Prologue: Negotiating women's roles and power: The practice of world religions in contemporary Asia

The articles that comprise this special issue make a convincing case for the importance of anthropological research in the field of gender and religion. Based upon the work of a panel presented at the 2002 annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, these articles demonstrate the anthropological facility for moving back and forth between ‘great traditions’ and local conditions. In different ways and in different contexts, these articles point to a variable pattern of ancient, local or indigenous cosmological equality and women's ritual leadership that are effaced as a result of political or cultural conquest by a literate, centralised, male-dominated ‘great tradition’. Equally important, these articles demonstrate that this effacement is rarely complete. Rather, women's power is fluid, dynamic, variable and negotiated at varying institutional and interpretive levels. These tensions illustrate how analyses of gender in religion work with different sets of issues. The first set of issues centres on women, that is, on actual persons who have varying degrees of agency within specific social situations. The second set of issues centres on what is often called ‘Woman’, a symbolic construct that conflates gender, sex and sexuality that is composed of allegory, ideology, metaphor, fantasy and projection.     

Hans Penner, Horatio and the Terminator: a review essay of Radical Interpretation in Religion

Adaptations of Donald Davidson’s meta-methodology of “radical interpretation” by Hans Penner and colleagues create more problems than they solve. Penner’s affirmation of both holistic and naturalistic approaches to the study of religion ring true. But, making the inclusion of ‘superhuman beings’—those “that do things you and I cannot do”—sufficient to the definition of religion. It is alternately counterfactual (Theravada, Chan or Zen Buddhism, Confucianism, Jainism and others), or not restrictive enough (does every such being qualify? viz. Schwarzenegger’s Terminator?), or logically ‘uninteresting’—is reference to superhuman beings alone what makes a discourse religious, or is it their being ‘worshipful’?     

Myths, models, and metaphors: Religion as model and the philosophy of science

Clifford Geertz's widely-used paper ‘Religion as a Cultural System’, makes the claim that ‘the importance of religion lies in its capacity to serve … as a source of general, yet distinctive conceptions of the world, the self and the relations between them …—its model of aspect—and of rooted, no less distinctive “mental” dispositions—its model for aspect’. However, apart from a highly critical article by Nancy Frankenberry and Hans Penner (1999) little attempt has been made to investigate this understanding of religion as model. This paper briefly considers the validity of Frankenberry and Penner's criticism and investigates possible applications of the elaborate analysis of models and metaphors in the philosophy of science since the time of Mary Hesse to the analysis of religious phenomena.     

Religious studies in Scotland: A persistent tension with divinity

This article treats the history of the study of religions in Scotland as a chapter in the history of the academic study of religions in the UK and Continental Europe. After sketching traditions of ‘Scottish comparative religion’ from the late nineteenth century to the interwar period, the authors map out an institutional history of ‘Religious Studies’ as a distinctive disciplinary formation in Scotland since 1970. The emergence, consolidation and in some cases decline of this relatively new academic field are charted at the five main contemporary university sites in Scotland where religion, as a distinct subject, is taught: Aberdeen, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Stirling and the Open University. In the cases of Aberdeen, Glasgow and Edinburgh, the authors argue that ‘Religious Studies’ has had to fashion its niche in the context of the ecclesiastical authority enjoyed by Scottish Divinity faculties, resulting in an ongoing ‘tension’ between Religious Studies and Theology. The development of the subject at Stirling and the Open University underscores the historical alignment of Religious Studies with non-Presbyterian educational values in Scotland, whereas the persistence of Religious Studies in Schools of Divinity at the other Scottish universities may veil the traditionally ‘religionist’ stance of most scholars of religion working in these institutions.     

Metaphor and ‘career’

This article provides a series of readings of a young man’s career—a career that was shared in the context of a research project. Although similar, each reading is qualitatively different in the sense that new material is introduced on each occasion. This, in turn, highlights the limitations of the word as a form of representation. The article argues that in order to encapsulate the irreducible hermeneutic characteristic of a ‘career,’ a non-linear form of representation is required. The article moves on to show how metaphor can be utilized to represent ‘career’ in both words and images. This includes a detailed examination of the notion of metaphorisation—a constructionist term that denotes the relationship between metaphor and consciousness. The article concludes with a discussion of the methodological possibilities offered by metaphor for conducting research.     

