Festival della Matematica 2008: Recent Episodes
Malory Nye
Summary:I am a student of religion who does not study religion. I study what people think and talk about as religion. I study the spaces, places, things, objects, ideas, practices, and conflicts that can be found in particular discourses that get labelled and thought about as ‘religion’. I study the idea of religion. LISTEN NOWEpisode notesI study the idea of religion. Very often this can feel like I am not studying (or teaching) about religion at all. To study the bits of peoples’ lives that slot into the bracket of ‘religion’, it is also necessary to try to understand the ‘bigger picture’?— the bits of their lives and cultures that appear to exist beyond the ‘religion’ tag. For this, sometimes the boundaries are clear —people can often articulate clearly where they consider ‘religion to end’ and ‘culture to begin’. This is interesting in itself, since it gives us some insight into how the idea of religion is understood. But it does not give us any definitive understanding of whether a certain action is either ‘religion’ or ‘culture’. Most significantly, such statements are part of what the study of religion is considering: That is, how the idea of religion is understood. And from there, how such an idea(s) is embedded and lived out in material and discursive ways. For the full text of this podcast, follow this link to the Religion Bites Blog. Useful linksThe full text of this episode can be found on the Religion Bites blog. About the Religion Bites Podcast Religion Bites is a podcast by Malory Nye, an academic and writer based in Perth, Scotland. The Religion Bites podcast gives you quick and simple intros to the study of religion, to help you think a bit further about the issues of religion and culture in the contemporary world. If we want to understand today’s world, we need to ‘get’ why people are religious – why they ‘do religion’ in the many ways that religion is done. This is not a podcast about being religious, it is about understanding religion and the role that religion has in the contemporary world. ALSO BY MALORY NYE Listen to Episode RB021 The post RB021 Studying Religion without Studying Religion (Religion Bites Podcast) appeared first on Religion Bites.
Summary:When we speak of religion are we in fact talking about race? Does the idea of ‘religion’ only make sense if we consider it as a particular instance of a racial formation? LISTEN NOWEpisode notesMy theoretical starting point here is this question: When we speak of religion are we in fact talking about race? Or to put this a little more carefully: What I am trying to explore is the extent to which discourses on religion and religions (religious practices, religious differences, classifications, etc.) are a means of expressing discourses on race and racial differences. Does the idea of ‘religion’ only make sense if we consider it as a particular instance of a racial formation? I work from the assumption that categories of race and gender are fundamental to the analysis of culture and society, inasmuch as both categories (together with other categories, such as sexualities, ability, religion) are part of the constructions of reality in which people live. So, to be clear, when I talk of both ‘race’ and ‘religion’, I am taking both of these as cultural terms?—?we can call them imagined, or constructed, or ideological. They are not intended to refer to any entities that are ‘sui generis’, that have a reality beyond the ways in which the terms are put to use. My central question here is not so much whether these terms are connected, but to what extent?—?and if we can at all distinguish religion from race? For the full text of this podcast, follow this link to the Religion Bites Blog.Useful linksThe full text of this episode can be found on the Religion Bites blog. About the Religion Bites Podcast Religion Bites is a podcast by Malory Nye, an academic and writer based in Perth, Scotland. The Religion Bites podcast gives you quick and simple intros to the study of religion, to help you think a bit further about the issues of religion and culture in the contemporary world. If we want to understand today’s world, we need to ‘get’ why people are religious – why they ‘do religion’ in the many ways that religion is done. This is not a podcast about being religious, it is about understanding religion and the role that religion has in the contemporary world. ALSO BY MALORY NYE Listen to Episode RB020 The post RB020 Race and Religion (Religion Bites Podcast) appeared first on Religion Bites.
Summary:To understand the burkini bans in France in summer 2016, our starting point needs to be based on an assumption of intersectionality. The bans are not only about religion or security, they also involve gender, sexuality, race, power, and history. LISTEN NOWEpisode notesWhat is going on with the burkini ban (or literally bans) in southern France? There can be no doubt that many French people are in fear at the moment. Not only of the tangible threat of Daesh (ISIS) political violence, but also from a more nebulous fear of an ‘enemy within’ amongst the country’s 4.7 million Muslim population. Fear of such French Muslims predates Daesh by many years, and has been carefully encouraged by certain political groups in France for a long time, particularly by Le Pen’s Front National Party. Such scapegoating and stereotyping is rarely rational, so it comes as no surprise in the end that it has culminated in an image of armed male police on a sunny beach, forcing an (apparently) Muslim woman to remove her clothing, and then fining her. It appears from the outside to be quite literally fighting (perceived) patriarchy with, well, actual patriarchy. In this episode I use an intersectional approach to explore the issues of this burkini ban. Intersectionality is about trying to understand complexity through the framework of complexity. It is about recognising that every context has multiple issues, that there are no straightforward or reductive explanations, but that instead there are multiple strands of any situation, cultural context, or even public controversy. The burkini ban in France is a clear example of the need for such an intersectional approach. Intersectionality requires us to ask questions about gender, sexuality, race and ethnicity, religion, history, politics, and agency. Although in any given culture or situation one of these may be stressed by particular parties (thus, some will argue, of course, that the burkini is primarily about religion), we gain so much more by looking not only at all the different aspects?—?as a complex matrix?—?but also the intersections between and across those aspects. For the full text of this podcast, follow this link to the Religion Bites Blog.Useful linksThe full text of this episode can be found on the Religion Bites blog. About the Religion Bites Podcast Religion Bites is a podcast by Malory Nye, an academic and writer based in Perth, Scotland. The Religion Bites podcast gives you quick and simple intros to the study of religion, to help you think a bit further about the issues of religion and culture in the contemporary world. If we want to understand today’s world, we need to ‘get’ why people are religious – why they ‘do religion’ in the many ways that religion is done. This is not a podcast about being religious, it is about understanding religion and the role that religion has in the contemporary world. ALSO BY MALORY NYE Listen to Episode RB019 The post RB019 Exploring the Burkini Ban with intersectionality (Religion Bites Podcast) appeared first on Religion Bites.
Summary: The history of the idea of chocolate is somewhat similar to the history of how we think about religions. Chocolate became chocolate through colonial encounter and appropriation. Without colonialism, we would not talk about chocolate – the same with religion. LISTEN NOWEpisode notesReligion is like chocolate. I don’t mean this literally. Religion is not chocolate, and chocolate is not religion. But there are similarities. The thing we assume chocolate to be was created, developed, and economically controlled by particular European individuals, rulers, and businesses. And after 500 years of European colonialism in America, it is very hard now to find any form of chocolate that exists beyond what Europeans have made chocolate to be. This is where the analogy with religion comes in. Religion – in particular, the idea of religion and religions of the world – is equally something that has emerged from similar histories of European colonialism. For the full text of this podcast, follow this link to the Religion Bites Blog. Useful linksThe full text of this podcast episode can be found on the Religion Bites blog. About the Religion Bites Podcast Religion Bites is a podcast by Malory Nye, an academic and writer based in Perth, Scotland. The Religion Bites podcast gives you quick and simple intros to the study of religion, to help you think a bit further about the issues of religion and culture in the contemporary world. If we want to understand today’s world, we need to ‘get’ why people are religious – why they ‘do religion’ in the many ways that religion is done. This is not a podcast about being religious, it is about understanding religion and the role that religion has in the contemporary world. ALSO BY MALORY NYE Listen to Episode RB018 The post RB018 Religion is like chocolate? (Religion Bites Podcast) appeared first on Religion Bites.
