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schonhoffer
Apr. 8th, 2007
05:03 pm - My Thoughts on Methodology in Review
This has been a very interesting class and I think that the blogs have been a good project. If nothing else, they forced me to get my readings done a few days early and actually give them enough consideration to write a couple pages on them. This is something that I am not afraid to admit that I don’t always do in other classes. More importantly, they allowed me to see how other people reacted to my readings and also allowed me to see the reactions other people had to my interpretations. This interaction further forced me to consider the ideas expressed in the readings.
Therefore, I would like to thank those who responded to my various posts. I would like to thank Jordan and Paul for responding to my blogs even though they did not have to (I am actually not sure which Paul responded to my blog for 11/10/2006, but one of them did). I would also like thank Ora, Rory and Melinda for your always insightful responses. You offered me with consistently well thought out and helpful responses, and many of your posts, that I had the pleasure to read and respond to, were downright brilliant. Thanks!
I think that I was fortunate to be in this group. We seem to have interestingly different approaches to our readings and to methodology. Were I a bit more ambitious, I might try to compare them now, and say how I benefited from each of them. I am not, but perhaps by trying to express my own methodological position, I might lead to some such comparison in the responses to this post.
I guess that I would describe my approach to religion as materialistic and naturalistic. Perhaps, I might even say scientific. Although, I would be wary to do so, since I was in the sciences and know that what I am doing is not what the natural sciences do and probably never can be. Yet as a loose descriptor it may not be that far off. I would also like to think of myself as a functional historian. I have a great interest in what people were thinking and doing a few thousand years ago and I like to figure that out. What I am doing and planning on doing in my studies is much more in terms of performing this sort of historical work than anything else.
We spoke a lot in this class about uncertainty. In fact, uncertainty might have been the theme of this class. We took terms and categories and problematized them and problematized our ability to know the things that exist in these categories. I think that this is a valuable exercise. We should be aware of our own limits and the limits of our scholarship, how tenuous our understanding is, and how fallible we are. We also use some categories that are harmful, and their identification is important. However, I worry about the way that this uncertainty gets used. I have seen it used to stop any sort of work. I think that uncertainty ought to be an opportunity for us to build models, to throw out ideas and to try our best to understand, but I know that this uncertainty can be used to prevent just this short of activity. It can be a criticism of anyone who tries to build models, propose ideas and tries to form coherent understandings. I think that this is a misuse of uncertainty.
Moreover, I think that this uncertainty can become itself a disguised ideology, one that is used to protect cultures and religions from study that might be seen as critical. Of course, there is value in ensuring that such criticism are not overly imperialistic, but at the same time, the inability to be critical, is I think its own ideology and is equally problematic.
I think that our uncertainty should lead to intense self-awareness. I agree with the passages from Jonathan Z. Smith that I quoted a couple posts back that self-awareness should be a scholar’s primary expertise. I also agree with Smith that just because our scholarship is imperfect does not mean we should stop. To take his analogy, the fact that maps we make do not match the territory does not mean that they are useless. In fact, a map that exactly matched the territory would be useless; it would have to be the identical to territory. The distortion, the imperfection is exactly what makes a map useful, what helps a person find where they are.
Moving from this position, I ultimately have a good measure of confidence in the methods of the sciences, the social sciences and rationality to produce useful maps. This is what I plan on doing. I am not sure that I acknowledge the existence of anything that is not material, or at least if it exists I doubt that it can be usefully discussed. Therefore, I am suspicious of most other approaches. Since I reject mind/body dualism (or the construction of the mind as something abstract), I think of human thoughts are material. Therefore, I think that I can usefully discuss thoughts and beliefs.
I think that closes out my post for today. Thanks again for reading!
Mar. 26th, 2007
Feb. 26th, 2007
12:54 am - My thoughts on the readings for 2/28/07
I like J.Z. Smith. In my opinion, Drudgery Divine is the definitive statement on the methodology appropriate for the study of early Christianities, or at least as close to being so as one could come. Therefore, I was quite happy that of our two readings for this class, one was written by Smith and the other discussed him at some length.
“Map is not Territory” is actually quite a short article. It is also the title of the first collection of Smith’s essays to be released. However, the excerpts in our reading are all from the article itself. It strikes me as somewhat weird that someone would bother to take excerpts from such a short article. As I first looked at the PDF, I spent a few minutes comparing the ellipses to the full text of the article, and most of them only encompass a paragraph or two, I suspect that if the whole article had been reproduced then it would only be have been a couple pages longer. Smith likes to tie stuff together and something is lost by taking these sorts of excerpts, which tend to omit some of his allegorical examples. On the other hand, the selection of this version of the article ensured access to Gill’s interesting response; it also shortened the article a bit, which might have been a nice for those who don’t like Smith as much as I do.
Gill comments that “Smith’s study of religion proceeds from no essential structures that define religion, but rather from a conviction that religion is a mode of creating meaning. The possible weakness here, it seems, is the failure to distinguish a religious mode of world creating from other models. The tendency is to consider any construction of meaning potentially religious” ( Critical Terms 306-307). Gill is careful not actually say that this is a criticism, but is a “potential criticism.” However, I question it as even a potential criticism.
We have discussed at some length in this class the difficulty in defining religion. Therefore, is it a criticism to not be able to “distinguish a religious mode of world creating from other models,” or is it more of a criticism to be so intent on finding a specifically religious mode of constructing meaning that other modes are excluded because they are “non-religious,” when there really is no distinction. In fact, for Smith this might in some ways be a virtue, as he writes in his oft quoted introduction to Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown :
“While there is a staggering amount of data, of phenomena, of human experiences and expressions that might be characterized in one culture or another, by one criterion or another, as religion - there is no data for religion. Religion is solely the creation of the scholar's study. It is created for the scholar's analytic purposes by his imaginative acts of comparison and generalization. Religion has no existence apart from the academy. For this reason the student of religion, and most particularly the historian of religion, must be relentlessly self-conscious. Indeed, this self-consciousness constitutes his primary expertise, his foremost object of study. For the self-conscious student of religion, no datum possesses intrinsic interest. It is of value only insofar as it can serve as exempli gratia of some fundamental issue in the imagination of religion.” (Smith, Jonathan Z.. Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. pg xi)
In “Map is not Territory,” Smith cites the example of the farmer that he worked for while preparing for Agriculture school (Excerpts 178). He describes the farmer’s conception of dirt. Unfortunately, one of the longer ellipses in the excerpts cuts out the conclusion to this anecdote. If I may fill in the majority of this ellipsis:
“There was nothing ‘natural’ about my farmer’s activities. Rather, he had created a world of gestures and words in which he, his family and farm gained significance and value. There were certain ‘givens’, which limited his creativity and there were elements of freedom – even arbitrariness – in his creation.