Orientalism, representation and religion: the reality behind the myth

Said's Orientalism has been called an ‘epoch-making’ and ‘paradigm constitutive’ book. While it undoubtedly caused a stir on its appearance and proved an important influence upon post-colonial studies and other developments in literary and cultural theory, a careful re-reading of it reveals a deeply flawed work that offers a confused analysis of human representations and realities, a highly selective and partial engagement with Western and Middle Eastern history and scholarship, and a particularly unhelpful approach to religion. The argument offered here is that Said's claims about ‘Orientalism’ are actually incoherent, veering between Foucauldian social constructionism and references to trans-cultural human realities; that the theoretical approaches to religion are inconsistent and highly selective; that the account of human agency is entirely inadequate; and that, although Said condemns entire generations of Orientalist scholars as racist, imperialist and ethnocentric, he is insufficiently reflective about his own scholarly position and the implications of its inconsistencies. Although Orientalism has been hailed as a book that ‘breathed insurgency’, it actually offers a vision of human beings as remarkably powerless in the face of arbitrary and abstract discourses that define their lives as oppressors or oppressed. Said sought to demonstrate that the reality behind the myth of scholarly impartiality was a racist and ethnocentric exercise of control and authority over the Orient, but the reality behind the myth of Orientalism is a theoretically flawed work offering a reductive account of religion and an impoverished view of human beings.     

The compatibility heuristic in non-categorical hypothetical reasoning: Inferences between conditionals and disjunctions

A new theory explains how people make hypothetical inferences from a premise consistent with several alternatives to a conclusion consistent with several alternatives. The key proposal is that people rely on a heuristic that identifies compatible possibilities. It is tested in 7 experiments that examine inferences between conditionals and disjunctions. Participants accepted inferences between conditionals and inclusive disjunctions when a compatible possibility was immediately available, in their binary judgments that a conclusion followed or not (Experiment 1a) and ternary judgments that included it was not possible to know (Experiment 1b). The compatibility effect was amplified when compatible possibilities were more readily available, e.g., for ‘A only if B’ conditionals (Experiment 2). It was eliminated when compatible possibilities were not available, e.g., for ‘if and only if A B’ bi-conditionals and exclusive disjunctions (Experiment 3). The compatibility heuristic occurs even for inferences based on implicit negation e.g., ‘A or B, therefore if C D’ (Experiment 4), and between universals ‘All A’s are B’s’ and disjunctions (Experiment 5a) and universals and conditionals (Experiment 5b). The implications of the results for alternative theories of the cognitive processes underlying hypothetical deductions are discussed.     

Daniel Dubuisson, The Western Construction of Religion

In The Western Construction of Religion Daniel Dubuisson argues that the concept of ‘religion’ is too historically and culturally contingent to serve as the basis for a comparative discipline. The concept is indigenous to Western culture and is inherently theological and phenomenological. He argues for a constructionist view of the discipline and proposes the concept ‘cosmographic formations’ as a replacement for ‘religion’. Religious phenomena should be taken as discursive constructions that link embodied individuals to the social, cultural and cosmic orders. The following reviews evaluate Dubuisson's arguments, relating them to broader currents in the theory of religion. Daniel Dubuisson responds to each of the reviews.¹     

Methodological concerns in the psychology of religion: Continuities, losses and transforming perspectives

This article seeks solutions to what has recently been called the ‘crisis’ in the psychology of religion by returning to the programs of its founding fathers. It explores some of the methodological debates that followed the translation of William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience into German. More was at stake than the commonly drawn distinction between empirical and hermeneutical approaches to religion, or between quantitative and qualitative methods. What was at stake was the need for another kind of psychology in general. This article pays special attention to Wilhelm Wundt's fundamental criticism of James and of others in the psychology of religion. Despite the problems inherent in both James' and Wundt's aborted general psychology programs, each nonetheless contains approaches that may yet serve as an impetus to contemporary research on religion. Contemporary developments in cultural psychology in particular complement current research in the psychology of religion.     

