shows like The Ghost Whisperer are supposedly based on the "actual" experiences of James Van Praagh and Mary Ann Winkowski[5] and many viewers believe that this show is a reflection of "the real world." Should we expect more religions like Jediism?

-Safari Bob


References
[1] http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2893669/Jobcentres-sorry-for-the-spurn-of-the-Jedi.html

[2] http://www.jedichurch.org/jedi-doctrine.html

[3] http://www.pbs.org/faithandreason/gengloss/postm-body.html

[4] http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/00/pwillen1/lit/absur.htm

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Whisperer

Book Review: Bones, Stones and Buddhist Monks by Gregory Schopen

In this collection of essays, Gregory Schopen strives to demarcate the “excessive focus upon the rarefied categories" [1, pg. ix] of scholastic monastic elites and the ‘popular’ or actual practices of ancient Buddhist monks. In this attempt, Schopen demonstrates the privileging of texts in the study of ancient Buddhism by western scholars over prevalent archaeological and epigraphical evidence pertinent to this field of study. He begins by exposing the ‘protestant presuppositions’ in the universal importance of the text in both study and in actual practice. He quickly contrasts the established theory, based on textual evidence, that monks and nuns did not possess property with the archaeological and epigraphical evidence to the contrary. He concludes that embedded “in apparently neutral archaeological and historical method might very well be a decidedly nonneutral [sic] and narrowly limited Protestant assumption as to where religion is actually located" [1, pg. 130]. This illumination may indicate an inherited tendency to disallow actual practice a meaningful place in the definition of religion and the devaluation of any non-textual sources that express religion.

This method of study is indicative of Schopen’s scholasticism in these essays. He continues to juxtapose literary tradition with fresh philological evidence and cursory colonial archaeology postulation with in depth epigraphical analysis. He posits that the doctrine of merit associated with later inscriptions is far older than a Mahayana idea. He uncovers the far greater roles of women in ancient Buddhist communities and in the practice of the image cult. He proposes that monks practiced and founded the relic cult in which the living presence of the Buddha is worshiped contrary to the position that laymen started this practice. He explores the funeral rites of Buddhist monasteries by monks for fellow monks, including the division of property with the brahmanical preoccupation with proper ritual treatment of the dead to avoid social censure as well as affronting the deceased. In all of these discoveries lie the undercurrents of exposing literary privilege and the promotion of archaeological and epigraphical evidence in the study and definition of religion.

Three points I found most striking in this collection of essays. First, I was impressed by his argument demonstrating the ‘protestant presuppositions’ of the privilege of literary text over other evidence. Although I would contend archaeological evidence can be obscure and just as open to interpretation, I had to recognize my own proclivities in this direction. Second, I agree that in the history of religions, more emphasis should be allowed for “religious constructions and architectures, inscriptions, and art historical remains" [1, pg. 114]. Third, I had to admit that I shared the common view of the Buddha as “a kind of sweetly reasonable Victorian Gentleman" [1, pg. 258] when I began reading this collection. After reading these essays I have a different idea of how the ancient Indian Buddhists lived and hopefully a closer understanding of their view of the Buddha.

-Safari Bob

[1] Schopen, G. (1997). Bones, Stones, and Buddhist Monks. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN: 0-8248-1870-9

Book Review: The Future of an Illusion by Sigmund Freud

Central to the argument of Freud is that religion is an illusion born out of the wish fulfillment of humanity as it struggles to understand its place in and master the forces of nature. For Freud “illusion is not the same thing as error; nor is it necessarily an error” (pg. 39) nor does it need be false “that is to say, unrealizable or in contradiction to reality” (pg. 39) but it is enough for humanity to recognize religious doctrines as being “in their psychological nature, illusions” (pg. 40). He does not wish to remove religion forcibly but to awaken humanity from infantilism and educate humanity to reality. “Need I confess to you that the sole purpose of my book is to point out the necessity for this forward step?” (pg. 63).

He begins by positing that civilization must be defended against the tendencies of the individual by protecting everything that contributes to the conquest of nature and the production of wealth against the hostile impulses of humanity. In humanity dwells the destructive anti-social and anti-cultural impulses that remain in spite of the sacrificial instincts imposed on individuals for the sake of civilization. These instincts are determined by the experiences of early childhood in which civilization suppresses the wishes of incest, cannibalism, and lust for killing. The external coercion of cultural forces become internalized in the super-ego and transforms the individual into a moral and social being. Narcissistic satisfaction provided by cultural ideals and manifested in art combat hostility to culture and reconcile humanity to the sacrifices it has made to establish civilization. These substitutive satisfactions are expressed in illusions and most notably, religious ideas.

Religion evolves out of the need to protect the individual from the external forces of nature. Civilization provides shelter and meaning from these forces by humanizing nature; namely in the guise of a father figure. Here protection is abstractly provided by giving meaning to his hitherto helpless state by positing and expanding on the notion of benevolent Providence. God becomes a father person to recover the intimacy of a child’s relationship to her father. This rectifies the short-comings of civilization even though this personification is a following of an infantile model. “The defense against childish helplessness is what lends its characteristic features to the adult’s reaction to the helplessness he has to acknowledge—a reaction which is precisely the formation of religion (pg. 30).” The information provided by cultural assets gives humanity meaning and reconciles it to the sufferings of life but are the least well authenticated. These illusions are derived from human wishes and historical recollections and should be recognized as such. Human development parallels the development of children into adults and Freud posits that as psychology aids in the expulsion of childish neurosis so can it aid in the development of civilization past the illusion of religion toward a more adult view of the relationship between the individual and civilization. People could understand that they are made by society “not so much as to rule them as, on the contrary, to serve their interests; and they would adopt a more friendly attitude toward [civilization] and instead of aiming at [its] abolition, would aim only at their improvement (pg. 53).”