The world of the home and the world of animals and plants were perceived as being intersecting realms. Each had its own ordering principles, rules of conduct, boundaries and relations of exclusivity and inclusivity. My boss, as homemaker and as organizer of his farm’s world of domesticated plants and animals, was required to determine and map the given limits and structures of each domain. As homemaker, he had to adhere to the rules of social intercourse which constituted the community of Holland Patent, New York. As husbandman, he was not free to violate the seasonal rhythms in deciding when to plant his crops or breed his animals. What he established within the walls of his house and within the fences that surrounded his farm was the carving out of a space which was separate from other spaces and yet in harmony with his perception of the larger social and natural environments. By limiting the space over which he had dominion, he strove to maximize all of the possibilities of that space. He sought to create, in both his home and farm, a microcosm in which everything had its place and was fulfilled by keeping its place. If his ordering grid was of sufficiently tight mesh, all anomalous elements would be forced to the periphery (for example the garbage dump which stood on his property line, the weeds which were allowed to grow beneath his fence). My boss had achieved power through his skill in compartmentalization. He had dispensed power by allowing each being within his realm the freedom to fulfill its assigned place. He conferred value upon that place by his cosmology of home and farm and by the dramatization of his respect for the integrity of their boarders.
(ellipsis ends here, but I will include the next few lines anyways) I would term this cosmology a locative map of the world and the organizer of such a world an imperial figure.” (Smith, Jonathan Z. “Map is not Territory.” Map is not Territory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978. pg 292)
It is here, of course, that Smith compares this map to the sorts of cosmologies that are frequently found in “archaic urban centers” (Excerpts 178), particularly Babylon. Smith has frequently noted the importance of noting differences in comparison, and he would not claim sameness. A farmer administering his farm is compared to a temple-state administered by kings and priests. This incongruity produces the sort of tension that Smith likes in his analogies (As discussed by Gill (Excerpts 185-186)).
The actions of the farmer might not be looked at as a “religious” manner of constructing meaning, while the construction of a cosmology in Babylon by priests and scribes in a temple would probably be looked at as a “religious’ manner of constructing meaning. However, it is here that Smith’s reluctance to distinguish between “religious” and “non-religious” modes of constructing meaning strikes me as a subject for potential praise, not for potential criticism. It allows him to select an element of data for comparison and generalization, in order to help imagine an element of religion, that is the conception of the “locative map” of territory. To the extent that this comparison works, it implicitly throws the perceived distinction between religious verses non religious mode of forming meaning into question. The seeming high contrast between the compared elements serves to highlight the few elements of proposed similarity, and also to cause one to wonder how the substantial situational differences manifest in the application of the principle which the comparison strives to imagine.
I seem not to have ended up talking very much about territory, at least not in the conventional sense. Fortunately, because of the ambiguity of the term, I can claim to be talking about the territory that we as scholars of religion ought to be studying (by looking at maps, of course). Thanks for reading!
Feb. 5th, 2007
02:47 am
Choosing our own readings was an interesting project. Following the suggestion on the readings website, I looked up the articles on power and authority in the Encyclopedia of Religion . Then I went through Sacred Texts and Authority (Neusner, Jacob ed.. Sacred Texts and Authority . Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 1998). I had used this book before, and it relates authority to the subject that I study.
In general I was disappointed by the Encyclopedia of Religion articles. This is particularly true of the article on power. Although, my disappointment with this article might not be entirely fair. It referenced some truly gigantic thinkers, and described them as well as might be expected in an encyclopedia entry. The problem is that these thinkers are not the sort of individuals who represent the sort of Religious Studies that I am interested in, and their approach to the subject of power is quite different from the one that would have employed.
The Encyclopedia of Religion article on power seemed to consider the value of power for the study of religion almost entirely in terms of how the religious experience is an experience of power and how gods of transcendent forces are perceived to have power. There were some glimmers of the questions that I wanted to address in the descriptions of Weber and Dumezil. Although I think the descriptions of these figures actually deemphasized the roles that my questions played in their thought. My interest in power in religion would be much more in terms of how religion emerges from, or causes the emergence of systems of power, and how it legitimates or renders illegitimate power and is in turn rendered legitimate or illegitimate by power. However, the perspectives presented in this article are of value, and I suppose that it is valuable for me to occasionally look at other ways of studying religion.
The article on authority was much more like what I wanted, but seemed disturbingly to cling to some sort of a master narrative, beginning with “Authority in Primitive Religions,” before moving into “Authority in Archaic Religions,” and then to “Authority in Founded Religions.” I suppose that I should probably not criticize and encyclopedia article too much, as descriptive brevity is probably the ideal and this sort of structure is useful such a description. The Authority article was also much more descriptive than methodologically oriented, and so not all that useful for this course.
The anthology that Neusner edits takes the artificially designated big five world religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam) and provides a chapter describing what “text” and “sacred text” mean in the context of these Religions and how these “texts” interact with the other systems of authority in the said religions. To be fair to Neusner, he certainly knows that this structure is artificial, but it is useful to write a book of manageable size, and if these religions are taken as case studies in how sacred texts interact with systems of authority and it is understood that not all practitioners of these religions are represented by these generalized descriptions, I can live with it.
This book is much more along the lines of what I was looking for. However, since the rest of my groups have not read it and it is much more complicated than an encyclopedia article, it is a bit harder to discuss. Perhaps, I can just mention the scenario with which Neusner begins his introduction. He describes the parallel images of an American president taking the oath of office with his hand on the Bible and a witness in court swearing to tell the truth also on a Bible. He notes that:
“The gesture of placing a hand on the Bible signifies that the person in question intends keep the promise he or she has made. The Bible is the guarantor of the promise. The Bible is the guarantor of a promise? How can that be? Can a book, printed on ordinary paper on a standard printing press, guarantee anything? For any other book, that would be a good question. But in the west, - particularly in America – the bible has special status … at the vary least, to place one’s hand on the Bible and swear an oath is to invoke God as a witness to the oath. The act suggests that a failure to fulfill the vow is an act of bad faith to God, and that serious consequences can, indeed will, follow. Because of its status as the scripture of a religion – the repository of the religion’s fundamental teachings – the bible is assumed to represent and perhaps to contain – a superhuman power that should not be transgressed. Societies that hold this and comparable beliefs assume that people will swear an oath on the Bible only if they mean it and intend to keep it. In this sense the Bible can be the guarantor of a promise – a very effective one, indeed. It is powerful because it is a sacred text. Even in our largely secular world, the idea of a sacred text still has resonance and relevance. This example of the use of a sacred text on our own world can help to open a door to the issues raised in this anthology” (Neusner intro xiii-xiv)
This does a decent job of capturing the character of the anthology, even if it does generalize and is significantly more simplistic than the rest of the anthology (it is after all an introduction). It also raises questions about how the Bible continues to have power to effect behavior (to guarantee a promise), and I think also, in both these cases, to confer power.