Conclusion: Construction sites at the juncture of religion and gender

The articles in this special issue offer fresh definitions of ‘new’ and ‘old’, of ‘local’ and ‘world’ religions. The themes of purity, danger and fundamentalism; female leadership, mediumship, self-sexism; and natalism and nationalism are discussed. This conclusion stresses the ‘folk’ sources of ‘mainstream’ religions, and focuses on the way the articles show women to be at the juncture of changing values concerning religion and gender, reform and fundamentalism.     

Body pedagogics and the religious habitus: A new direction for the sociological study of religion

Sociological theory has been central to the modern study of religion. In the face of the global resurgence of religious phenomena, however, and the challenge this has presented for the assumptions that characterised much twentieth century sociology, there is a need for new theoretical models to make sense of religion today. This paper contributes to this task by building upon Durkheim's suggestion that religious social facts become fully efficacious only when internalised, and Luhmann's interest in sociological manifestations of ‘transcendence’ and ‘immanence’, in order to analyse religion as a thoroughly embodied phenomenon that can be understood through the study of religious body pedagogics. Having outlined the key steps involved in the analysis of body pedagogics, we illustrate the utility of this realist framework through an ideal-typical representation of Christianity and Islam and reflect, via a consideration of several objections that could be directed towards it, upon how this approach can deal with the complexities and contingencies of contemporary religion. In conclusion, it is suggested that this systematic body pedagogic focus on embodied commonalities and differences across diverse religious contexts offers a valuable basis upon which to engage critically with religion today.     

‘At home in the uncanny’: Freud's account of das Unheimliche in the context of his theory of religious belief

This paper serves as an exploration of Freud's comment that one of the functions of religious belief is to make humanity feel ‘at home in the uncanny’ (heimisch im Unheimlichen). The first section examines the context of Freud's comment within The Future of an Illusion. Attention is then shifted to Freud's essay on ‘The “Uncanny”’, and to his conclusion that the ‘uncanny’ is the name for everything that ought to have remained secret and hidden but has come to light. A number of interpretations of the ‘at home’ remark are discussed, and it is suggested that religion might fruitfully be viewed as an attempt to come to terms with humanity's ‘transcendental homelessness’.     

Les “règles de la discussion légitime” dans la logique de Port-Royal

In the XVIIth century the conflict which opposed the jansenists to the jesuits involved the problem of the due process in theological matter. The jesuits heralded the thesis that the infallibility of the Church has to be extended from dogmatics (quaestio iuris) to the historical facts (quaestio facti). On the opposite side Arnauld maintained that such an opinion was monstruous: also in religious matters the fact has to be proved according to the principles of a due process, and not by authority. In this article the thesis pleaded by the jansenists is considered in connection with the model of argumentative procedure offered by the Port-Royal logic.The Logique ou Art de penser (1622) by Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole seems to have rediscovered the classical principles of the theory of argumentation: from the burden of proof to the idea of probable truth. But really a new model of adversary-system has been introduced into the modern mind, which is very different in concept from the topical tradition. The basic metaphor of combat, implying that the truth will prevail in the fight, is compatible with the epistemological premises of the modern logic (as the separation between fact and value). Therefore the problem of the fact-finding seems to be attracted into the area of the logic of information, and not of the theory of argumentation.

     

Liberalism, the First Amendment and Religious Studies: a review of Stanley Fish's The Trouble With Principle

In The Trouble with Principle Stanley Fish argues that (1) there are no neutral principles; (2) that liberalism is intolerant, anti-religious and amoral; (3) that only politics, ideology and rhetoric ‘exist’ and that in politics and rhetoric, as in war, ‘anything goes’; (4) that the principles embodied in the First Amendment stand in the way of political responsibility; and (5) that religion, the primary victim of liberalism, should reassert itself in the public sphere and in academe by putting on the full armour of rhetoric and politics. Although in his book Fish distinguishes between professional experts and true believers, he recently has given up this distinction and instead advocates the creation of departments of religious studies staffed by ‘true believers’. Disagreeing with all of these positions, the reviewer argues that Fish's antifoundational attack on liberalism and advocacy of a neo-foundational fideism bespeak a singular lack of political wisdom.     