Although Freud recognizes several weakness to his argument, namely that his view could be illusion, I feel that he places too much emphasis on the supposition that humanity tends to think and feel alike in spite of a divergence of experiences. We all would like to have the illusion that all humanity is similar but empirical evidence even within a given culture demonstrates a divergence of values, tendencies, hopes, dreams, etc. When one compares different cultures (such as the much quoted Eastern/Western dichotomy) humanity is seen as diverse. In order for Freud’s vision for the civilization of humanity to have promise, it must become one culture with the same illusions, neurosis, and thinking patterns in general. We all have common needs, i.e. food, shelter, air, etc., but how we define, categorize, explain, and pursue these needs as different cultural ideals are diverse.

-Safari Bob

[1] Freud, S. (1989). The Future of an Illusion. James Strachey (trans). New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN: 0-393-00831-2

Book Review: The Sacred Canopy by Peter L. Berger

In The Sacred Canopy Berger attempts to “push to the final sociological consequence an understanding of religion as a historical product (pg vi).” His argument falls into two categories he describes as systematic (or a theoretical sociological exercise in which he attempts to explain the dialectics of religion phenomenon) and historical (in which he applies his dialectical model to specific socio-historical situations).

He begins his systematic study by examining the role of religion in the construction of the social world. Here he posits a series of dialectical relationships that work toward the construction of a world-view for humanity in relation to a constructed society. People cannot exist apart from the dialectic process of society consisting of three steps: externalization, objectification, and internalization. By the ordering of experience, humanity imposes nomos (or meaningful order) upon the social world by both objective (via institutions) and subjective (via consciousness) constructs. When this nomos is instinctually assumed either cosmologically or anthropologically “it is endowed with a stability deriving from more powerful sources that the historical efforts of human beings (pg. 25).” Here religion enters the social world as a human enterprise by which a sacred world is established. Essentially for Berger, these orders all work within society to give it meaning, order, and to protect against the terror of chaos. “Religion is the audacious attempt to conceive of the entire universe as being humanly significant (pg. 28).”

Religion is instrumental to the process of legitimation by locating social institutions within the sacred and cosmic frame of reference. This ‘maintenance of reality’ integrates a comprehensive nomos of marginal situations in which the reality of everyday life is questioned and creates an all-encompassing sacred reality. Here a social base (plausibility structures) for the continuing existence of society is real to humanity. The process of the explanation is called a Theodicy, which “allows individuals to integrate the anomic experiences of his life into the socially established nomos and its subjective correlate in his own consciousness (pg. 58).” In fact anomic phenomena can be legitimized by reference to a future nominization resulting in the masochistic submission to the total other.

Religion also plays a role in the alienation of humanity to nature. A duplication of consciousness occurs when the social world is internalized and results in the privileging of one part of the consciousness over the rest. Others and ‘otherness’ is interjected into consciousness as the works of humanity become part of a reality other than itself. This alienation creates a ‘false consciousness’ in which reality is inverted and the producer of society is apprehended only as a product. Religion reinforces this falsification of humanity’s “consciousness of the part of the universe shaped by [its] own activity, namely, the socio-cultural word (pg. 90).”

In his historical model Berger uncovers a process of secularization; which he defines as “the process by which sectors of society and culture are removed from the dominion of religious institution and symbols (pg. 107).” The roots of this process is found in the Hebrew Bible with the notion of the transcendence of God and the ‘disenchantment of the world’ which opened space for both human and divine actions. Law and ethics are not grounded in timeless cosmic order but in the concrete and historically mediated commandments of the ‘living God’ (pg. 119) and this rationalizing model was effective in the formation of the modern West via Christianity and the formation of the Christian Church. In the process of secularization, the modern industrial society has produced a social area within the competing pluralities of denominations that constitutes a ‘cultural lag’ between the economy and the state and family. Individualization gives rise to privatized religion as a matter of choice or preference which leads to the ‘demonopolization’ of religious traditions and to a competitive religious market. This results in a change of location of religion within consciousness from assumption to an act of faith. Religion is discovered within the subjective consciousness of the individual (ala Kierkegaard). Protestantism works as a prototype in which its crisis of theology demonstrates the problems of legitimation in which religion no longer defines the world.

I found his argument to be encompassing and relevant to the social progression of religion in the West. I particularly found the systematic section of his argument to be thought provoking and worthy of further study. He certainly uses Feuerbach, Marx, Hegel, Durkheim, and Weber for his backdrop to construct a sociological model for the phenomenon of religion in western society. Certainly from his sociological model the importance of Theodicy in the explanation of creation and religious progression is viable and to my mind, certainly reflects historical development.

- Safari Bob

[1] Berger, P. L. (1990). The Sacred Canopy. New York: Anchor Books. ISBN: 0-385-07305-4