This seems to basically take care of my methodology readings for this week. Thanks for reading!
Jan. 22nd, 2007
01:08 am - My thoughts on the readings for 1/24/07
I found the readings for this week to be very interesting. In fact, someday I would like to return to this book and read Religion and Emotion in its entirety. As I think about this book, I am surprised by how little that I have actually thought about this issue. In the Introduction, Corrigan notes that:
“In many cases where researchers have chosen not to press the analysis of emotion, that choice has been framed by academic concern about possible reductionism in the analysis of religious ideas and practices. Emotion was – and for some scholars still is – unexplainable. That is, it has been viewed as irreducible and, as such, a legitimate foundation for interpretations of religion that wish to leave room for the mysterious, inexplicable, and transcendent” (Corrigan 6).
I find a great deal of truth in this statement, and truth that applies to myself. At times, when pressed about the extent to which some of my more serious criticisms of Christianity invalidate the religion, I have taken recourse to the inexplicability of emotion. As I might suggest in such a case, Religion is mainly emotion. Emotion is internal, personal and ultimately true. My rational criticism of religion does not touch this emotion, which may ultimately contain religious truth. If I made a serious study of emotion, then is it possible that I would find explanations of emotion that render this buffer invalid?
Interestingly, in the field of Mediterranean Antiquity that I study, both I and other scholars seem willing to talk about distinctly ancient Mediterranean emotions. A great deal has been written on honour and shame (which were felt) or on conceptions of envy that were quite different (and much more important) than envy is considered by most people today. Scholars of Religion seem quite willing to talk about these emotions, perhaps because a buffer is not needed to protect the Religion of the ancient Romans. Honour, shame and envy are not very important Religious emotions today, so there is no harm in explaining them psychologically and anthropologically, and then taking apart how religious ideas work within this psychological and anthropological construction. However, other emotions that ancient Mediterranean writers considered important for religion (for instance reverence) do not seem to attract the same attention, perhaps because they are still important for religion.
Having said this, given all of our discussion about experience in this class, I wonder if emotion is impossible to really study. It seems to be very personal and experiential. Even if the motivations for avoiding the study of emotion may be suspect, the decision itself might be correct. I think that here we are returning to our earlier discussions about our ability to describe experience. As you may remember, I was more confident than most in our class about our ability to do so.
I have above noted religion seems to be very personal and experiential. This seems to be almost self-evidently true, and like most such truths it deserves some exploration. I recently had a conversation with a friend who studies Eastern Christianity in Late Antiquity. Our conversation was about the nature of demons in Christianity. It is unfortunate that I had not already done our readings for this week, since then I might have turned the discussion more toward emotion. However, conceptions of emotion were still touched on. As I understand my friend’s description (and this was from a light conversation, so my understanding/remembrance may not be perfect), in a number of groups in the period he studies, emotion was seem to the result of demons and God/angels influencing humans. The core of the human was thought, emotion was the result of external forces who cannot affect free thoughts, but can influence humans by creating emotions. Since both the interaction between humans and demons/angles and the goals of demons/angles followed very clear and well developed rules, it was quite possible to explain emotion in terms of these goals and rules. Emotion was therefore external and quite explicable. Similar ideas come up in William Christian’s article.
I doubt that many in my commentarial group will consider spiritual beings influencing human beings to be a viable model for explaining emotion. I raise this explanation more because I wish to question the “self-evident” truth that emotions are internal and personal. To the groups I described above, this certainly was not self-evident. Of course, all our readings for this week also address this issue by discussing the social dimensions of emotion, thus arguing that emotion is not entirely internal.
While writing the last paragraph, my mother phoned me. I mention this not as an excuse for running out of time and leaving this post here, nor in order to complete the (probably annoying) trend of making my blog posts increasingly personal, but because when I told her what I was working on we had a lengthy discussion about emotion. Near the end of the Introduction, Corrigan notes that “other studies framed by theological and philosophical concerns, and especially the work of neuroscientists, will make their own contributions to the development of this area of study” (Corrigan 34). For my mother it would be impossible to try to study emotion without including neuroscience.
We spoke at some length, and it quickly became apparent to me (because I was explicitly told), that current work in the biological study of emotions is very theoretical and technical. Even as someone who has a strong science background (i.e. a B.Sc.), I was at the limits of my knowledge to follow the basics. Mom recommended a few readings to me, that I will try and pursue before our class. We spoke of something quite akin to the debate that Corrigan describes as between Universalism and Cultural Relativism in terms of nature and nurture, and both of us, as always, agreed that they were not opposites but intertwined processes. Relating this to emotion, we spoke of cross-cultural studies in reaction to facial expressions, and the seeming universality of meaning included therein, including the activity in the Limbic System in reaction to facial expressions. We spoke of more ambiguous related results with babies. We spoke of the relationship between physical reaction and thought, and the suggestion that in many cases a physical reaction creates an emotion which creates a thought. We spoke of neural anatomy and the structural relationship of emotional processes. It was certainly at this point that the inadequacy of my knowledge became apparent.
This raises another question about our ability to understand emotion. I had spoken earlier about our inability to understand experience. Even worse, to understand emotion, we might have to understand neuroscience! If emotion is predicated in physical processes, then we may need to understand these processes to understand emotion. Unfortunately, such an endeavor is essentially impossible without very specialized scientific knowledge; knowledge that I don’t have.
I had wanted to discuss ritual weeping, something that I have experienced both in my time as a rural Catholic at Good Friday services, and in pursuing Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises which are discussed by Christian (39-40). However, I have probably written enough for today, so I’ll leave it here.
