Sunday, November 30, 2008

Reflections on Method and Theory

Throughout this semester I wrestled with the value in studying methods and theories pertaining to the entire study of religion. There were several weeks where I felt that even though the topics were interesting they had no relevance for my particular focus within the study of religion. While being informed of the broader methodological discussions within the field was useful in our classroom discussions I wondered how this knowledge would help me as a scholar.

A moment of clarity came when I was able to use some of our classroom discussions on methodology in another class I was taking within my area of study. It was a class about genre and the classification of texts. I had an “aha” moment when suddenly we were having a discussion about modern categories imposed on ancient texts. This resonated with our discussion of the problems of classifications found in the readings of Masuzawa, Smith and van Voorst. I think that the ability to take the themes and questions from this class on method and theory and to be able to see them used (or not used) within my particular field is the most valuable thing I learned this semester.

While I did not find all of the classroom discussions useful for ancient textual studies, it was interesting to see the broadness of the field of religious studies and how my classmates were able to use them in a meaningful way. I think that one of the challenges of a class like ours is the same challenge of defining the term ‘religion’. Our class as a whole represented over 2000 years of history and covered a large geographical area (all over the world), as well as drew in knowledge from many other disciplines including anthropology, sociology, women’s studies, psychology and philosophy. Each of us had different approaches and studied different subjects (people, rituals, texts, etc). With such a variety of interests and backgrounds I am actually surprised that we had so much in common! Just like the word “religion” is difficult to define, I think that to make a class which is useful for students with such diverse interests is quite a difficult endeavor.

In regards to my own intellectual personality, I think that I am starting to get a sense of where I fit into discussions of scholarship in the study of religion. While I am hesitant to make any conclusions about my particular methodological beliefs, attitudes or proclivities (mostly because I think that I still have so much more to learn!) I do see how they would greatly affect my work as a scholar of religion. I see the study of religion, especially in relation to the study of texts, as being a bit outdated in its approach. The term ‘religion’ still carries with it a lot of baggage which I think still plagues its critical study.

The study of canon and the classification of literature is a very important topic for my research project. The discovery of ancient medieval texts from the Cairo Geniza in 1895 (An ancient Jewish storehouse) and the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947 gave way to a flood of literature from antiquity and the early medieval period which opened a window into how texts and religious experiences were understood during that critical time in history when the biblical canon was being formed. When scholars first looked through this wealth of material they were often too haste in their classifications and categorizations of these texts. As a result there is a now a sense within my field that some of these categories do not accurately reflect the literature in question. There is also an idea that our very categories are not even useful in this study. Thus, I see myself as critically re-examining texts and deconstructing some of the preconceived ideas that went into the classification of this literature. I hope to be able to acknowledging the work that has been done in the past but “go beyond” it as Post was able to do in his paper about Hobsbawm.

One topic that I would have liked to discuss further was the insider-outsider approach to the study of religion. We are all influenced by religion in some way and it is important that we talk about how we are to use our influences in our studies. I think that this would have been a very useful discussion especially studying at the university of Toronto, being a university that has religious roots but is now a secular institution.

In regards to the structure of this entire course, I liked that we began with a discussion on methodology and then moved into a discussion on religion and religious studies. By covering different terms we were able to break down different aspects of the study of religion as a whole entity. I liked this way of navigating through the study of religion, however I think that perhaps it would have been useful to see the bigger picture from the beginning. I felt as though I was stumbling through this class, not knowing entirely what I was doing until now when I reflect back on the course. Perhaps at the beginning we could have laid out more of what we were doing and how we were going to navigate through the material. I also really like how we are ending. It is helpful to have a wrap-up class, where we discuss the overall picture.

I think that the greatest thing about this class was meeting others who had some of the same questions I did about the study of religion. Through discussion with those whose studies were also religious in nature though quite different than my own I was able to better understand the uniqueness of my own research questions within my field. Thanks to all of you who helped me this semester, either in person or in the virtual world. You enabled me to think and re-think my formulations and refine my research interests and gain a better appreciation for the study of religion as a whole.

Sunday, November 16, 2008

The Tradition of the Red Cup

A Holiday Tradition
I had a conversation the other day with several friends about traditions and rituals that happen during the holiday season. One of these rituals was that of the starbucks cup. My friend explained that she had several “friends” who take part in the yearly ritual of Starbuck’s “switching of the cup”. This ritual, for them, involved getting up early and going to Starbucks on a particular day in order to be the first customers to receive the holiday inspired red cups (apparently this day is November 10th FYI). While I personally had noticed the different cups during this season, I had not really given much thought to when this change takes place. I was baffled by the idea that there are those who actually plan their days around being one of the first ones to get these cups. When doing some further research on this ritual I found this quote from the president of Starbucks:

"The holidays at Starbucks are all about enjoying traditions and connecting with friends and family," said Jim Alling, president of Starbucks North America. "For our customers, that means gathering at their local Starbucks coffeehouse to connect over a hot cup of Starbucks(R) Christmas Blend coffee in our signature red cups to savor the warmth, magic and reprieve that are found there during the holidays."

