Материал: The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion by John Hinnells

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well as the conceptual basics of the anthropology of religion is not feasible in the present context, so the emphasis is more on salient highlights, updates, and productive areas of debate. More extensive overviews and resources are available in the various texts/ textbooks, and readers on the subject.3

Pioneering the discipline

Anthropology enjoys an ongoing dialectical tension between its scientific and humanistic sides. This is well characterized by James Peacock in his valuable introductory text on the anthropological enterprise: ‘Emphasis on culture and recognition of the subjective aspect of interpretation link anthropology to the humanities, yet its striving for systematization, generalization, and precise observation reflects the inspiration of the sciences’ (1986: 92). When Sir Edward Tylor (1832–1917) was appointed to the first chair in anthropology in Britain (in the United States, Franz Boas [1858–1942] is regarded as the founding father of cultural anthropology), the field was then described as the ‘science of man.’ Influenced by the rationalist and evolutionist views of the nineteenth century, Tylor speculated that humans developed the idea of a soul, and from that, spirits, who might also inhabit natural phenomena, in their attempt to rationalize mysterious experiences such as dreams, trances, and hallucinations (1970 [1871]). He postulated that this early human belief, which he termed animism, eventually gave way to polytheism and monotheism, although traces of spiritualism persisted in beliefs such as reincarnation and immortality of the soul.

French sociologist Emile Durkheim saw religious beliefs and concepts as the product of particular social conditions, rather than in intellectualist terms. In his classic work, Les Formes Elémentaires de la Vie Religieuse (Durkheim 1965 [1912]), he argued that religion, predicated on a distinction between the sacred and the profane, was an essentially social phenomenon. Like many of the pioneering functionalist and evolutionist scholars, he turned to what he perceived to be some of the earliest and most elemental forms of religion, namely the totemic beliefs of the hunting and gathering Australian Aborigines. He argued that totemic symbols were mystically charged emblems of group loyalties, and that ritual expressed and strengthened the social organism. In fact, the ‘collective effervescence’ experienced at these ritual events was, he proposed, at the heart of the religious impulse. Durkheim’s insistence on the holistic approach was critiqued by I. M. Lewis, who viewed it as a type of ‘social determinism’ that trumped any ‘historical determinism’ or questions about the origins of social institutions (1976: 52). It did, however, constitute a significant advance over the decontextualized, comparative approach of Sir James Frazer, in his landmark study of ritual and magic from classic texts around the world, The Golden Bough (1996 [1890]). Frazer believed there was an evolution in the ways in which people made sense of, and tried to control, their worlds, from magic, through religion, to science.

Frazer’s lack of recognition of the scientific knowledge of ‘primitive humanity’ was roundly criticized by subsequent scholars. For example, Mary Douglas argued that the primitive worldview was not compartmentalized, but far more integrated and holistic than modern thought (Douglas 1975). Moreover, Bronislaw Malinowski (1884–1942) challenged the ‘armchair anthropology’ of Frazer and other scholars of the time and became, in I. M. Lewis’ words, ‘the pioneer, bush-whacking anthropologist’ who turned fieldwork in exotic cultures into a doctrine and tenet of professionalism (Lewis 1976: 55–56). Based on the two years that he spent among the Trobriand Islanders in the Pacific, Malinowski explained religion and science in light of his functionalist theory of human needs (1954 [1925]). Magical rituals

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were performed when the situation was dangerous and unpredictable, such as fishing at sea, while religious rituals offered psychological assurance in the face of death.

Malinowski’s contemporary A. R. Radcliffe-Brown (1881–1955) was more theoretically inclined and he developed the idea of ‘structural-functionalism’ (1952). From his viewpoint, social life was predicated on an orderly, organized foundation, and social organizations functioned in order to sustain social solidarity. His work spawned a whole generation of scholars. Drawing more on structural linguistics, French scholar Claude Lévi-Strauss (1963) promoted the idea of structures or patterns of culture existing at various levels of consciousness. These structures have functional significance, serving to resolve contradictions and binary oppositions in human life (Lewis 1976: 65–66). Later scholars, such as Luc de Heusch, have adapted structuralist Âprinciples to the complexities of religion elsewhere in the world (Heusch 1982).