Summary:So, here is a question that is rarely asked in Religion 101 classes: What type of gloves should you be wearing? All studies of religion are a study of humans, people and the worlds, cultures, meanings, ideas, and practices they live within. What we choose to wear (perhaps metaphorically) on our hands helps to shape what we do in the study of religion. LISTEN NOW Episode notesSo, here is a question that is rarely asked in Religion 101 classes: What type of gloves should you be wearing? Please bear with me on this. After giving it some thought, these are the options that seemed most obvious to me: (Photos for each of these options are above, click the arrows of the slider to look through the 10 pictures) 1. White cotton gloves to allow us to ‘handle with care’ 2. Latex forensic gloves (CSI) 3. Boxing gloves (e.g., Muhammad Ali) 4. Long evening gloves (e.g., Audrey Hepburn and/or Dr Frank N Furter of Rocky Horror) 5. Thermal/winter gloves (for protection) 6. Dress gloves (rooted in power and history, e.g., colonialism) 7. Gloves of protest (Tommie Jones and John Carlos at the Mexico Olympics, 1968) 8. No gloves (Brad Pitt in Fight Club) 9. A gauntlet, thrown down Thus, whatever we may wear on our hands, what we do looks at: power, conflict, control, and economic difference gender, genders, sex and sexualities race, ethnicities and the politics of difference the various forms of intersectionality between each of these Whatever our subject of study may be, and whatever approach we may take, it is always going to be located within the particularities of the history that has created us. This history and politics is one of postcolonialism, after centuries of European colonialism and empires. Ours (and others’) ideas and knowledge are still largely shaped by those politics. Useful linksThe full text of this podcast episode can be found on the Religion Bites blog on Medium.com The title of the discussion is: Trying to understand religion? It’s a matter of finding the right gloves to wear…About the Religion Bites Podcast Religion Bites is a podcast by Malory Nye, an academic and writer based in Perth, Scotland. The Religion Bites podcast gives you quick and simple intros to the study of religion, to help you think a bit further about the issues of religion and culture in the contemporary world. If we want to understand today’s world, we need to ‘get’ why people are religious – why they ‘do religion’ in the many ways that religion is done. This is not a podcast about being religious, it is about understanding religion and the role that religion has in the contemporary world. ALSO BY MALORY NYE Listen to Episode RB017 The post RB017 What gloves to wear in the study of religion? (Religion Bites Podcast) appeared first on Religion Bites.
Summary: Postcolonialism and religion: in what ways are history and the contemporary world relevant not only to the topic of religion, but also to how we analyse and understand religions and cultures? LISTEN NOWEpisode notesFor some postcolonialism is merely a buzz word — perhaps like intersectionality — that is heard frequently but little understood. For others it is quite simply a methodology, a way of looking to approach a series of questions about a topic. Or as a description of the composition and power relations of the contemporary world. In historical terms, perhaps, postcolonialism is the world that has superseded the colonial era (whenever that may have been). For those who identify most strongly with the term postcolonialism, however, it is much more than this — it is a framework that helps to generate the key questions of our studies, and to contextualise not only what we observe and think about, but also what we are doing as scholars looking at the topic of religion Postcolonialism is certainly a historical tool for analysis and it relies on asking questions (and trying to analyse) a series of unequal power relations. Postcolonialism relies on other approaches, such as gender studies, studies of race and racism, and in particular approaches that examine issues of intersectionality — between various categories, such as race, class, gender, culture, language, religion. What this means in practice is that: 1) Those who are doing the study of religion in contexts in the non-western world have by necessity to understand what is meant by such a contemporary postcolonial context. 2) However, postcolonialism is not solely a study of the impact of colonialism on non-western societies. The impact of colonialism in earlier centuries, and the transformation of colonialism in the twentieth century to the present, has had an impact that has been important right across the globe. 3) But this is not only about history and the development of the political relationship (and imbalance) between the west and the non-west (i.e, the rest of the world — the west and the rest). A postcolonial approach is also about how we think, how we have been taught to think, and the assumptions that we make and take for granted. In conclusion We can understand the postcolonial in various different ways: On a straightforward level, the postcolonial is a time — it refers to the contrast with the colonial era (roughly 1492 to 1945). Thus the postcolonial is the era after the fall of the British and other European empires, the age of less obvious empires — such as US power and hegemony (the Cold War, Vietnam, Iraq, etc.), and the rise of globalisation. The postcolonial is also a geographical classification — it draws attention to non-European history and analysis. It aims to make us think less eurocentrically. The postcolonial is also a way of asking how the history of European and American colonialism has produced what we think we know. It challenges our categories and theories, by dislocating our assumptions based on particular histories. Postcolonialism is an approach that asks and examines how the colonial histories changed the world. It is not only about the colonial — now postcolonial societies — it is also how Europe itself is a product and beneficiary of this colonial and postcolonial history. Useful linksEdward Said’s Orientalism Gayatri Spivak, ‘Can the subaltern speak?‘(this is a complex and difficult paper to read, and you might wish to watch a YouTube video by Jason Campbell, where he goes into a lot of details trying to unpack the themes of Spivak’s paper) If you would like to try out my other podcast, called History’s Ink, then click here About the Religion Bites Podcast Religion Bites is a podcast by Malory Nye, an academic and writer based in Perth, Scotland. The Religion Bites podcast gives you quick and simple intros to the study of religion, to help you think a bit further about the issues of religion and culture in the contemporary world. If we want to understand today’s world, we need to ‘get’ why people are religious – why they ‘do religion’ in the many ways that religion is done. This is not a podcast about being religious, it is about understanding religion and the role that religion has in the contemporary world. ALSO BY MALORY NYE Listen to Episode RB016 The post RB016 POSTCOLONIALISM and Religion (Religion Bites Podcast) appeared first on Religion Bites.
Summary: In this episode, my aim is to encourage you to stop using the word ‘belief’ when you think about (and talk about) religion. It is not a useful word, and for most of the time it does the opposite of what we want the word to do — that is, it obscures our attempts to understand, rather than adding any clarity or precision. LISTEN NOWEpisode notesMy former colleague, Mary Keller argued back in 2002 that: ‘If I say that I am not religious but that my sister is, one is likely to get the sense that my sister has a bubble in her brain where she cultivates her belief … Religiousness is construed as a mental activity’ (Keller 2002: 6). This is what I will be exploring today, not so much the content of belief in religions, but how we come to talk about this ‘bubble in the brain’ that we call belief. In this episode, my aim is to encourage you to stop using the word ‘belief’ when you think about (and talk about) religion. It is not a useful word, and for most of the time it does the opposite of what we want the word to do — that is, it obscures our attempts to understand, rather than adding any clarity or precision. If you are going to continue to use the word belief, then I recommend some caution with it. Treat it as though it is radioactive, or contaminated with some highly polluting substance, so you need special protective materials (gloves, body suit, mask, etc) in order to be able to use it. Just be careful how you use it. And when you do use it, think about what you are saying when you say it. In this episode, I will go through some of the main critiques of the term belief in the study of religion, focusing in particular on 1) the issue of belief as something with very particular historical baggage, emerging out of Protestant Christians traditions of western Europe and north America 2) the use of the term belief to label and categorise cultures that are different from such European and American culture (particularly within colonial and postcolonial contexts) 3) the term as a means of bracketing out different types of thought and speech, into opposites such as belief versus commonsense or knowledge, or more broadly religion versus science, and lastly 4) that there are better terms to use, which help us think through the issues with a bit more clarity. What we refer to as ‘beliefs’ in the study of religion are in fact systems of discourse, that exist within particular contexts and frames of reference, and which are always embedded within certain structures of power. This is what we are studying when we look at beliefs. Or at least, rather than simply trying to learn their beliefs, we should be looking at these much larger issues of the discourses that shape and contextualise peoples’ worlds and experiences. Useful linksAbout the Religion Bites Podcast Religion Bites is a podcast by Malory Nye, an academic and writer based in Perth, Scotland. The Religion Bites podcast gives you quick and simple intros to the study of religion, to help you think a bit further about the issues of religion and culture in the contemporary world. If we want to understand today’s world, we need to ‘get’ why people are religious – why they ‘do religion’ in the many ways that religion is done. This is not a podcast about being religious, it is about understanding religion and the role that religion has in the contemporary world. ALSO BY MALORY NYE Listen to Episode RB015 The post RB015 The problem of BELIEF in the study of Religion (Religion Bites Podcast) appeared first on Religion Bites.
