Religion Bites: Recent Episodes
Malory Nye
This is the first episode of season 2, which is on the general theme of religion, race, and coloniality. The episodes for this season are recordings from lectures that I presented at the University of Stirling in autumn 2018
This podcast is based on a blog article that I first wrote a couple of years ago, and was recorded at the end of 2018 (soon before I fell ill). Although in reflection on issues raised last year and in 2020, I would probably add more discussion to my reflections here. However, I think this is still relevant to some of the contemporary debates about how the discipline of the study of religion needs to address the many challenges of anti-racism, both as a subject area and within the wider academy.
A text version of this episode, together with the links mentioned, can be found below.
https://medium.com/religion-bites/does-religious-studies-have-a-problem-with-race-e7d94efe3765
If we are exploring religion in culture, then how and what do we talk about as religion?
This is a question that goes across much of the contemporary study of religion, and impacts on it in various ways — not only in particular religious and culture contexts, but also very noticeably in the idea/approach of ‘material religion’. In short, if we want to explore ‘religion’ within particular cultural locations — such as religion in a book (e.g., Harry Potter) or a film/s (e.g., Star Wars) — then can we say that religion is a thing to find or a ‘manifestation’ of something (such as ‘the sacred’)? My straightforward answer to this is a definite ‘no’: religion is not a thing, it is not an it.
A text version of this episode, together with the links mentioned, can be found at the link below. (The episode was recorded a while ago, when I was still teaching at the University of Glasgow — that explains why I talk about teaching a class, when of course at present such face to face teaching is not possible due to the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020!).
https://medium.com/religion-bites-podcast/023-what-are-we-looking-for-when-we-look-at-religion-and-popularculture-66f5f1d50214
There can be no doubt that the academic study of religion emerged out of European colonialism. There are various lines of descent for the discipline, and like much of the humanities and social sciences, they all lead back to colonialism, and in particular the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
And so, during a time when there is a widespread movement for the decolonisation of knowledge, is there a need for a decolonisation of the study of religion? And if so, then what does it involve?
These are some initial thoughts on this major issue.
A written version of this episode can be found at:
https://medium.com/religion-bites/decolonisation-of-religious-studies-993727c6d1bc
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.
A written text version of this episode can be found at:
https://medium.com/religion-bites/i-dont-study-religion-so-what-am-i-doing-in-the-study-of-religion-be2653682feb
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?
A written text version of this episode can be found at:
https://medium.com/religion-bites/the-analysis-of-race-in-the-study-of-religion-c9288a5da01d
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.
A written version of this episode can be found at:
https://medium.com/religion-bites/burkini-bans-in-france-its-all-about-intersectionality-e81a9b1714ef
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.
A written version of this episode can be found at:
https://medium.com/religion-bites/religion-is-like-chocolate-e38536eda9ba
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.
A written version of this episode can be found on the Religion Bites blog: https://medium.com/religion-bites/trying-to-understand-religion-its-a-matter-of-finding-the-right-gloves-to-wear-811fbc25ac5b
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?
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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?’.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
If 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.
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