With E. E. Evans-Pritchard’s still influential work on the thought of the Azande people of central Africa came a shift in focus from that of ‘structure’ to that of ‘meaning’ (EvansPritchard 1937). He was particularly interested in how their beliefs in witchcraft, oracles, and magic translated into the actions of their everyday lives and social relations. His study raised important questions about rationality and cultural translation, subsequently generating a body of literature on the similarities or differences between unfalsifiable, so-called primitive belief systems and supposedly rational scientific worldviews (see Gellner 1999: 29). Some of this discussion centered on the rationality of millenarian movements such as the ‘cargo cults’ of the Pacific region, in achieving political ends (Worsley 1968; Lattas 1998). Rodney Needham questioned the use of the term ‘belief’ in many non-Western cultures (Needham 1972). He preferred the notion of ‘idea,’ since it conveyed the embedded aspect of cosmologies, and did not connote distance between ‘observers’ and ‘informants.’

The intellectualist interpretation was given a new lease of life with Robin Horton’s classic, and much debated, article, ‘African traditional thought and Western science’ (Horton 1993). In it he demonstrates the ways in which traditional African cultures and Western cultures both seek to explain, predict and control events. In addition to the continuities, he argues that the former thought-system is more closed than the latter. Ultimately, Horton’s intellectualism and Malinowski’s functionalism were more positive about the role of religion than French philosopher Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, who contended that the thought of primitive people was pre-logical, as it did not distinguish between cause and effect.

From modes of thought to modes of practice

Viewing cosmologies as resources for, rather than determinants of, action can help lessen the persistence of evolutionist or binary thinking, argues Michael Herzfeld (2001: 192f.). It may also undermine the tendency to treat cosmologies in isolation, along with ‘religion.’ He advocates greater recognition of the role of choice and agency in how people (whether ‘primitives,’ ethnographers, or scientists) organize their ideas about the universe. Addressing the question of myth, Herzfeld is troubled by the ongoing distinction between mythical and historical narratives, as held by Mircea Eliade and Claude Lévi-Strauss among others, as it leads to larger social distinctions between primitive or archaic and modern, and literate and non-literate societies. It also fails to recognize the ideological manipulation in both, as in nationalist myths of origin. So, while drawing on the insights of some of the early functionalist accounts of myth as providing models for human behavior, explaining disorder and failure (theodicy), and creating ‘timeless temporalities,’ anthropology must be true to

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its comparativism, and turn its lens onto the cosmology of the West itself, revealing its own cultural specificities (Herzfeld 2001: 206).

In his remarks on ritual, Herzfeld again underscores the need to not get too predicated on rites as reordering and instrumental (ibid.: 257f.). He states that all rituals are about time and the passage of existence. This is well illustrated by Arnold van Gennep’s (1960) three-stage model of rituals (separation, marginality or liminality, and aggregation) which Victor Turner (1974) then gave more of a social interpretation. The latter argued that ritual could generate ‘communitas’ (the realm of anti-structure and the leveling of differences), allowing people to overcome uncertainty and ambiguity at the key transitional moments in their lives. Turner’s work remains very popular with religion scholars because of its attention to indigenous cultural notions, notably Ndembu symbolism and ritual, and broader humanist concerns (Gellner 1999: 30).

Current scholarship on ritual evidences the shift in focus from structure to agency, and the influence of practice theory. Catherine Bell prefers the term ‘ritualization’ over a more objectified notion of ritual, viewing it as ‘a matter of variously culturally specific strategies for setting some activities off from others, for creating and privileging a qualitative distinction between the ‘sacred’ and the ‘profane,’ and for ascribing such distinctions to realities thought to transcend the powers of human actors’ (Bell 1992: 74). Thomas Csordas’ analysis of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal movement serves as a fine example of the imaginative and complex ways in which ritual life can be interpreted (Csordas 1997).