Jan. 8th, 2007
02:36 am - My thoughts on the readings for 1/10/07
I generally liked the readings for this week and for the most part agreed with them. However, I am having difficulty deciding what to write about them. In part this may because they mostly discussed things that I take for granted. One of the primary themes of all three readings was the artificiality of the belief/mysticism vs. rationality/knowledge dichotomy. This is something that I have taken for granted for some time. The destabilization of this binary opposite seems to be an almost inevitable result of the methods of studying religion that I employ. Therefore, this discussion did not strike me as all that provocative. I suspect that in this class, I will not be alone in feeling this.
I find that thinking back on King’s article on mysticism, I am somewhat puzzled. His discussion of mysticism seems mostly to destabilize and invalidate mysticism as a phenomenon or a useful category. However, at the end of the article, King has no trouble speaking about the ‘mystic.’ His own genealogy of mysticism has done little to convince me that this is something that can be responsibly spoken of or that has any meaning at all.
I think that perhaps he is using the term to invalidate itself, talking about the ‘mystic’ in a way that does not conform to the supposed characteristics of ‘mysticism’ that he just discussed. However, I may be being biased. I recognize that some people in Religious Studies really like the idea of mysticism. I don’t. The term/concept never entered my vocabulary/conception of religion. This is in largely because it never made sense to me. I don’t get why certain things get called mystical across such a wide range of religions. The commonality never made sense to me. I don’t get what makes mysticism a phenomenon or a useful category.
At least one of the texts that I study in depth, The Gospel of Thomas, is one that a lot of people have called mystical. If the definition of mystical as “the aspect of Christian tradition that was understood to emphasize religious knowledge gained by means of an extraordinary experience or revelation of the divine” (King 8) is taken, then Thomas would be about as mystical as one could get. However, I don’t think this fits anymore with the way most people use the term. Nor do I think that this definition creates an especially useful category.
This is not to say that I am uninterested in the aspects of Thomas that some have classified as mystical. I am quite fascinated by the process by which it explains that one comes to reach a knowledge of God, and the final result of this process that one becomes possessed by (or perhaps just becomes) God. However, I don’t call this process mystical. I don’t know if it is (since I don’t know what mysticism is). I certainly don’t think that doing so would help. I can find analogous processes of coming to know God, and I can use them to compare to the process that Thomas describes. I can do this quite well without using the term mystical.
I wonder if the other posters in my commentarial group have had a more positive experience with the idea of mysticism. If so, did this affect the way that you read King’s article? If you do have a more positive view of mysticism, perhaps you could try to explain to me what makes you think that it is cross-cultural phenomenon or a useful category.
Nov. 27th, 2006
12:51 am - My thoughts on the interesting readings for 29/11/06
I enjoyed the readings for this week. I was particularly pleased that two of the issues with which I had struggled the most in our last two classes were to some extent addressed by our two readings from the Critical Terms text. It is these two issues that I would like to address today.
In the last class, I had struggled with the suggestion that we could never judge the religious or cultural practices that we studied. LaFlour has made some comments about this that I would like to quote at length:
“Even among Anthropologists and historians of the non-Western religions, once champions of the parity of cultures, there is a new nervousness about the ramifications of being ‘value-free’, that is, of holding that all worldviews need to be equally respected . This new skittishness results, in large part, from heightened awareness that bodies are affected deeply by cultural concepts, and that there may be limits to the extent to which the outside observer can wink at some practices. Researchers today worry more about whether what they say (or do not say) runs the risk of being in implicit collusion with real, sometimes rather horrible, oppression. Scholars with feminist concerns have, of course, been most acutely aware of this problem. If it is true that the women and children of a studied society, relatively powerless therein, are having their bodies forcibly, even painfully, malleated, how far may the toleration of divergent beliefs and practices go” (LaFleur 49).
LaFleur has produced a much better articulated version of the question that I tried to raise at the end of the last class. He suggests a principle of “no cruelty” to replace an idea of naturalness in order to justify value-judgments. Unfortunately, LaFleur never defines cruelty, or discuss how this might be worked out without appeal to one’s own culture, when a problematic practice is rationalized by the culture in which it occurs. Neither does he address how one can actually justify a “no cruelty” principle without appeal to natural law, since it seems to be predicated on an (individualistic?) appeal to a natural law that cruelty is bad.
We do not have firm grounds to make value-judgments and we should be very very aware of this. If the exercise of the sort that we went through in the last class was an attempt to problematize value-judgments, to show us on what shaky ground we stand when we make them, then I agree completely. However, there seemed to be something more, a rhetoric that I have heard used to attack any value-judgment made on anyone who comes from any different culture (does this require a reification of culture?). LaFleur suggests, the refusal to make value-judgments might be construed as an implicit approval. I see some truth in this claim, the refusal to make judgments may be an offer of approval to everything, and this is something that I am not willing to give.
Are we to be merely collectors of knowledge, like an alien from an old science fiction who watches but has sworn never to interfere? If we can never make a value-judgment about practice that we study, then what are we saying about those that we study? Are we saying that the distinction between their culture and ours makes them totally other to us, and that we therefore have no connection or responsibility to them? Is this a disguised attempt to reconstruct the modernist notion of the impartial subject who observes the object in a laboratory like setting, where the observer has no connection to the (lesser?) object, no responsibility or investment?
If we can never make value-judgments, then what are we doing? Is there any meaning to collecting knowledge for its own sake? As individuals who have acquired (some-little) knowledge of Religious practices do we have a responsibility to use this knowledge in some way? If we don’t make value judgments, do we leave them to be made by those who do not have the same knowledge of religion that we are studying to acquire? If we refuse to make value-judgments what justification do we have to condemn (make a value-judgment) about those who are willing to make such a judgments? To end my rant-like series of questions, I would return to my first question and most powerful question, does the refusal to make a value-judgment actually give a judgment of implicit approval?
We may not be on firm ground to make value-judgments, but I don’t think we have anything to stand on to refuse to make them. So I will continue to draw attention to the practices and beliefs that I have studied that I perceive to be detrimental to my fellow human beings, even if I know that in some ways I am ethnocentric, projecting, and colonial, I think that the alternatives are worse.
I will address the second issue more briefly. Two classes ago, we spoke about ritual. I had felt that experience was being used as tool to make ritual impossible to study. The idea that I heard was that since ritual was primarily experienced and experience was indescribable, then the heart of ritual could not be critically evaluated. I found this idea to be problematic; it effectively blocked the study of religion by putting what was important out of the bounds of what could be studied. If this is the case then what is the point of our field? I was quite impressed by Sharf’s discussion of how certain conceptions of religious experience have been artificially constructed in order to insulate religion (culture?) from certain streams of inquiry. I will certainly use some of the ideas found in this article in the future when addressing ideas of religious experience.
