P. Pels | Universiteit Leiden (original) (raw)
Papers by P. Pels
Religion in the Making, 1998
Preface Contributors Introduction, Arie L. Molendijk PART ONE. Institutionalization: National Set... more Preface Contributors Introduction, Arie L. Molendijk PART ONE. Institutionalization: National Settings Sciences of Religion in France during the July Monarchy (1830-1848), Michel Despland The Foundations of the Study of Religion in the British Context, Peter Byrne Transforming Theology: The Institutionalization of the Science of Religion in the Netherlands, Arie L. Molendijk PART TWO. Emerging Disciplines: Boundary Disputes The Science of Religion and Theology: The Question of Their Interrelationship, Sigurd Hjelde J.G. Frazer and the Cambridge Ritualists and the "Scientific" Study of Religion, Robert Ackerman The Ironies of Fin-de-Siecle Rebellions against Historicism and Empiricism in the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Fifth Section, Ivan Strenski Rethinking the Rise and Fall of the Psychology of Religion, David M. Wulff PART THREE. Rethinking Religion: Conceptual Innovations How Religion Became Scientific, Robert J. Baird Religion Posed as a Racial Category. A Reading of Emile Burnouf, Adolph Moses, and Eliza Sunderland, Miriam Peskowitz The Emergence of the Academic Science of Magic: The Occult Philosophy in Tylor and Frazer, Wouter J. Hanegraaff British Roots of the Concept of Ritual, Barbara Boudewijnse Survivals: Conceiving of Religious History in an Age of Development, Hans G. Kippenberg Index of Names Index of Subjects
Ethnography, 2019
As anthropologists we are increasingly confronted with attempts – be it by employers, the media, ... more As anthropologists we are increasingly confronted with attempts – be it by employers, the media, or policy makers – to regulate our work in ways that are both epistemologically and ethically counterproductive and threaten our scientific integrity. This document is written out of concern about the problems that occur when protocols for data management, integrity, and ethics, developed for sciences that employ a positivistic, hypothesis-testing and replicable style of research, are applied to different scientific practices, such as social and cultural anthropology, that are more explorative, intersubjective and interpretative. In social and cultural anthropology, issues of scientific governance and its ethics are strongly case-specific. Still, concerns about the imposition of scientific protocols from other disciplines require anthropologists to develop some general guidelines for data management, integrity and ethics of anthropological research. Rather than fixed rules, these are bro...
Etnofoor, 1992
... My puzzle-ment about his behaviour was clarified when my guide and interpreter, Thomas, grave... more ... My puzzle-ment about his behaviour was clarified when my guide and interpreter, Thomas, gravely announced that his (Thomas') reputation had been irrevocably damaged: people ... I was rumoured to be the mumiani, the white vampire, and Thomas my murderous assistant. ...
Anthropological Theory, 2022
Renewed calls for decolonizing anthropology in the 21st century raise the question of what work e... more Renewed calls for decolonizing anthropology in the 21st century raise the question of what work earlier waves of decolonization since the 1960s have left undone. Some of this work should focus on the classification of human differences, which figured prominently in all phases of the discipline’s history: as a methodology in its racist phases, as an object of study during its late colonial phase of professionalization, as self-critical reflexivity in the 1980s and 1990s, and as a renewed critique in the 21st century. Can a universal methodology of studying classifications of human kinds arise from the discipline’s past of colonial stereotyping? I argue affirmatively, through an approach that recognizes time as the epistemic condition that connects past and present positions to present and future methodologies. Firstly, my analysis distinguishes the parochial embedding in colonial culture of Durkheim and Mauss’ ideas about classification from their more universal intentions. This is t...