Summary: Agency is a concept often used to understand how people participate in (and sometimes resist) religious contexts and structures. That is, how do people who are in a subordinate position and who are marginalised from the main areas of power, how do they live with (and perhaps overcome) their powerless-ness? LISTEN NOWEpisode notesThe idea of the agent (the person with agency) recognises the person, not just the victim. This is a person that acts on their own choices, on their own values and beliefs, and is not merely a pawn that is pushed around by those with power. In much discussion, it is when women actively and obviously resist rather than acquiesce that scholars have tended to use the term ‘agency’ — as a way to describe and articulate the women’s resistance to the power that is exerted upon them by others. Thus patriarchy is often accompanied by women’s own individual and collective actions of resistance, in many different ways. We can look, for example, to well documented Christian women in American history who have resisted male and white power, in different ways. For example, Anne Hutchinson in the 1630s against the domination of a particular form of Puritanism in the early Massachusetts Bay Colony, or important female figures of the black emancipatory era of nineteenth century America, such as Ida Wells, Sojourner Truth, and Maria Stewart. All of these women made a stand, showed their resistance, and in doing so were clear and very obvious examples of the acting out of their agency against the established power relations. But this leaves out other women: the actions that some (indeed many) women take that are not so clearly about resistance and challenge. Or to put this another way, is a person’s agency only shown when they resist and challenge power, subordination and discrimination? Can agency also be about exerting ones own sense of power and empowerment, through compliance rather than resistance? This question is particularly associated with the scholar Saba Mahmood who felt that earlier approaches to agency ‘ignore other modalities of agency whose meaning and effect are not captured within the logic of subversion and resignification of hegemonic terms of discourse’ (Mahmood 2005, 153). Or to put this another way, women (and other groups who are disempowered and discriminated against) can act with their own agency in ways other than challenging and resisting. A recent article by Kelsy C. Burke Women’s Agency in Gender-Traditional Religions proposes four different (and distinct) ways to understand women’s agency: Resistance agency Empowerment agency Instrumental agency Compliant agency It is useful to remember that although this is specifically concerned with women’s agency, if we want to use such a breakdown of types of agency, they can also be used in other political contexts, such as race, sexuality, etc, and also within the context of intersections of identity and agency (specifically black women’s agency, or LGBT Muslims, etc.) Useful linksKelsy C. Burke Women’s Agency in Gender-Traditional Religions About the Religion Bites Podcast Religion Bites is a podcast by Malory Nye, an academic and writer based in Perth, Scotland. The Religion Bites podcast gives you quick and simple intros to the study of religion, to help you think a bit further about the issues of religion and culture in the contemporary world. If we want to understand today’s world, we need to ‘get’ why people are religious – why they ‘do religion’ in the many ways that religion is done. This is not a podcast about being religious, it is about understanding religion and the role that religion has in the contemporary world. ALSO BY MALORY NYE Listen to Episode RB014 The post RB014 AGENCY and Religion (Religion Bites Podcast) appeared first on Religion Bites.
Summary:This episode introduces the concept of intersectionality, a way to understand complex issues and identities deriving in particular from the work of Kimberlee Crenshaw. An intersectional approach recognises that the ‘single’ categories that we rely on for much of our analysis (race, gender, class, etc) do not and cannot exist on their own. There is no race, it exists within its intersections with other differences — such as class, gender, sexualities, religion, and so on. Every time we ‘see race’ we see it within such intersections, intersecting with other categories / aspects of cultural life. LISTEN NOWEpisode notesThe term ‘intersectionality’ was coined by the writer Kimberle Crenshaw in a paper published nearly twenty years ago, in 1989, titled ‘Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex’ (it is available in various places online, such as here). In this paper she started with what could be considered the basic problem of taking a single axis of power relations (and in particular discrimination and disadvantage) as a means to understand (and possible redress) the issues. As she herself noted, the recognition of this problem was not in any way new, but the term she coined to address this, intersectionality, has become a key buzzword for much cultural and feminist study, as a result of Crenshaw’s discussion. The problem with taking a single axis — that is a single point of analysis (such as either gender or race) — is that it fails to address the complexities of any issue. It is like thinking we are only going along a single road, when in fact we’re in much more dynamic place of the intersection. In Crenshaw’s words, ‘In other words, in race discrimination cases, discrimination tends to be viewed in terms of sex- or class-privileged Black. In sex discrimination cases, the focus is on race- and class-privileged women.’ (p57) That is, in discussions of specifically racial disadvantage, the focus is on the disempowering of black men, whilst in discussions of specifically sexual politics, it is white women who are the focus of much discussion In both cases, the particularities of black women and other women of colour, are left out of the normative stand points. Often they are silenced. For those who are caught in this area of double discrimination, where does it leave them? In the words of Crenshaw again, ‘this single-axis framework erases Black women in the conceptualization, identification and remediation of race and sex discrimination’ And it does so, ‘by limiting inquiry to the experiences of otherwise-privileged members of the group.’ (p57) ‘Because the intersectional experience is greater than the sum of racism and sexism, any analysis that does not take intersectionality into account cannot sufficiently address the particular manner in which Black women are subordinated.’ (p58) ‘The point is that Black women can experience discrimination on any number of ways and that the contradiction arises from our assumptions that their claims of exclusion must be unidirectional. Consider an analogy to traffic in an intersection, coming and going in all four directions. Discrimination, like traffic through an intersection, may flow in one direction, and it may flow in another. If an accident happens in an intersection, it can be caused by cars traveling from any number of directions and, sometimes, from all of them. Similarly, if a Black woman is harmed because she is in the intersection, her injury could result from sex discrimination or race discrimination [or both]’ (p63) The second paper by Crenshaw mentioned is ‘Mapping the Margins: intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against people of color’ (Kimberle Crenshaw, 1991, Stanford Law Review 43(6):1241-1299). Again, a pdf copy of this available online here. ‘By tracing the categories to their intersections, I hope to suggest a methodology that will ultimately disrupt the tendencies to see race and gender as exclusive and separable.’ (p1244) The conclusion that she reaches is that these ‘single’ categories that we rely on for much of our analysis (race, gender, class, etc) do not and cannot exist on their own. There is no race, it exists within its intersections with other differences — such as class, gender, sexualities, and so on. Every time we ‘see race’ we see it within such intersections, intersecting with other categories / aspects of cultural life. Politically, Crenshaw recommends we see the ways in which intersections build up and produce ‘coalitions’ — race as a coalition between men and women of colour, and likewise women as a coalition between white, black and other women of colour, and so on. We can only understand each of these in the context of the intersections and the coalitions that they make. ‘… recognizing the ways in which intersectional experiences of women of color are marginalized in prevailing conceptions of identity politics does not require that we give up attempts to organize as communities of color. Rather, intersectionality provides a basis for reconceptualizing race as a coalition between men and women of color… Intersectionality may provide the means for dealing with other marginalizations as well. For example, race can also be a coalition of straight and gay people of color, and thus serve as a basis for critique of churches and other cultural institutions that reproduce heterosexism.’ (p1299) Sanna Valkonen and Sandra Wallenius-Korkalo’s paper ’Embodying Religious Control: Intersectional Approach to Sámi Women in Laestadianism’, is published in Culture and Religion 2015, vol 16 no 1. It is available online, but unfortunately it is behind a paywall (i.e., it requires payment to access) They argue that religion can be understood ‘as a difference constructing certain kinds of gender and gendered religiosity and ethnicity’. Such intersectionality ‘addresses the diversity within a religious community. Intersectionality thus opens up a political perspective on religion by turning attention to power structures and mechanisms sustained by these constructed differences and categories.’ Finally, the definition given is by Nina Lykke, in her introduction to Feminist Studies, 2010 ‘intersectionality can, first of all, be considered as a theoretical and methodological tool to analyse how historically specific kinds of power differentials and/or constraining normativities, based on discursively, institutionally and/or structurally constructed socio-cultural categorizations such as gender, ethnicity, race, class, sexuality, age/generation, dis/ability, nationality, mother tongue and so on, interact, and in so doing produce different kinds of societal inequalities and unjust social relations’ (p50), For those who find visual metaphors useful, you might like to watch this video of an intersection – which just about sums up the issues of the complexities of different aspects (not only in terms of directions of travel, but also different types of road users, including bikes, vans, and pedestrians, as well as cars). It reminds me of the days when I used to drive a car around London.