Appropriately, the readings for the last class of this semester gave me additional material through which to examine the two biggest issues that this class raised in my mind this semester. Sharf addressed the extent to which the inexpressibility of experience renders religion beyond the reach of scholarship, and to what extent the possibility that it might do so has been miss-used. While LaFlour addressed the issue of to what extent we are able to make judgments about religious practices that come from radically different social settings than our own.
Nov. 6th, 2006
01:08 am - My hopefully non-offensive thoughts on the readings for 8/11/06
We had a complex set of articles this week, and I feel that I am jumping in a bit over my head by trying to comment on them. I think that I will focus on Daniel Boyarin’s article, since I found his attempt to describe a current debate within feminism with reference to the opposing gender constructions in early Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism to be fascinating.
I have some problems with Boyarin’s methodology. He has a tendency to make claims about early Christianity as whole. He also tends to read texts (some of which come from very different geographical and temporal locations) in light of each other. He seems to construct a discourse on gender in early Christianity, as though all of the texts that he examines were sharing theology. However, this ignores the fundamental diversity of early Christianity. In fact, some of the texts that he identifies seem to disagree with each other on almost every point, so I am not sure why he expects them to agree on their conception of gender. He also ignores a number of early Christian texts that originate from similar dates, but which have very different conceptions of gender.
Having said all of this, I actually agree with his conclusions about how gender is constructed in some early Christian circles. In addition, I think that there may be some commonalities in discourse between a number of texts here (coming out of ideas in Hellenistic Judaism). However, I would be very weary of trying to make general statements about early Christianity without more nuance than he has.
The school of feminism to which Boyerin compares early Christianity denies the existence of natural sex (this is also discussed by Clark). That is, they believe that the entire concept is a human construction. This is a claim that I cannot accept. I might accept that we cannot separate sex from gender, that our perception of the natural differences are invariably coloured by the symbolic construction through which we view them. However, this does not mean that the natural differences are not there.
Boyerin writes “it is the socioeconomic needs of particular groups of people that generate the necessity for reproductive sexual intercourse, and that necessity is best served by the ideology of sexual difference, of sexual dimorphism as the primary salient feature for the classification for human beings and the charge of desire for intercourse that it is designed to produce” (Boyerin 118). When I read this claim, my first reaction was thinking: “Nurture beat Nature and no one told me!?”. It seems to me, that if the desire to reproduce is entirely a socio-economic construction, then there is really no room left for biological personality traits.
In fact, a large number of animals seem to manage to reproduce fairly well (males and females telling each other apart and getting together), presumably without being indoctrinated into a socio-economic structure that is telling them how to go about this. Anyone who has been involved in livestock farming will be able to note the different ways that animals of different sexes behave and interact. Of course, we project our views of gender onto these animals, so a particularly aggressive cow is no longer “cowed”, instead it has “the strength of a bull” or is “bull-headed”, it is now conceptually a bull (to us). However, it will still interact with a biological bull in the manner that one would expect (still female to itself and the bull). In addition, if I were to approach a bull a little bit differently than I would approach a cow, am I doing this because the false perception that the aforementioned words exemplify, or am I doing this out of a practical desire to avoid being maimed?
Sex differences are pretty obvious in the animal kingdom. In some species, individuals appear so different that one would not guess that they were of the same species until one observed mating. To claim that humans are outside of this, is to claim that we have entirely left biology behind, that our anatomy and biochemistry are no longer relevant to our consciousness. This is a claim that seems to be quite arrogant.
Of course, talking about natural sexual differences and natural desires to procreate is dangerous. It would be easy to appropriate this argument to construct a view that individuals who do not conform to these natural sexes are thus unnatural (and I want to clarify that this is not what I am doing). It is for this reason that I avoided discussing evolution, even though doing so could have strengthened my argument. However, doing so runs the risk of coming to close to the argument that evolution favours reproduction and thus only reproductive sex is natural (an argument that unfortunately I have heard made). Such a claim ignores the fact that evolution is not teleological. It does not produce the best; it only produces the best adapted to survive long enough to reproduce, or at least to help other members of its species reproduce, in a particular environment. There is no moral high-ground here (unless you want to claim that surviving long enough to reproduce as much as possible is the ultimate moral good!). In addition, having a certain amount of the population in a non-reproductive mode can sometimes be advantageous for the viability of a species.
My last few entries have been on the longer side, so I think that I will end this one here. Thanks for reading!
Oct. 22nd, 2006
11:19 pm - My narcissistic thoughts on the readings for 25/10/06
The topic for this week is ritual. The readings for this week forced me to reflect on my own relationship with ritual. This relationship is sufficiently curious that I felt discussing it here, in the context of this week’s readings, might provide some insight into the thrust of the readings in question. Trying to do a psychological/social analysis using oneself as an example is quite academically irresponsible. It is also extraordinarily self-indulgent. However, I am posting to a blog. If I am not allowed to be self-indulgent and academically irresponsible here, then where might I be?
I have already self-identified myself as Catholic in a few of my responses to the posts of others in my commentarial group. This is a claim that I should qualify. I consider myself to be Catholic, but this consideration stems entirely from my ritual practice. I go to Mass regularly (usually more than once a week). I also recite the rosary with some regularity. On the basis of this ritual activity, I consider myself to be Catholic. However, if one were to employ a definition of religion that was based on belief then I would not be able to call myself Catholic. In fact, I have consciously examined and rejected almost every doctrine or dogma that would normally be considered distinctly Catholic or distinctly Christian. To put it simply, I do not believe in the creed of Catholicism, but I continue to practice its rituals. I am a Christian who has no faith. The question then is: Why do I continue to practice Catholic rituals (attending Mass and reciting the rosary) when I not only reject but am often openly critical of the mythology and theology that lies behind these rituals?
Several of our readings discuss approaching ritual as “text” (Sharf 250, Bell 207, see also Asad’s discussion of Geertz’s use of “symbols”). The idea is that one can read the ritual as though one were reading a text. Thus one can come to understand the social structures, mythology and theology which the ritual teaches. Geertz would claim that ritual structures serve to reinforce or make real these more abstract religious claims (Assad Religious 49-50). This claim is quite similar to what much of traditional ritual theory in general would claim about ritual (Sharf 247-249). However, if ritual is entirely a means of acting out mythological/theological/social discourse, then why does it appeal to me when I consciously reject this discourse?