An economic perspective on the Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory of personality

Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory postulates personality factors of ‘reward sensitivity’ and ‘punishment sensitivity’ linked to neural systems that control approach and avoidance, respectively. In contrast, behavioural economics distinguishes gain (‘reward’) and loss (‘punishment’) valuation systems that are orthogonal to approach/avoidance behaviour. We combined gain and loss with both their presentation and omission and found evidence for separate gain valuation, loss valuation, approach, and avoidance systems. This suggests that it is possible to integrate valuation/input and behaviour/output views of ‘reward’ and ‘punishment’ in a way that may be of use to both personality theory and economics and so forge closer links between these two major perspectives on decision-making and behaviour.     

Thinking the ‘question’ of religion: The aporia of Buddhism and its democratic heritage in Sri Lanka

(If an abstract can ever be ‘abstract’?) Buddhism (and, more generally, religion) has never been thought as a question - that is, as a question inseparable from the question of the political. The academic study of Buddhism continues to be dominated by an empiricist, humanist, and even humanitarian project, shackled by modes of knowledge production, within the garrisons of colonialist area studies. No textualizing, anthropologizing, historicizing approach - however, critical it may be - can avoid the trap of humanism. To think the question of religion, one must begin to think it and its heritage as an aporia, an irreducible contradiction. In reading Qadri Ismail's Abiding by Sri Lanka, I argue that reflecting on the aporia of religion - whose legacy is not a ‘problem’ to be solved, inherited, or abandoned - might well enable us to imagine a notion of the political hitherto unheard of.     

Western esotericism: Towards an integrative model of interpretation

Despite the fact that during the last fifteen years we have witnessed the emergence of a research field of ‘Western esotericism’, scholars are still far from agreeing on definitions of ‘esotericism’. For an academic ‘field’, however, that wants to establish international networks and to bring together scholars from various research areas and disciplines, it is highly desirable to provide an interpretational framework in which these different studies find their place. The main argument of this article is that such common ground can be found only when esotericism is seen not as a selection of historical ‘currents’, however defined, but as a structural element of Western culture. After reviewing the most influential approaches to Western esotericism, this article identifies two dimensions of an esoteric discourse: claims of higher knowledge and ways of accessing this ‘truth’. To these dimensions can be added certain world views that are typically involved in there discourses. The interpretative model proposed here aims at critically addressing basic aspects of Western self-understanding including the rhetorics of rationality, science, enlightenment, progress and absolute truth. It postulates that conflicts of religious world views, identities and forms of knowledge lie at the heart of Western cultural history.     

A critical look at critical (neo)personalism: Unitas multiplex and the ‘person’ concept

This essay evaluates critically William Stern's (Stern, W. (2010). Psychology and personalism) unitas multiplex and definition of ‘person.’ Discussion of the former is restricted to the lowest psychological levels and evaluation is conducted in light of interpretive options open to the ‘targets’ of Stern's current adherents, termed ‘neopersonalists.’ It is concluded that to avoid the charge of ‘individualism,’ neopersonalist expositions of the unitas multiplex should be geared toward the strong possibility that their targets will read it as a person-ontology. Evaluation then turns to Stern's definition of ‘person,’ which is compared with elements of Hacker's (Hacker, P. (2007). Human nature: The categorial framework. Oxford: Blackwell) analysis of the same concept. Results suggest that while Stern's definition applies to ‘animal’ and ‘human being,’ it does not apply to ‘person’. A more coherent conceptual framework for neopersonalism thus is suggested. A ‘can-do teleontology’ maintains emphasis on the person's potentialities and inherent goal-oriented and goal-striving nature, avoids reduction of the person concept, relates the person to others by necessity, and is amenable to Stern's definition of ‘personality.’