Useful linksKimberle Crenshaw, ‘Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex’, Available at: http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclf/vol1989/iss1/8 Kimberle Crenshaw, ‘Mapping the Margins: intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against people of color’, 1991,Stanford Law Review 43(6):1241-1299. A pdf copy of this available online here. Sanna Valkonen and Sandra Wallenius-Korkalo’s paper ’Embodying Religious Control: Intersectional Approach to Sámi Women in Laestadianism’, is published in Culture and Religion 2015, vol 16 no 1. Nina Lykke, introduction to Feminist Studies, 2010 About the Religion Bites Podcast Religion Bites is a podcast by Malory Nye, an academic and writer based in Perth, Scotland. The Religion Bites podcast gives you quick and simple intros to the study of religion, to help you think a bit further about the issues of religion and culture in the contemporary world. If we want to understand today’s world, we need to ‘get’ why people are religious – why they ‘do religion’ in the many ways that religion is done. This is not a podcast about being religious, it is about understanding religion and the role that religion has in the contemporary world. ALSO BY MALORY NYE Listen to Episode RB013 The post RB013 INTERSECTIONALITY and Religion (Religion Bites Podcast) appeared first on Religion Bites.
Summary:Is race a matter of identity (what people think of differences) or is it a biological given? How is it that the idea of race-as-a-given works to structure and enforce differences (and power relations) within a particular society? LISTEN NOWEpisode notesHow much is ‘race’ something that is given to us by biology (and genetic inheritance)? In what ways do our assumptions about race overlap with how we understand gender differences? And is there a better way of understanding these? Even more so than with gender, the problem with race is that it is a way of understanding differences that is based (perhaps almost?) entirely on socially and historically derived ways of thinking. That is, the common view of this area of study is that there is a biological element of difference (akin to sex divisions between males and females) that is race. And on top of this are all the other ways we talk about such biological differences, that are broadly called ‘ethnicity’ (which is akin to gender, as a social construction based on the biological given). But once we start applying this approach, the divisions into races becomes very complicated. If we push this a little further, if racial differences are not solely matters determined by biological givens, then what makes (what we call) different race different are the things that relate to the different groups’ ethnicities, or to use another term, their cultural differences. A lot of work has been done in the field of race studies to explore race differences in terms of cultural differences, indeed it is one of the main premises of the development of cultural anthropology in the twentieth century. When we talk about such cultural differences, we are meaning ‘culture’ in terms of culture as a way of life, as shared systems of meaning — as I discussed back in episode 5 of this podcast series. In this sense, some would argue we are not talking about race at all — race is just a clumsy, even pseudo-scientific way of talking about cultural differences between groups of people. We just use skin colour and other such markers as an easy (and very imprecise) short cut for referencing those differences. In short, the study of both gender and race is about how people talk about, think about, experience, and practice certain types of differences. What we need to understand is not how these differences are biological, but rather how and why certain differences are considered important among particular people. Useful linksThe writer mentioned is Ta-Nehisi Coates whose discussion of race and racism can be found online in the Atlantic Ta-Nehisi Coates new book, Between the World and Me, has recently (July 15) been published. I strongly recommend it. It is well worth a read. About the Religion Bites Podcast Religion Bites is a podcast by Malory Nye, an academic and writer based in Perth, Scotland. The Religion Bites podcast gives you quick and simple intros to the study of religion, to help you think a bit further about the issues of religion and culture in the contemporary world. If we want to understand today’s world, we need to ‘get’ why people are religious – why they ‘do religion’ in the many ways that religion is done. This is not a podcast about being religious, it is about understanding religion and the role that religion has in the contemporary world. ALSO BY MALORY NYE Listen to Episode RB012 The post RB012 Race, Ethnicity and Religion (Religion Bites Podcast) appeared first on Religion Bites.
Summary:Gender matters to our understanding of culture and religion. How we understand gender, gender differences, and the understandings and practices of gender has a profound impact on how we talk about (and understand) religion. Gender is a means of understanding the concept of culture. All aspects of culture are gendered — both in terms of how differences between genders are perceived, but also how they are lived out. Gender is a place for power relations (remember that power is everywhere) — not only clear cut male control of women (such as patriarchy), but also the means by why power relations are put into practice. LISTEN NOWEpisode notesHow does Gender matter in the study of religion? Gender matters to our understanding of culture and religion. How we understand gender, gender differences, and the understandings and practices of gender has a profound impact on how we talk about (and understand) religion. Gender is a means of understanding the concept of culture. All aspects of culture are gendered — both in terms of how differences between genders are perceived, but also how they are lived out. Gender is a place for power relations (remember that power is everywhere) — not only clear cut male control of women (such as patriarchy), but also the means by why power relations are put into practice. To be a person is to have a gender. Usually this gender is ascribed, it is given to us at birth, most usually as male or female. In some cultural contexts there may be ambiguity or pluralism, that it is possible to move between genders, or perhaps to have a gender that is not specifically male or female. Whilst in other cultural contexts, the dominant (and dominating) ideas are of fixed genders: men are men, women are women, that’s it. But even so, there are often variations — a boy is different from a man, a young adult woman is different from an old woman, and perceptions of cultural, ethnic, or class differences may also impact on perceptions of gender. Let’s sort out some basic terms to help us find our way through. These terms seem simple, but the more we explore the issues of gender, the more difficult they become: Sex — often seen as a biological category, a simple matter of saying (based on anatomy) what a person is Gender — this is the ascribed status based on the (biological) sex. Often perceived as binary (men-women), on basis that most people have either a male or female sex Sexuality — not the same as (biological) ‘sex’, refers to the orientation of practice (and identity). Quite simply often described (in English speaking cultures) in terms of heterosexuality, homosexuality, and bisexuality. Whilst sex and gender, as we have defined them, tend to be relatively neutral terms (i.e. usually without any particular social or cultural stigma), sexuality is often heavily normative. That is, the common idea (often expressed in religious terms) that heterosexuality is normative and is the ‘default’ human requirement, and other forms of sexuality are marginalised (and often stigmatised to the point of punishment). In a number of religious contexts (and religious traditions) this emphasis on heterosexuality, and the stigmatisation of other forms of sexuality, is given strong emphasis (humans made by god to be heterosexual) Identity — this can be given to us (we are told we are a woman or a man) and also something that we try to live with. Sex, gender, and sexual identities can be complex, working at both the personal and the social level. E.g., Bruce Jenner, born anatomically as a heterosexual man, has identity now as a woman, Caitlyn Jenner, i.e., female gender. Often such identity can be ambiguous, such as the Austrian singer Conchita Wurst, a person with an ‘obvious’ male physiology (a beard) but who identifies, dresses, and ‘acts’ (and sings) as a woman. An important issue is how much can an identity be chosen rather than ascribed or prescribed, and in particular what are the social and cultural