I suppose that one could argue that I still unconsciously engage in this discourse and thus find edification in its enactment, even though I consciously deny that I do. I cannot deny that Christian discourse has left a mark on me. I have often found that Christian/Catholic symbols have a surprising emotional effect on me. I also find myself resorting to Christian/Catholic ideas and worldviews more often than I would like. The conditioning that I received as a child will always be with me no matter how I problematize it intellectually. So maybe the ritual conveys specific meanings to me and I accept these meanings unconsciously and thus find the ritual edifying.
The idea that rituals convey meaning which I accept unconsciously, seems to be quite obviously true. I practice the rituals because I find doing so to be rewarding. I don’t have a conscious explanation for why I find it rewarding, so I probably am receiving meaning from the ritual at a non-conscious level. However, I think that it is a stretch to assume that this meaning can be a reinforcement or lesson in an ideology that I have invested great effort in consciously problematizeing. How can it reinforce/teach a world view or social structure that to a large extent I no longer participate in? Since such an approach seems to be quite a stretch, let us see if some of the alternatives to this theory of ritual explored in our readings might offer a more natural explanation for my situation.
Sharf writes that “In ritual, as in play, it is not the ‘symbolism’ of the object that is altered but rather the apprehension of or orientation to the object itself. One partakes of the wafer as if it were the flesh of Christ; one hears the voice of the shaman as if it were the voice of an ancestor; … ritual recreates the situation of early childhood play in all its enthralling seriousness and intensity” (Sharf 256-257). This strikes me as at least partially correct. I believe that the Passion story is entirely a Markan invention and that Mark’s motives for this act of mythmaking were quite dubious. If I were to talk about the Passion outside of Mass, I would treat the story in this manner. However, in mass the Liturgy of the Eucharist as a whole implies the Passion story and in Mass I approach this story as if it were true, while some part of me still “knows” that it not.
I feel that here I am in danger of making the claim that religious people don’t actually believe what their religion teaches, that it is just a game. I don’t think that this is what Sharf is claiming and it is certainly not what I am claiming. If one hears the voice of the shaman as if it were the voice of an ancestor, but one does not feel the need to consciously question this, than subjectively the voice of the shaman is the voice of the ancestor. It is not symbolically so, it is true. This is the level that I perceive the vast majority of religion functioning on. However, the mechanism that allows one to hear the voice of the shaman as if it were the voice of the ancestor may be the same mechanism that allows me to hear the passion story as if it were not a curious remnant of Markan creativity. Sharf makes a plausible case that this mechanism might be a reversion to childhood play.
This still does not explain why I should find the rituals edifying. Perhaps I should attempt to pull out some psychoanalysis and talk about a universal desire to return to childhood or the innocence of childlike play. On the other hand, perhaps this imitation of child-like play is just a mechanism that lets me accept the absurd myths and theologies of my rituals long enough to gain some other benefit from them. However, we are then left with a question about what part of these myths I find edifying once I accept them?
Asad talks about the relationship between power and religion (Religious 34-35). Structures of power may have influenced my continuing participation in Catholic ritual. I did not come from a particularly religious family, but my parents did expect that the whole family would go to church on Sundays. They were obviously in a position of substantial authority over me. Could this requirement from those who had authority over me have spawned a long-lasting disposition? Yes, I think that it could have. On the other hand, Religious requirements were not all that big a requirement in my family. I never thought that I would have to be religious to win my parents approval, nor was there ever an expectation that I say the rosary. In fact, I doubt my brothers even know how to say a rosary. Therefore, I think that there is something more than this going on.
Asad also talks about the use of ritual as moral discipline (Ritual 62-65). This perhaps getting closest to what seems to me to be a natural description of my own engagement with ritual. Although I have rejected most of Christian cosmology/theology, I still have a sizable remnant of a Christian morality. Having a sizable remnant of a Christian morality means that one almost certainly transgresses against said morality frequently. I say the rosary particularly at times when I feel that I have made moral transgressions and particularly for the purpose of considering and dare I say absolving these transgressions. The recitation of the rosary is for me very much a discipline that I use to address and refine my own morality. It does not matter that I recite the lists of mysteries, whose mythic meaning I believe in, I still feel that the discipline of the recitation works for me. And as I noted above, within the ritual I approach these things as thought they were true, so when I say: “The Third Sorrowful Mystery: Jesus is Crowned with Thorns”, I am not thinking “wow that’s a Markan mythic addition if I’ve ever heard one!” Instead, I just go with it.
Bell talks about understanding Ritual in terms of Performance (205-206). If I were to treat the mass as being a performance, than could I explain why I enjoy it in the same way that I could explain why I enjoy other performances. Since I have already posted here more about myself than anyone really wants to know, I think I might as well add another personal detail. I am perceptually disabled (that is problems with my physical perception). Because of this, I (among other things) have a great deal of difficulty reading social situations. I have a significant anxiety that I am going to say or do the wrong thing (this anxiety being justified because I more often than not do). However, I have been going to mass as long as I can remember. The ritual is always the same, I always know what I am supposed to do or say, and I (almost) always do it correctly.
Mass is a performance of the perfect social situation, because in it everyone knows exactly what they are supposed to do and say. The performers are able to be social without risks that normally comes from being social (any deviation or mistake seems always to be ignored). It creates the perfect social structure, where everyone can interact without risk, without the danger that those around them will take offence or act in a hostile manner, where everyone greats each other as friends and chants together in unison. This does not necessarily have to be symbol for the divine social structure or the divine social structure projected onto the current social structure, as the older ritual theory might suggest. On its surface level, the performance actually allows the congregation to act out this situation, without necessarily implying anything behind it (although the way it is usually constructed it does imply something behind it, I only comment that this is not necessary).
If this motivation can be extended to anyone but myself (and I think it can be), then it almost seems that the symbols employed in it are meaningless as long as everyone agrees upon their employment. However, this is not the case. Caught up in this utopian unity a person may come to associate the symbols shared in this unity with the feeling that the unity creates, thus to return to the original argument that I criticized. I do think that a ritual can help to engrain symbols in a person; I just don’t think this is usually the sole or core of a ritual.