Of course when he mentioned the word “tradition” I perked up and then decided to share this tradition in my blog entry this week. Has Starbucks itself become a tradition?! If the “switching of the cup” is a ritual, it is a ritual within the tradition enjoyed by Starbucks customers involving the gathering at local coffeehouses and drinking the Coffee Christmas blend in a holiday inspired red cup. Is it a tradition?

What is Tradition?
Tradition is a very vague and a difficult word to define. Similar to the words “ritual”, “emotion” and “religion”, tradition is slippery in its definition. I think that one of the biggest issues surrounding its definition is that most scholars understand traditions as constantly changing. They are not static moments in time, rather they reflect changes within a particular culture/society/religion and often have the ability to adapt to these changes. This is often difficult to account for when seeking to define tradition. One of the most important elements in a tradition is the fact that it is grounded in history giving the tradition legitimacy in its practice. Paul Post writes about the tradition of Gregorian Chant music CD of the monks in Northern Spain and the growing popularity of their CD as international bestselling music. He writes that these “authentic” chants are really not that authentic, first of all this CD borrows traditional music sounds from old recordings from the 1970s and 80s, and secondly the term “Gregorian” has little to do with “Gregory” the name of which it has been associated with. He uses this as the prime example of what Hobsbawm labeled as “invented tradition” (Post, 39).

Hobsbawm defines an “invented tradition” as one which is a “set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past” (Hobsbawm, 1). He further explains that it is not custom or routine (3) but it is a “process of formalization and ritualization” (4). I like the idea of an invented tradition in this sense, however the term itself can be problematic within the study of religion. Using the word “invented” can conjure up ideas about fabrication and illegitimacy. Post reads Hobsbawm’s Invented tradition as a concept not a term. He seeks to reflect deeper upon this concept in order to get beyond the superficial issues of artificiality and manipulation which plague “invented traditions” (Post, 44-45). His paper thus lays out the different ways of approaching this concept, using a variety of studies and methods.

The Cup
I am not really sure how the cup fits into the readings this week except that it represents a tradition for some Starbucks customers. It amazes me how Starbucks was able to create this tradition and that it has caused quite a stir (for some people). I think that one of the reasons why it has become a tradition is through its connection to the tradition of Christmas. By giving it a history (through association with Christmas and the holiday season) and by extension all the feelings and emotions and activities which accompany the holidays, Starbucks was able to make the “switch to the red cup” a holiday tradition. It is in this way that Starbucks has “invented” tradition.

Sunday, November 9, 2008

The Emotional Side of the Study of Religion?

Can you imagine how might you productively apply an analysis of emotion to your own research?

Preliminary Thoughts:
I can truly say that before this week I had never heard of scholarly discussions connecting the words emotion and religion. I think that it is because of my preconceived ideas about the word emotion, and that as a scholar it is less reliable to study emotions than studying empirical evidence. As a result I tend to think of emotion and religion as two separate spheres of study. I am not entirely sure where my ideas about emotion were conceived, but I think that my training in history and historical methods have had a large impact. In my studies I tend to focus more on the provenance of a text; the date of composition, the source/authorship, and the way in which a text borrows/incorporates motifs and themes from other literature. By focusing on these aspects of a text I have largely ignored the idea of emotion in my studies.

What is Emotion?:
The study of emotion is a recent development in the field of religious studies. Corrigan writes that it came about as a reaction against the analytical model proposed by thinkers such as Emile Durkheim (5). The analytical model they proposed focused on the investigation of sources, causes and explanations of religion, and had no interest in the study of emotion. Since then scholarship has moved from using an analytical approach towards a deeper appreciation of the value of emotion in both modern and ancient cultures.

But what is emotion? It is a difficult term to define and for many scholars it remains inexplainable (6). Corrigan does not lay out a single all-encompassing definition, but somehow manages to elude the issue by explaining around the term. He does this by pointing out the origins of the study of emotion and some of the problems which it presents. The closest he comes to a definition is when he describes emotion and religion as a new center for which aspects of religion (ritual, authority, community, ideas, etc.) can be studied with the intention of disclosing “meanings previously hidden” (25). Thus, emotion is a lens through which we can seek to understand religious acts.