forces (and power relations) that influence such identities, and the way they are practised? Practice — which brings me to the lived element of all of the above. A person who is born as a man is expected to live as a man. If we stay with the example of Bruce Jenner, it was not until he was 65 (in June 2015) that s/he publicly put into practice his — now her — female identity as Caitlyn, by taking part in a photoshoot for Vogue magazine (and ‘coming out’ by participating in the Kardashians’ TV series). The image she presented as Caitlyn in Vogue, the way she now acts, and the ways in which people talk about and represent Caitlyn (and every other male, female, transexual and transgender people) are all part of the practice of sex and gender — in specific to Caitlyn (formerly Bruce) and in general. In short, the practice of gender identities, the roles and expectations that people have and bring to their relations, is everywhere in human interactions (like power). Gender forms a major part of how we relate to each other. It begins at birth (when we speak out gender identities, in ways such as: ’is it a boy or girl?’, do they wear pink or blue, how do we name the child, etc.) and continues in an embedded way through a person’s life. The practice of gender is the sea in which humans swim. Power and gender map out in every religious context, and very often in ways that are clearly (or not so clearly) ideological. Gender plays out strongly in traditional (and liberal) American contexts of Christianity, ranging from debates about abortion and women’s (and men’s) roles to the recent large culture-war debates about marriage and sexuality. On a lower level religion also has a very significant role in the values that are expressed (and debated) about families and family life, and various gender based expectations of women and men. One could also argue that religion often has an impact on the frequent ‘blind spots’ (and wilful denial) on rape culture. As we will explore in later episodes, religious groups, ideas, and practises may also be part of the challenge of and resistance to power. Religion is not always about a dominating ideology, not always, although it often is. In conclusion, the study of gender and religion is also about ideas of what it means to be male and female — partly about roles and identities, and also practises — this has come to be called masculinities and femininities. How the person is expected to be, through the practice of gender, through the practice of their religion. This takes us a long way from the base line of what are often thought of as the ‘natural’ or biological elements of sex — the differences between men and women that we often taken as ‘given’. Some writers, such as Judith Butler, have suggested that all aspects of gender, including the biological ‘givens’ of sexual anatomy are ascribed by culture and power. That is, our bodies, whether we are women, men, or any other gender, are written up by our culture. We know the world so much through culture that we cannot know anything about our bodies from outside of that lens. This means that at the very least we have to recognise that to understand gender differences we need recognise our own understandings — perhaps we could call them prejudices — about such differences, and start again by asking how cultures (and the religions that make up those cultures) construct genders and put them into practice. Useful linksAbout the Religion Bites Podcast Religion Bites is a podcast by Malory Nye, an academic and writer based in Perth, Scotland. The Religion Bites podcast gives you quick and simple intros to the study of religion, to help you think a bit further about the issues of religion and culture in the contemporary world. If we want to understand today’s world, we need to ‘get’ why people are religious – why they ‘do religion’ in the many ways that religion is done. This is not a podcast about being religious, it is about understanding religion and the role that religion has in the contemporary world. ALSO BY MALORY NYE Listen to Episode RB011 The post RB011 Gender, Sexuality and Religion (Religion Bites Podcast) appeared first on Religion Bites.
Summary:An understanding of power, in its many forms, is an important part of the study of religion and culture. In this podcast on ‘Religion, Power and Ideology’ I give an outline of Michel Foucault’s understanding of the concept of power. In particular, ‘power is everywhere because it comes from everywhere’. One instance of power and religion is the idea of an ideology – religion as a means by which power relations (and inequalities based on such power relations) are naturalised and legitimated. Religion is not the only form of ideology, but I raise the important question to ask in any study of religion: ‘where is the money?’. LISTEN NOWEpisode notesWe are now going to talk about religion and power. To start with, let’s put some meaning into the idea of power: The French writer, Michel Foucault wrote in 1981 the following comments on power: ‘By power, I do not mean ‘Power’ as a group of institutions and mechanisms that ensure the subservience of the citizens of a given state … [nor] a general system of domination exerted by one group over another ‘… It seems to me that power must be understood in the first instance as the multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate and which constitute their own organization; as the process which, through ceaseless struggles and confrontations, transforms, strengthens, or reverses them ‘… Power is everywhere; not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere.’ (Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 1981: 92) Let’s note a couple of points from this long quote: 1. Power is a multiplicity of force relations. It is not a simple, single thing that resides in an institution at the top (a monarch, president or government. Indeed, it is very easy to think of power in terms of politics — the thing that politicians fight to control and wield. In many ways, the idea of this type of power is most obviously shown in dramas such as The Game of Thrones. People seek power (over others) and so plot, scheme, and kill to take that power and use it (and of course are in turn schemed against and killed by others who take the power they had). But this is the type of power that Foucault rejects in the quote. Power exists as a multiplicity of forces, and indeed manifests itself in ceaseless struggles. 2. And secondly, equally importantly, power is everywhere and comes from everywhere. People live within power, we practice power on a greater or lesser level in all our actions — even those we think of as ‘harmless’ or ‘neutral’. Everything we do, every part of culture, is about power — in some way or other. Power is about relationships between people, how such relationships are expressed, developed, controlled, and manipulated. Most often, power is not only within the relationships — it is what makes the relationships. It is how people express themselves and relate to others. Everyone is political, in everything that people do. The power of thrones, wars, and kings, queens, or presidents is simply one form of power — at a high and very intense level. If we accept this argument, then the next question is where does religion fit into it? There are numerous answers to this. Perhaps the most famous (or infamous) is the view of the nineteenth-century writer Karl Marx on religion. His quote is often used in this respect, when he claimed that religion is the ‘sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world .. . It [religion] is the opium of the people’ (Marx and Engels 1957: 37) What he meant by this, quite simply, is that religion is way of feeling better about being exploited. In a world where one class (business owners, capitalists, the ruling class) exploit the working classes, then religion is nothing more than a means by which that exploitation is made easier by those who suffer. Like an opium narcotic, religion takes us to another — hopefully happier — place. Useful linksAbout the Religion Bites Podcast Religion Bites is a podcast by Malory Nye, an academic and writer based in Perth, Scotland. The Religion Bites podcast gives you quick and simple intros to the study of religion, to help you think a bit further about the issues of religion and culture in the contemporary world. If we want to understand today’s world, we need to ‘get’ why people are religious – why they ‘do religion’ in the many ways that religion is done. This is not a podcast about being religious, it is about understanding religion and the role that religion has in the contemporary world. ALSO BY MALORY NYE Listen to Episode RB010 The post RB010 Religion, Power and Ideology (Religion Bites Podcast) appeared first on Religion Bites.