Now, I would note that I envisioned two different purposes to the two rituals that I set out to explain. I called the rosary moral discipline, and the Mass a utopian performance. I also think that the purpose of these rituals would probably be different for other people. I can see someone who actually believes in the tenants of Catholicism getting a number of things from the named rituals that I don’t experience. For example, such a person could be informed by Catholic popular theology that doing these things provides merit before God and might be acting out of desire to obtain this merit and thus become a good person. The attendance of mass or recitation of the rosary might then be edifying because it one has been told that it will supply this merit. In any case, I suspect different rituals work in different ways and that different people may get different things from the same ritual.
Similarly, I suspect that a ritual can also appeal at multiple points. In my discussion above, I have not even mentioned ideas of habit or continuity with the past, nor have I talked about the appeal of the sensory or aesthetic qualities of ritual, which I am suspect are also factors in my own participation in Catholic ritual. My basic point is only to suggest that my enjoyment of Catholic ritual seems to stem from sources other then immersion in action that conveys Catholic theological/social/mythical meaning.
That about sums up my self-indulgent and academically irresponsible attempt to use myself as a case study to evaluate theories of ritual. I apologize if I have talked more about myself than would normally be proper. Unfortunately, as an aspiring biblical scholar, I am aware of little other data on ritual than my own experience to draw upon.
Oct. 8th, 2006
11:22 pm - My thoughts lengthy on the readings for 11/10/2006
In The Invention of World Religions , Tomoko Masuzawa lays out a history of the development of the term and concept of World Religions. By doing this, she draws attention to the extremely problematic nature of this term/concept. She has convinced me entirely. In fact, if I were to provide a criticism of her book, it might be that she did not take her argument as far as she could have. As I stated in my comments for the previous class, the implications of this claim for students of Religious Studies are astounding. At the end of Masuzawa’s book, we are left with the question “where do we go from here?” It is this question that I want to further explore here.
As I pointed out in my previous entry, Masuzawa indicates in her introduction that she intends to problemitize the term/concept of “World Religions”, but that she would not be able to offer an alternative to its use. She reiterates this claim in her conclusion: “If the scientific efficacy of the world religions discourse is put in doubt, what alternative method, what new strategies should be adapted in its stead in order to conduct basic research, or to teach an introductory course on various religions? It behooves me to acknowledge the legitimacy, reasonableness, and urgency, of such questions, even though I am unable to answer them, at least not here, not on this occasion” (Masuzawa 327). Masuzawa demonstrates that the concept of “World Religions” is harmful. It forces everything observed through its lens into the mold of Christianity, but she leaves us without an alternative. Masuzawa is aware that she has left a frustrating question dangling, but it is not within the scope her book to provide the answers.
In our last class it was suggested that criticism like that of Masuzawa could create a paradigm shift of the sort envisioned by Thomas Kuhn. If I may apply Kuhn’s ideas here, this might be all that Masuzawa could accomplish at this point. As I understand Kuhn, a new paradigm is usually only be invented when the old paradigm has already been problemitized. An “anomaly” must be discovered and this anomaly must be considered significant. The recognition of this anomaly creates “crisis” and the process of struggling with crisis allows for the creation of new paradigm. At this point, all that Masuzawa can do is draw attention to the anomaly in the hope of provoking a crisis.
However, Kuhn would also argue that anomalies are always being discovered constantly, and that only under (usually not entirely rational) conditions are anomalies considered significant. One set of factors that might effect the appraisal of an anomaly is economic factors. Masuzawa notes that: “it is clear that the consistently large enrollment figure in world religions courses – as well as in derivative courses … - has been the single most powerful argument and justification for maintaining the steady budget line and faculty positions in religious studies departments and programs” (Masuzawa 9). Masuzawa believes that the economic benefits of World Religions courses directly correlate to the lack of criticism that this term/concept has received (Masuzawa 9-10). She is likely right, and the economic benefits of World Religion courses may hamper the anomalies that Masuzawa has here identified from being regarded as significant.
In our first class, I suggested that the fact that World Religion classes provide us with economic benefits may not be entirely a bad reason for keeping them. With good reason, this statement elicited a negative reaction. In part, I had made this claim to play the devil’s advocate, but playing the devil’s advocate is only fun when the unpopular point has some validity. We should not forget that the success of World Religion courses is likely a large portion of the reason that we are here. Now, I don’t think that it would be moral to teach a harmful lie, as part of some conspiracy so that we can all prosper in the discipline that we are studding to enter. However, the fact that world religion courses are so successful has implications on matters beyond our own self-interest.
The fact that World Religion courses are so economically successful can only mean that people want to take them. This means that people consider the study of world religions to have value before they are ever begin to study World Religions at a University. I remember taking my World Religions class. At that time I had no intention of becoming a scholar of religion. I took the class, because I thought that it would be valuable for me to learn about the religions of the world, so that I could better understand the way global politics and art functioned. I also thought that I would gain some spiritual edification from studying these World Religions. I thought that this would be the case without talking to people who had taken Religious Studies courses or investigating what the subject was about. I “knew” what the subject was about and I “knew” how it would be valuable to me. I “knew” this because, although I had never taken a World Religion course, I had encountered the World Religions discourse. It was part of my up-brining, I spoke in it, my friends spoke in it, even the religious groups that I participated often spoke in it. As I studied religion further, and became more aware of this discourse and the artificiality of this discourse, I became aware that I could not escape from it. I hear people talking about religion wherever I go, I hear it in the media, I even hear it coming from myself more often than I would like. Almost without exception, the language that is being used is the language of the World Religions discourse. Courses in World Religions are economically viable because people perceive them to have value, people perceive World Religions courses to have value because the World Religions discourse seems to be everywhere one looks.
The concept of World Religions might be an insidious lie that deceives and reinforces ideas of Christian/Western supremacy while forcing everything into the Christian/Western mold. However, the discourse of World Religions is not our tame pet, it is not an academic peculiarity that we can throw away now that we have falsified it. It is a dragon, and I think that it is closer to being our master than we are to being its. This dragon is served by the media, by politicians, by pop culture, by faith groups, and by a nebulous sphere of discussion on street corners and at diner tables. If we have become aware of how dangerous this dragon is (and I find Masuzawa to be convincing on this score) than how can we go about slaying it, when it is so powerful?