From meaning to power

The emphasis on religion as a social institution by earlier anthropologists, notably of the British school, was given a new orientation in the 1970s by the American anthropologist, Clifford Geertz, in an influential essay entitled, ‘Religion as a Cultural System’ (Geertz 1973). Michael Lambek characterizes Geertz as ‘the major exponent of a Weber-inspired interpretive anthropology which attempts to understand religion within a broadly cultural/symbolic domain, but also with reference to public circumstances in all their messiness’ (Lambek 2008: 57). Geertz is well known for his advocacy of the need for ‘thick description,’ that is, interpretation of ‘natives’’ own interpretations of events, based on the anthropologist’s empirical knowledge. As noted by David Gellner (1999: 20), this change marked the move from ‘etic’ (looking at cultures from the outside and in the light of broader principles) to ‘emic’ (viewing cultures from the inside and in terms of their own categories) approaches.

An important counterpoint to Geertz’s interpretivist approach is the work of Talal Asad, notably in his well-known piece, ‘The Construction of Religion as an Anthropological Category’ (1993: 27–54). In this trenchant critique of essentialist definitions of religion, he claims that ‘there cannot be a universal definition of religion, not only because its constituent elements and relationships are historically specific, but because that definition is itself the historical product of discursive processes’ (ibid.: 29). To insist that religion has an autonomous essence, and is conceptually separate from the domain of power, is, he argues, a modern Western norm generated by post-Reformation history. This account, Lambek states, is ‘indicative of a shift away from a symbolic anthropology toward a poststructuralist one that is more centrally concerned with power and discipline and with the way that religious subjects (i.e. practitioners) are formed’ (Lambek 2008: 110). It also reflects efforts to contextualize ethnographic knowledge, notably in terms of the various colonial settings in which such knowledge was generated.

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Historicizing and problematizing

Similar concerns to problematize and locate dominant anthropological concepts are found in the historical anthropology of Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff. For example, in their edited volume on Modernity and its Malcontents, they state decisively at the outset that the concept of modernity ‘is profoundly ideological and profoundly historical’ (Comaroff and Comaroff 1993: xi). As with much of their influential output, they tie their theoretical strengths into exciting empirical explorations that relate to the subject matter of ‘religion’

– generally situated in colonial and/or post-colonial Africa (Comaroff and Comaroff 1991, 1992). The authors in the volume on modernity, all former students of the Comaroffs, share a common orientation,

that tries to dissolve the division between synchrony and diachrony, ethnography and historiography; that refuses to separate culture from political economy, insisting instead on the simultaneity of the meaningful and the material in all things; that acknowledges – no, stresses – the brute realities of colonialism and its aftermath, without assuming that they have robbed African peoples of their capacity to act on the world.

(ibid.: xi)

Their ‘analytic gaze’ is turned upon the role of ritual in African modernity/modernities. It yields some excellent studies of the persistence, even efflorescence, of occultism, magic, and witchcraft in late twentieth-century African communities, as paradoxical consequences of ‘modernity’ and ‘development’ (ibid.). For example, based on her field studies of reports about witchcraft and other supernatural activities in the popular press in Onitsha, a large Igbo-speaking market town in south-eastern Nigeria, Misty Bastian argues that witchcraft is not seen as solely associated with the ‘traditional’ or the ‘village’ (Bastian 1993). In fact, it may even gain new power and meanings from the urban context, as it constitutes a useful medium for making sense of the complexity of West African life experiences (cf. Meyer 1999). Anthropologists have long believed that one of the most distinguishing characteristics of a society is the way that it deals with affliction and suffering. Witchcraft beliefs and practices offer a particularly illuminating window onto such existential questions. Building on, as well as contesting, the earlier analytical foundations laid by Evans-Pritchard (1937), and I. M. Lewis (1986), recent scholarship has generated some insightful analyses of the ways in which ideas about occult practice inform contemporary African social, political, and religious life (for example, Geschiere 1997; Bongmba 2001; Niehaus 2001; Ciekawy 1998; Hackett 2003).