Summary:Religion does not just exist within the context of culture. What we think of as religion always also exists within contexts of power, gender, race, ethnicity, and other areas of identity and difference. Or to put this another way: power, gender, and race are basic (and universal) aspects of human behaviour. To understand what humans do, we have to understand the contexts of power, gender, and race, etc in which that human action is located. Whenever we do something, it can be understood and analysed (if we wish) in relation to power, gender, and race. And likewise so with religion. A key part of understanding any religious context requires also asking similar questions. LISTEN NOWEpisode notesIn the past few episodes I have tried to show that religion and culture are not two separate entities. The terms ‘religion’ and ‘culture’ are ways of talking about similar overlapping things (or perhaps the same thing). Having got this far, I now want to open this up a little and introduce key issues in the study of religion and culture, which are used extensively in the study of culture (what is normally called ‘cultural studies’). That is, if we are going to understand culture, we don’t just listen to the music, read the books, visit the art galleries, fashion shows, or the graffiti on the street. We explore each of these through key questions related to how aspects or dimensions of culture impact on and help to create and make meaningful what we are studying. There are: Gender — what it means to understand maleness, femaleness, masculinities, femininities, sexualities, and so on. Race and ethnicity — how we think of and express human differences, in relation to issues such as skin colour, culture, language, geography, and a host of related aspects that are boiled down to an idea of ethnicity or race. Other issues of difference and identity that are connected with gender, race, and power (such as class, age, ability, and much more) And power — the ways in which influence, authority, control, and ideas operate within a particular context. I have already introduced these issues briefly in some of my analysis in the last episodes. There is a lot in each of these, and I will be recording episodes exploring each of these issues in much more depth and discussion. They are all key to what we have to say about culture, and likewise to what we say about religion. Religion does not just exist within the context of culture. What we think of as religion always also exists within contexts of power, gender, race, ethnicity, and other areas of identity and difference. Or to put this another way: power, gender, and race are basic (and universal) aspects of human behaviour. To understand what humans do, we have to understand the contexts of power, gender, and race, etc in which that human action is located. Whenever we do something, it can be understood and analysed (if we wish) in relation to power, gender, and race. And likewise so with religion. A key part of understanding any religious context requires also asking similar questions. Useful linksAbout the Religion Bites Podcast Religion Bites is a podcast by Malory Nye, an academic and writer based in Perth, Scotland. The Religion Bites podcast gives you quick and simple intros to the study of religion, to help you think a bit further about the issues of religion and culture in the contemporary world. If we want to understand today’s world, we need to ‘get’ why people are religious – why they ‘do religion’ in the many ways that religion is done. This is not a podcast about being religious, it is about understanding religion and the role that religion has in the contemporary world. ALSO BY MALORY NYE Listen to Episode RB009 The post RB009 Power, Gender and Race (Religion Bites Podcast) appeared first on Religion Bites.
Summary:Building on the discussion in the last two episodes, I introduce here the idea of subculture to explore through examples the linkages between such cultures of resistance, the cultural products that come from them, and religious ideas and practices. LISTEN NOWEpisode notesWhen talking about culture in religion, so far I have focused on the first of these — how cultural systems may be the bases of religious differences, within what we consider the ‘same’ religion. But we also often see a strong interplay between religions (religious ideas and practices) and the other two aspects of culture. This can be in the ways I have outlined in an earlier episode, with the overlap between ‘high’ and ‘popular’ culture and ‘high’ and ‘popular’ religion. Not only is religion an important language in which culture is expressed, it can often be the other way around. That is, religion is very often a medium for culture, religious objects and places may be culturally significant in themselves. To explore this further we need to note in particular that culture in itself is not something neutral. Although everybody has and does culture, the ways in which culture is experienced — performed, identified with, and practised — are subject to a range of social forces and conflicts. Culture very often is the means by which power is expressed and understood. For example, the distinction we have already noted between high and popular culture clearly marks this out. High culture is associated with a certain class or group of society — those who have more power, wealth, and status than others. It is the rich and powerful who sponsor elite culture, such as art, classical music, fine dining, and so on. Although such high culture may be accessible beyond the rich and powerful, the association is certainly in place because the rich and powerful define the high culture. In contrast, popular culture is almost by definition the domain of those without such power and wealth. Mass culture is the culture of the masses, the many — not the wealthy elite. This is not to say that the ‘masses’ — that is the majority — are without power, and neither does it imply that those outside of the elite ruling group lack the discernment and appreciation of quality that is associated with high culture. Instead, it is more accurate to say that those in power choose to show their power through their use of culture, by showing themselves as distinct in and through their engagement with high culture, rather than the popular culture of the masses. By putting a high price on such distinction they are able to exclude those without such wealth and power — they create segregation through the use of culture. But it has also been observed that the majority of people (the masses) often use culture in their own sorts of ways. As we shall discuss in a later podcast, the basic idea is that where there is the exercise of power there is often resistance. Those who are under the political control of others may often choose to show both their compliance with that power and their challenge to it through the medium of culture — either high or popular culture. This idea has been discussed in cultural studies under the idea of ‘subcultures’ or culture of resistance. When looking within any cultural context we should expect to find groups that are politically marginalised, but who in being so are themselves challenging those politics — either subtly or explicitly. Useful linksThe two music clips in this episode are as follows: Elvis Presley, Devil in Disguise Jerry Lee Lewis, Whole Lot of Shakin’ About the Religion Bites Podcast The Religion Bites podcast gives you quick and simple intros to the study of religion, to help you think a bit further about the issues of religion and culture in the contemporary world. If we want to understand today’s world, we need to ‘get’ why people are religious – why they ‘do religion’ in the many ways that religion is done. This is not a podcast about being religious, it is about understanding religion and the role that religion has in the contemporary world. ALSO BY MALORY NYE Listen to Episode RB008 The post RB008 Religion and culture (Religion Bites Podcast) appeared first on Religion Bites.
Summary: When we reverse the discussion, and explore how we can understand the many ways in which we can explore culture within religion, again the gap between the two disappears. Thus, culture is the medium through which religion is done, and cultural differences often are the means by which religions differ. This can be highlighted by the ways in which we talk about differences within what we consider the ‘same’ religion (e.g., the differences within Christianity or within Islam). People live and express different forms of these religions through their culture differences. LISTEN NOWEpisode notesHaving talked a little about religion in culture, we now reverse that. The next challenge is to find culture in religion. As we explore this, we will begin to find that it is not so easy to distinguish the two. An example of culture in religion might also be seen the other way around, as religion in culture. This is not a problem, as it highlights the main issue – that religion and culture are not so easily distinguished. Even though we are used to the warning to ‘mind the gap’, in fact there is no gap. If you have seen the first of the Matrix films, you may recall the visit that the protagonist Neo makes to woman known as The Oracle, where he meets with a young boy (called ‘Spoon Boy’ in the credits) who is working hard on a trick with a spoon (a clip of this part of the film can be seen here). Culture is the medium through which religion is done, and cultural differences often are the means by which religions differ. When exploring the issue of culture in religion, the next problem we have is deciding what we mean by ‘a religion’. If we are looking for culture within religion, we usually find that it is located within particular religions, rather than in general religion. The exploration of the meaning of this idea of religion, as particular entities, is quite different from the earlier discussion we had about ‘what is religion?’. That is, what do we mean when we talk about a particular religion — such as Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and so on? What is Christianity? What is Islam? There are various ways we can answer this: institutional, an organisation — that is Christianity is the church (which may, perhaps be the Catholic church, or the body of churches together) in terms of teaching and texts —eg Christianity can be said to be located in the Bible, and the teachings that have derived from that book. Such as church doctrine, Christian thinking, the morality of those who consider themselves Christian as a group of people — those people who consider themselves as belonging to that religion. Christianity in this sense is the body of Christians (often referred to as the body of Christ, or the Christian fellowship, or simply as Christendom) as a discourse, as a way of talking — that the religion exists because the people who identity with that religion consider that they are united into a single religion. Eg Christianity is the entity that Christians say they are part of, associated with certain texts and narratives, and perhaps certain institutions. In many respects this is saying all of the above, but with the addition that the religion exists within discourses, in ways in which people talk — rather than in things (such as what they talk about) Once we look into this, things become challenging. Is there a single entity that we can call Christianity (or Islam, or Buddhism, etc.)? An alternative — which has become popular in anthropological studies of religion — is to talk about specific religions in the plural, rather than singular. Christianities, Islams, Buddhisms, etc. Useful linksAbout the Religion Bites Podcast The Religion Bites podcast gives you quick and simple intros to the study of religion, to help you think a bit further about the issues of religion and culture in the contemporary world. If we want to understand today’s world, we need to ‘get’ why people are religious – why they ‘do religion’ in the many ways that religion is done. This is not a podcast about being religious, it is about understanding religion and the role that religion has in the contemporary world. ALSO BY MALORY NYE Listen to Episode RB007 The post RB007 Culture in religion – there is no gap (Religion Bites Podcast) appeared first on Religion Bites.