If we were to stop teaching World Religion courses, I think the discourse would continue just as strongly. We would only be loosing whatever small influence we yet retain over it. If we tried to rename our introductory religion class and change the curriculum to address the raised concerns, would people still be interested in taking the remolded class or would we again be leaving the World Religion discourse to continue just as strongly outside of our influence? Moreover, would the prevalence of the World Religion discourse overwhelm whatever remodeled introductory religion course we produced, forcing it back into the World Religions mold? Perhaps, if a remodeled class were able to stay true to its mission, it could educate a new generation to be aware of the pitfalls of the old model of World Religions (now I’m calling World Religions a model, I have also called it a term, a concept and a discourse). However, I would worry that remodeling an introductory class alone might do more harm than good, it would neglect the demand that exists to study World Religions and in the worst case, allow this demand to be met by less capable hands (so I’m an academic elitist? what graduate student isn’t?). If we want to slay the world religions discourse, we probably will have to do something more drastic and horrifyingly it will probably have to be something that reaches out through all of those spheres of activity that the discourse in question permeates.
I don't think that this is not an impossible activity. To return to Kuhn’s paradigm theory, if we can draw enough attention to the anomalies in the World Religions model then we should be able to provoke a crisis. However, this will not be an easy activity, and in the meantime we may have to keep running World Religions courses. I wonder if we can contort our faces and our logic in order to rationalize World Religions as a pedagogical tool. We might use the discourse to undermine itself. The discourse of World Religions advocates that studying world religions is socially, intellectually and spiritually edifying. Therefore, it will keep sending its slaves to take our classes, and if the classes are taught in such a way as to create awareness of their own artificiality then they might undermine the very discourse that names them edifying. Furthermore, I don’t think that all of the perceived values of World Religion classes are illusionary. The model has been retained because it has some utility. It does offer a simplified way for individuals from a Christian-influenced culture to achieve some understanding of “relgions” quickly. In this way the World Religions concept further acts as a pedagogical tool, its most serious problem becoming an advantage. The fact that it squishes other religions into Christianity-like-things helps those from a Christian-influenced background understand “religions”. This limited understanding of “religions” does convey some immediate benefits. Thus it might be possible to rationalize the use of World Religions as a pedagogical tool.
In conclusion, Masuzawa has convinced me that the discourse/term/model/concept/dragon of World Religions is problematic. However, I think that it will take more than her argument to actually do anything about this discourse. Since I am completely unable to think of a viable alternative for a World Religions class, I have tortured logic to the point where I have claimed that World Religions may serve as a useful pedagogical tool, while we work to demonstrate the inherent problems of this discourse. After all properly taught World Religions classes will certainly do more to problemtize rather than reinforce this discourse, right?
Sep. 24th, 2006
10:50 pm - My thoughts on the readings for 27/9/2006
In the readings for this week, both Tomoko Masuzawa and Jonathan Z. Smith attempt to draw attention to the artificial nature of some of the basic terms of Religious Studies by presenting a genealogy of these terms. Masuzawa deals with the concept of “World Religions” or “Living Religions”, while Smith addresses the concept of “Religion” itself.
These are terms that are intensively ingrained and naturalized in the minds of most students of religion. After all, they are students of religion, and a student of religion is almost always someone who studies a living religion; so-called dead religions are left to scholars of History or Anthropology. The terms are also incredibly ingrained and naturalized outside of the field of Religious Studies, with the term “religion” being used without any self-awareness, in popular discourse.
In order to overcome the apparent naturalness of these concepts, both Smith and Masuzawa approach them from a historical perspective. By demonstrating that these concepts are relatively new innovations, the naturalness of these concepts is undermined. Further, by demonstrating the assorted motives that drove the development of these terms, their naturalness is further undermined, and the door is opened to allow them to be criticized. This strategy is effective in overcoming the resistance of the reader to the undermining of ingrained concepts, and both Masuzawa and Smith do this with great skill.
If a student of religion accepts the implications of Masuzawa and Smith’s arguments, then the student of religion is left with some startling implications. Where does one go from here? Although both Masuzawa and Smith problemitize the concepts with which they are working, neither argues for their concepts abolition. In her introduction, Masuzawa writes that: “nor do I imagine myself, at the conclusion of this book, to be in a position to advocate a particular programmatic scheme or a change of course in the way religion is to be done” (Masuzawa 10). Essentially, Masuzawa is going to tell her readers (many of whom are likely scholars of religions) that the way they are going about their studies is problematic, but that she is unable to offer a solution. Smith goes a step further. In his conclusion he writes: “(religion) is a second-order, generic concept that plays the same role in establishing a disciplinary horizon that a concept such as ‘language’ plays in Linguistics or ‘culture’ plays in Anthropology. There can be no disciplined study of religion without it” (Smith 281-282). Smith ultimately claims that religion is artificial but necessary, and therefore it must be retained in order to continue useful studies. However, this still does not address how one is to deal with a term that Smith seems happy to treat as a second-order generic term, but which most discourses seem to treat as a phenomenon.
Religion for Smith seems to function primarily as a disciplinary boundary. It delineates an area of study that is particularly useful. World Religions occupy the primary object of study because their study has some immediate practical applications (Smith 280). This study also has economic benefits and reflects popular interest (Masuzawa 9-10). Therefore, the concept of religion as a disciplinary boundary is useful. Because of its utility, a strong argument can be made for its retention, and this seems to be all that either Masuzawa or Smith has proposed. However, religion gets used in a large variety of other ways within both popular use and normal scholarship. An implication of Smith and Musazawa’s arguments would seem to be that this use is irresponsible.
If religion is a second-order constructed category, then many of the normal uses of religion become invalid. In this case a characteristic of religion is a characteristic that is used to judge whether something belongs in the category of religion. Therefore, it cannot be assumed that something has a characteristic of religion, because it is religion. In fact, the reverse is true. Similarly, speaking of a something as “religious” loses much of its implied meaning. That it is “religious” only means that it fits into a certain category. Since the category of religion is likely polythetic, saying that something fits into this category does not imply much at all. In fact, the word ought not to be used for much beyond establishing helpful disciplinary boundaries.
Both Smith and Musazawa raise problems with the normal use of the concepts “Religion” and “World Religions” by tracing the development of these concepts. Smith does this attempting to discuss the definition of religion, whereas Musazawa is more actively trying to problemitize the concept while simultaneously producing a history of it. Nonetheless, both Smith and Musazawa do raise significant questions about the viability of the concept. However, neither advocates the complete abandonment of the term. In fact, Smith argues that its retention is beneficial. Instead, it would seem that both would like to see the subject of Religion and World Religions approached in a manner that is more aware of the difficulties that these terms/concepts convey.