The rethinking of the traditional/modern dichotomy in anthropological research is linked to the renewed appreciation for the historical dimension. Johannes Fabian argues that suppressing temporality allows investigators to ignore the fact that the people they study are actually living in the same time period as they are (1983). Contemporary anthropologists tend to be more interested in how various populations and interest groups use their images of the past to constitute or strengthen present interests, and also how far those who study such groups are themselves implicated in such processes. Herzfeld reminds us, in no uncertain terms, that ‘[t]he idea that we somehow stand outside our object of study is preposterous’ (Herzfeld 2001: 55, emphasis added). The adjudication of the accuracy of historical accounts is controlled by the powerful, whose own ‘literal’ records need also to be read as ‘interpretational devices’ (ibid.: 62).

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The reproduction of the past, or its suppression, through social and ritual performance, allows people to come to terms with ‘a discomfiting present’ (Herzfeld 2001: 58). In her illuminating and multi-layered work on West African slavery (which Herzfeld alludes to), Rosalind Shaw describes how ritual practices, namely divination, and images of pernicious occult powers, may be understood as ‘memories of temporally removed processes created by an Atlantic commercial system that spanned three continents’ (2002: 3). Interestingly, Shaw notes that, while divinatory skills lost favor in the light of the hegemony of a twentiethcentury Western education, they enjoyed renewed salience with the catastrophic failure of Sierra Leone’s economy and infrastructure during the 1980s and 1990s, and the emergence and entrenchment of the rebel war. She shows how mnemonic stories of European cannibalism under colonialism and present-day popular stories of ‘big persons,’ namely national politicians and top civil servants, rumored to have gained their prestige through evil ritual practices prescribed by diviners, serve as social critiques. These stories draw on colonial and precolonial memories of power and its abuses. It is noteworthy that the memories of suffering and exploitation detailed in her study are condensed and expressed via ritual means, as well as highly charged sacred objects and locations. Stephan Palmié’s riveting study of AfroCuban religious culture also discloses how local forms of moral imagination constitute a response to the violent slave-trading past, rivaling Western understandings of modernity and rationality (2002).

Experience and experiencing

As with many other disciplines in the human sciences, anthropology experienced a ‘crisis of representation’ and the ‘postmodern turn’ in the 1980s and 1990s. In the wake of this critique, authors tend to be more transparent about their field experiences, even life trajectories. This is more than understanding positionality – frequently theoretical exploration is involved in trying to factor in the voices, or better still, knowledge, of women and indigenous peoples, or negotiate a balance between subjectivism and objectivism, for instance.4 Research on religion appears to compound these ethical and epistemological issues, yet such methodological reflection by scholars of religion has been less forthcoming (see, however, Spickard et al. 2002; Dempsey 2000).

As an anthropologist with comparative religion and philosophy strings to his bow, Michael Jackson has been exemplary on this question of reflexivity. In his much-praised book Paths Toward a Clearing (1989), he reflects on ‘the presumed coevalness that permits an ethnographer to have an understanding of the people he or she lives with and the images of radical otherness that pervade much anthropological writing’ (ibid.: x). Drawing on his skills as novelist and poet, and on theoretical ideas from the existentialist and pragmatist traditions, Jackson focuses on experiences which are shared by both ethnographers and the people they study. He sets out to probe the dialectic at the heart of the anthropological project, namely the tensions between the search for universal cultural patterns and the empirical diversity of social life. He does this in the context of his experiences both among the Kuranko of Sierra Leone and the Walpiri of Central Australia (Jackson 1995).

In the course of twelve years of intensive research and collaboration with a Haitian Vodou priestess and her family in Brooklyn, Karen McCarthy Brown felt the need for more integrity, honesty, as well as imagination in her work (Brown 1991). Coming to the conclusion that fieldwork was more of a ‘social art’ than a social science, she wove fictional and autobiographical threads into the overall ethnographical analysis.5 Similarly, Sam Gill,