Summary:Continuing the discussion of religion and culture, in this episode we explore what is seen as the gap between the two. Looking at specific examples of religion in culture – in both ‘high’ and popular culture – we examine how religion is often the basis of the language of experience, a form of culture that we live by. LISTEN NOWEpisode notesIn this episode, I am going to question whether or not there is a gap between religion and culture. As I have said before, religion is culture and culture is religion. I will explore a few examples of this to make the point, including art, classical music, and literature as well as popular music such as Madonna, Sam Smith and Hozier. You will see that there is an awful lot of religion in culture, and also a lot of culture in religion. To get started with this, remember in the last episode I talked about the distinction between two forms of culture — between high or elite culture and low or popular (or mass culture). We cannot explore either without ‘finding’ religion in both these types of culture, in some form or other. What we are trying to understand is how what is often thought of as religion is so deeply implicated in culture that it too difficult to pick it apart. In practice, there is no gap as such — or at least, the gap is just a way of separating out issues that in truth are much more complicated. We do not only find religion in the set aside places, such as in churches and Christian record labels. The influence of religious ideas, symbols, and religious worlds goes through all aspects of society. It is part of our culture (in the Geertzian) sense, and it is expressed through cultural products that are both elite or high culture and also mass or popular culture. It might not be the lofty religion of the church, it might indeed be a challenge to the values of organised religion (such as expressed by the Irish singer Hozier, even though his song title says literally ‘take me to church’). Indeed, we can not find that gap easily — let alone mind the gap. Instead we should keep asking ourselves where and how we can find religion in culture, and how and why it is there. This is not the end of it by any means, it is only a starting point. We still need to think about what we do with religion when it is found in culture — how do we analyse and interpret this? Useful linksThe three music clips in this episode are: Madonna, Like a Prayer Sam Smith, Stay with Me Hozier, Take Me To Church About the Religion Bites Podcast The Religion Bites podcast gives you quick and simple intros to the study of religion, to help you think a bit further about the issues of religion and culture in the contemporary world. If we want to understand today’s world, we need to ‘get’ why people are religious – why they ‘do religion’ in the many ways that religion is done. This is not a podcast about being religious, it is about understanding religion and the role that religion has in the contemporary world. ALSO BY MALORY NYE Listen to Episode RB006 The post RB006 Mind the gap: religion in culture? (Religion Bites Podcast) appeared first on Religion Bites.
Summary:Religion is a cultural practice. And culture is bound up with religious ideas, identities and religion practice. Religion can be understood as a form of culture, and the study of religion is a form of cultural studies. And what we gain from this is the shift of our point of reference to the practical, the everyday, that is what people do. LISTEN NOWEpisode notesIf the study of religion is going to be meaningful and helpful, then we need to take off the gloves and get down and dirty with real life. That is what religion is about, or at least that is how we can try to understand religion. And the means by which I signal this approach is by calling it the study of religion and culture. Culture is about the everyday, the everything, the world and what we do in it. And religion is too. Religion is embedded in culture. No… religion is culture. And very often it is the other way around – culture is embedded in religion, and culture is religion. It is only for convenience that we talk as though these are two separate and distinct categories. Rather, both are different ways of talking about human behaviour. In short, religion is a cultural practice. And culture is bound up with religious ideas, identities and religion practice. Religion can be understood as a form of culture, and the study of religion is a form of cultural studies. And what we gain from this is the shift of our point of reference to the practical, the everyday, that is what people do. The idea of culture is, in itself, a multifaceted albeit useful tool for analysis. Culture usually refers to two quite distinct areas of life: (a) culture as cultural products, i.e. what people do in literature, art, music, and so on; and (b) culture as a shared system or way of life. But these two ideas of culture are related: a group which shares a culture will identify with particular cultural products, and religion may act to unite the two (for example, the English as a culture share not only Shakespeare, but also the King James Bible). Useful linksAbout the Religion Bites Podcast The Religion Bites podcast gives you quick and simple intros to the study of religion, to help you think a bit further about the issues of religion and culture in the contemporary world. If we want to understand today’s world, we need to ‘get’ why people are religious – why they ‘do religion’ in the many ways that religion is done. This is not a podcast about being religious, it is about understanding religion and the role that religion has in the contemporary world. ALSO BY MALORY NYE Listen to Episode RB005 The post RB005 Culture and religion (Religion Bites Podcast) appeared first on Religion Bites.
Summary:In order to understand the contemporary world we need to take religion seriously. Although some may think of religion as an ancient (or medieval) relic of bygone times, religions are very often important elements of the contemporary world. We need to recognise that religion and religions have an impact in many different ways. Thus we can ask questions about the changing roles of religion in contemporary societies. For example, is there a process of ‘secularisation’, of the decline of religion, going on, and if so, is there any way of knowing where this will go? Is religion part of modernity or is it opposed to it? What role does religion have in the processes of globalisation, and how is globalisation itself spread and enhanced by religion? How do new media impact on religion, and again vice versa – how are media themselves developed and changed by the influence of religious groups and religious practices? And how can we make sense of the particularities of the contemporary world in terms of the historical legacies of particular religions. How has the world we live in been shaped by particular religious ideas, by events in the past that were rooted in religious issues. And how does diversity – at the international, the national, and the local levels – create religious issues in the contemporary world? LISTEN NOWEpisode notesA few years ago it was possible to say with some confidence that ‘religion is dead’. Few would probably feel quite so comfortable in making such an assumption. Recently issues in the news, such as ISIS, the attacks on the Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris in January 2015, the rise of religious nationalist movements across many countries in the world, all of these have left us with a conclusion that it is not so religion after all to pronounce the death of religion. Whether we like it or not, there is still a lot of religion going on in the world. The issue is not so much to worry about whether it is alive or dead, but rather to get a better understanding of the many ways in which things we call religion are part of the world in which we live. Thus we can ask questions about the changing roles of religion in contemporary societies. For example, is there a process of ‘secularisation’, of the decline of religion, going on, and if so, is there any way of knowing where this will go? As societies develop does religion become something different, or do people do new things with religion. Is religion part of modernity or is it opposed to it? What role does religion have in the processes of globalisation, and how is globalisation itself spread and enhanced by religion? How do new media impact on religion, and again vice versa – how are media themselves developed and changed by the influence of religious groups and religious practices? And how can we make sense of the particularities of the contemporary world in terms of the historical legacies of particular religions. How has the world we live in been shaped by particular religious ideas, by events in the past that were rooted in religious issues. Even if religion may have a lesser social role today in certain countries, much of the language we speak, the values we have, the laws we live by, and the institutions that structure our lives have all been impacted by religion and religions in so many different ways. And how does diversity – at the international, the national, and the local levels – create religious issues in the contemporary world? There is a lot here to unpack, and so in this fairly introductory podcast I will just take some of the main highlights of these issues and give some initial pointers to where they might take us. Useful linksAbout the Religion Bites Podcast The Religion Bites podcast gives you quick and simple intros to the study of religion, to help you think a bit further about the issues of religion and culture in the contemporary world. If we want to understand today’s world, we need to ‘get’ why people are religious – why they ‘do religion’ in the many ways that religion is done. This is not a podcast about being religious, it is about understanding religion and the role that religion has in the contemporary world. ALSO BY MALORY NYE Listen to Episode RB004 The post RB004 Relevance of religion (Religion Bites Podcast) appeared first on Religion Bites.