Problems:
One of the problems of studying emotion is the danger of universalism. In the article by Elliot R. Wolfson, he writes about extreme weeping as a characteristic Kabbalist spiritual practice. It is through this experience of intense emotional fervor which an individual can receive “revelatory experiences or mystical illumination” (Wolfson, 272). By doing a study focusing on emotions modern readers could inevitably draw connections between the weeping of the Kabbalists and modern expressions of weeping. While this could add understanding to the Kabbalists’ weeping, it could also diminish the value of their weeping. If we wanted to understand the significance of the weeping we should first seek to place it within its historical period and compare the different emotional experiences of that time. If we simply compare their weeping to modern conceptions of weeping we could undervalue or overvalue the importance of that emotional fervor as a religious experience. (Again, my emphasis on a historical approach creeps up)

Corrigan mentions in his introduction, “the study of religion, is steeped in issues of definition, questions about reductivity, and debate about the role of emotion in cultures” (7). I thought about this as I was reading through some of the articles and concluded that the term “emotion” is really no better than the term “religion”. It seems like emotion is used as a way of trying to get away from some of the stigma associated with the term religion. Not only is it vague, but it seems to be very subjective and thus could easily fall prey to the same discussions and scholarly biases which have plagued the study of religion.

I also took issue with the broadness of the term emotion. I read through several articles and they were all so completely different! I found it very difficult to draw connections between them. For example, the article by Shuger looked at philosophy and rhetoric and makes the argument that belief was grounded in emotion. This was quite different from Basu’s article about the Sufi saints and their emotional associations with cultural ideas and concepts. The differences between the articles highlights the different ways in which emotion can be studied.

Concluding Thoughts:
In conclusion, I think that emotion is something that has value to its study, but as with any methodology, it is important to use a variety of methods to access information rather than focusing on a single method. I don’t think that emotion is a strong methodology which is able to stand on its own. Although I do agree with Corrigan that it helps us as scholars access material and information that other approaches do not reveal. I do not think that I would ever write that my methodology was the study of emotion, although perhaps it would be an aspect of a certain methodology which I would adopt.

Sunday, November 2, 2008

TEXT vs. ACTION: The Great Debate between Textual Scholars and Performance Theorists

What’s wrong with the hermenuetical stance and agenda of the textual scholar?

There are two main difficulties scholars must account for when attempting to study religions. The first is the definition of religion and the second, which stems from the first, is how to understand religions as continuously changing and adjusting to the economic, social and political events. Earlier this semester we discussed the definition of religion and the different baggage which is consciously or unconsciously carried within this term. I do not wish to re-define Religion, partly because I am not entirely sure how, however I would like to address the second related issue being the changing of religious experience.

There is no religion that has remained static and has not in some way adjusted to new ideas, cultural change or political influence. The question of how to study a religion that is constantly changing (or has gone through a variety of changes in the past) is one of the questions that is addressed by performance theorists. As an example I will use Judaism. If you look at Judaism in antiquity and compare it to Medieval Judaism or even to Modern Judaism, you would see that Jewish communities from different periods understood themselves in very different ways and perhaps they would not even recognize each other as belonging to the same faith tradition. All these different variations of Judaism used the Torah. A hermeneutical approach would understand their community in light of the Torah and emphasize that the way to understand their community was the way in which the Torah was interpreted, while a scholar ascribing to performance theory would try to understand the rituals and the human actions that made up their various forms of Judaism. (Note: I hope that I do not offend when I refer to different “variations” of Judaism, I do not mean to be disrespectful I just want to differentiate between different periods, the same could be done for any religion). I use this example to outline the different ways to approach religion.

Furthermore another question is which aspects of religion should be studied? Is it the “scripture” which teaches the religion (advocated by hermenutics), or is it the religious “rituals” or perhaps it is the feelings and emotions which are experienced by the participants in the religious tradition. Catherine Bell writes that the language of performance theory is a counter-approach to the one advocated by the “scholarly tendency to approach religious activity as if it were either a type of scriptural text to be analyzed or the mere physical execution of a preexisting ideology” (Bell, 207). Performance theory, as she advocates, is a way of going beyond a textual analysis to try and “decode action as action” (Bell, 206). She would argue against Paul Ricoeur that text metaphors as a way of understanding religions is not a satisfactory way to study religions.

The main problem with the hermenutical and text-focused approach is that it imposes a limit upon studying a religion. Returning to the point I was making about religions as constantly changing, if we looked solely at a single aspect of a religion, for example a sacred text, we could easily use this text as our guidebook to the religion, even if many of the elements contained within that text are not used or thought of as important to that particular culture. Bell writes that the performance approach in religious studies stresses “the execution of a preexisting script for activity…or the explicitly unscripted dimensions of an activity in process” (Bell, 205-6). The focus therefore is upon the action, the “doing” if you will, rather than the guidebook for the action.

Final Thoughts:
While I liked the problematization of the hermeneutical approach, a problem which I had with the emphasis on performance was that it is almost impossible to use when looking at ancient religions. I study ancient Judaism and one of the difficulties which I face in my studies is trying to understand how the Jews living within a Hellenistic world understood themselves as Jews. While there are some texts which refer to specific rituals, and even some archaeological evidence which suggests certain religious rituals and experiences were being done, there is little to be known for certain. I think that performance theory does have an important role to play in shifting the focus from texts (mostly referring to written texts) towards experiences and acts, however I think that each scholar must choose whether or not this approach is possible or even valuable for one’s research on a case by case basis.