SummaryIf it is difficult to define religion, what about if we try to avoid doing so? Can we talk about religion without a definition? Trying to find a definition is almost like stepping through a quagmire, it is messy and difficult, and unhelpful in many ways. The aim of this discussion is to encourage you to think about the difficulties of thinking and talking about religion. Whether we are ‘for’ or ‘against’ religion, whether we have a particular religious faith or not, it is important for us to start from a point of recognising complexity. There are no simple answers, because there are no simple questions. LISTEN NOWEpisode notesSo is there any point in even using the term religion? Should we find ways of talking about this without using ‘religion’, which can often lead us think we understand something even though we don’t. Some people suggest we should use something else, such as the word ‘ritual’ instead of religion. We have to use words, we can’t stop using words to try and talk about the world we see about us. And in some cases, the word ritual may help us to understand other cultural activities better, and in other cases it might not. So what I suggest is that we do not drop the word religion, but instead we keep it, and try to use it carefully. Indeed, one way we can try to avoid a definition is to talk about religion in a new and quite different way. That is, the idea that it is not so much ‘religion’ it is ‘religioning’, religion with an ‘i-n-g’ at the end. To talk about religion as a verb rather than a noun. As something that is done, rather than something that does. Most importantly, we need to recognise that whatever term we use, it will have its limitations. This is what I am most concerned about – not so much whether we talk about religion, and how and why. But rather what are the limitations of using a term such as religion, and how we can learn a lot more if we recognise these limitations. And these limitations are 1) of course it is an English language term. We should not assume that the meaning we assume it has can be exported easily, and in fact what we think it religion is local, indeed parochial to our part of the world. There is nothing wrong with that, it is just recognising our limitations. 2) Whatever our religious outlook, belonging, and faith may be, the term religion carries a lot of meaning from European and north American histories of Christian thought and practice. Religion carries a lot of barrage from centuries of Christian cultural life. One strong example of this is that religion is not only/primarily about faith and what people believe. Religion is about what people do, how they behave, and how they understand what they and others do 3) Religion is a meaningful term in much – but not all – of the world. Most Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, and many other followers/participants in particular traditions have an outlook that understands such traditions as ‘religion’ (albeit in many different ways) – marking off some of the things they do as religion, in their own particular ways (which might be different from how we understand ‘religion’) 4) The term religion is a starting point for understanding much of what people do. But that is only so long as we recognise we have to dig much deeper and understand the context, the particular, not the general. 5) Much of what we talk about when we talk of religion can be called ‘culture’ instead. I am not saying the two terms are the same, and indeed the term culture is equally if not even more problematic. But in most societies, including our own, religion and culture do strongly overlap and often it is hard to pick the two apart. And in cultural contexts where there is no concept of ‘religion’ what we will find is a lot of what may look like religion going on in the form of culture rather than religion. And so, the lesson to learn is really, be careful what you assume, be careful what you say, listen and learn, and accept that ‘reality’ is a lot more complicated than you’d ever think. And religion is just a small example of that. Useful linksAbout the Religion Bites Podcast The Religion Bites podcast gives you quick and simple intros to the study of religion, to help you think a bit further about the issues of religion and culture in the contemporary world. If we want to understand today’s world, we need to ‘get’ why people are religious – why they ‘do religion’ in the many ways that religion is done. This is not a podcast about being religious, it is about understanding religion and the role that religion has in the contemporary world. ALSO BY MALORY NYE Listen to Episode RB003 The post RB003 Talking about religion (Religion Bites Podcast) appeared first on Religion Bites.
Summary Defining religion: What is it all about and what do we mean by the term religion? Well one thing to ask before we start exploring this is does it really matter. Surely we know what religion is, it is just there…? Whether we like it or not it is everywhere, and as I have been trying to stress in setting up Religion Bites it is worth accepting that religion is part of the world in which we live, we can’t ignore it, we need to live with it around us, and so we are really challenge to try to understand it a bit better. And that is why it is worth taking just a few minutes to reflect on the idea of what is religion? What is it? The thing we call religion? What are the meanings we give to the word religion, how do we use it when we talk about religion? Say in the classroom, in books, or in our daily lives? If we start off asking this question, it gives us the chance to try to understand what we are talking about, and also what we are not talking about LISTEN NOWEpisode notes In this episode I discuss ways in which what we think of as religion is often defined with reference to one or more of the following ideas: Gods Spirituality Sacred/Superhuman Faith Social Cognitive/Psychological Beliefs/Practices Each of these might give us something to think about in relation to pinning down what we mean by the term ‘religion’. None is straightforward and simple enough on its own, so perhaps we might want to bring together a definition that includes all of the above, something along the lines of Geertz’s long winded and extensive definition, that: ‘…a religion is (1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting motivations in men [and women] by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely.’ Or a family resemblances approach to defining religion, saying that a particular instance of religion might not include everything, but is made up of a set of characteristics shared across different religions. A families characteristics may vary across its members, some having a particular shape of nose or mouth, or ears, or colour of hair or eyes, but they all together make up a set of resemblances that compose the family as a whole. Likewise we may say that some religions may emphasise spirituality, or sacredness, or the social element, etc, but all are made up of similar characteristics. Religion is not reducible to one or two elements, but varies across different ‘family members’. This ties in perhaps with the approach of the scholar Jonathan Z Smith who cited a list (by another scholar) of fifty different attempts to define the concept of ‘religion’. What this told us, said Smith, is not that religion cannot be defined, but rather that ‘it can be defined, with greater or lesser success, more than fifty ways’ (1998: 281). Does not mean any of them are false, but rather there as so many different ways we can talk about what we call religion What is often mentioned here is the old India proverb of the blind men trying to determine what an elephant is. Without being able to see the whole, they each describe the part they touch – the tail is a rope, the leg is a tree, and so on. Whatever definition we may find most useful, there are many other ways of saying what religion ‘is’. It is not necessarily important how we define religion, or what we include in our definition. What is more important is how we construct our definition, how we ask the questions about what we mean by religion. As I will talk more about later in the Religion Bites series, the most important thing to ask is not so much what is religion, but why and how we choose specific issues, and even why we talk about this thing called religion. As the writer Talal Asad has put it: “… 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.” Useful linksAbout the Religion Bites Podcast The Religion Bites podcast gives you quick and simple intros to the study of religion, to help you think a bit further about the issues of religion and culture in the contemporary world. If we want to understand today’s world, we need to ‘get’ why people are religious – why they ‘do religion’ in the many ways that religion is done. This is not a podcast about being religious, it is about understanding religion and the role that religion has in the contemporary world. ALSO BY MALORY NYE Listen to Episode RB002 The post RB002 Defining Religion (Religion Bites Podcast) appeared first on Religion Bites.