Anthropological Theory, 2022
Renewed calls for decolonizing anthropology in the 21st century raise the question of what work e... more Renewed calls for decolonizing anthropology in the 21st century raise the question of what work earlier waves of decolonization since the 1960s have left undone. Some of this work should focus on the classification of human differences, which figured prominently in all phases of the discipline's history: as a methodology in its racist phases, as an object of study during its late colonial phase of professionalization, as self-critical reflexivity in the 1980s and 1990s, and as a renewed critique in the 21st century. Can a universal methodology of studying classifications of human kinds arise from the discipline's past of colonial stereotyping? I argue affirmatively, through an approach that recognizes time as the epistemic condition that connects past and present positions to present and future methodologies. Firstly, my analysis distinguishes the parochial embedding in colonial culture of Durkheim and Mauss' ideas about classification from their more universal intentions. This is then developed into a threefold reflexive and timeful methodology of studying classification's nominal-descriptive, constructive, and interventionist dimensions-a process of adding temporality to the study of classification. Subsequently, Ant enor Firmin's 19th-century critique of racial classifications, and W. E. B. Du Bois's theory of double consciousness help to show how this threefold methodology addresses the insufficiently theorized process of being classified and discriminated against through racial categories wielded by the powers that be. These arguments radicalize the essay's timeful perspective by concluding that we need to avoid modernist uses of time as classification and adopt the aforementioned threefold
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 2014
This book began to take shape in December 1988. The setting was the Department of Cultural Anthro... more This book began to take shape in December 1988. The setting was the Department of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam. A conference was held in memory of the anthropologist Bob Scholte, whose sudden death in the preceding year shook his students and colleagues profoundly. The Conference was intended to follow lines of critical and reflexive inquiry initiated by, among others, Scholte himself. It appeared to be a particularly auspicious moment for such an event, as critical, feminist and symbolic perspectives in anthropology seemed to converge. Political critique, reflexive analysis and the experience of multiple voices had combined to produce doubts about the authority of the anthropological expert, whose line of descent includes sexist, racist and imperialist ancestors. As anthropological authority was questioned and the anthropologist's voice toned down, there seemed to be a promise for a conversation with other voices. Yet, despite the potential present at the Conference to engage in fruitful conversation, more often than not it resembled a show-j down, a confrontation between (academic) identities. The configuration on of opponents changed continuously and pitted neo-Marxists, j feminists and postmodernists against their respective others. No one ; could deny the academic vigour displayed at the event. But at the same time, the confrontations reinforced the impression of a stalemate in anthropology.' As we write this Introduction, we have become increasingly aware that the Conference portrayed to a certain extent the current state of the art of anthropology and reverberated the debates which are occurring in the other human sciences. The feeling of crisis could easily be attributed to the ingression of postmodernist thought and its tendency to undermine all efforts at legitimation of the scientific project. But this explanation ignores the fact that postmodernism in anthropology is a product of a history of critical and reflexive initiatives. Anthropology's root, its preoccupation and confrontation with 'postmodern' attempts to reformulate the professional task of the anthropologist. These attempts, it seems to us, call for a restatement of the reflexive critique of anthropology which Bob Scholte introduced (1974). Before we do this, a word on the relevance of these papers for nonanthropological readers. The history of anthropology has its own
Politique Africaine, 2001
... Associate editors: Nicholas Thomas, The Australian National University, Canberra and Emiko Oh... more ... Associate editors: Nicholas Thomas, The Australian National University, Canberra and Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, University of Wisconsin, USA. ... Sri Lanka: Politics, Culture and History MICHAEL ROBERTS VOLUME 15 Consumption and Identity edited by JONATHAN FRIEDMAN ...
By bringing the active challenge to ethnographic authority by people written about to the fore, t... more By bringing the active challenge to ethnographic authority by people written about to the fore, the authors of this chapter hope to raise some doubts about the matter-of-factness with which ethnographers maintain their identity as scholarly writers who do their research in some 'field' far away from 'home'. Focusing on the study of religion in Africa, they present two cases in which the tactical behaviour of both the anthropologists and their interlocutors challenges the hegemony of their attitudes towards each other's production of knowledge. The authors first discuss an element of anthropological fieldwork which, in practice, has been rare: the initiation of the researcher into secrets held by local religious leaders. Here, ethnographers (act as if they) accept the hegemony of the 'other' cultural practice while being initiated. Second, they describe a case from van Dijk's own fieldwork and show how the researcher was obliged to go through a peniten...
From certain recent discussions about the relationship between missionaries and anthropologists, ... more From certain recent discussions about the relationship between missionaries and anthropologists, one gets the impression that this relationship is to be judged by an 'essential' difference between the two. Some say that the missionary cannot be equated with the anthropologist as the former comes to teach, while the latter comes to learn (Abbink 1985, Beidelman 1982: 16 n. 34, Delfendahl 1981, Hughes 1978: 65). Often, the next step in the argument is that the missionary is guilty of a form of cultural imposition characteristic of colonialism (Beidelman 1982: 5-6). It is striking that in these discussions the concept of 'mission' is never made explicit; that both anthropology and mission, as .professions, are usually not studied in any theoretical depth; and that the historical transformations of both enterprises are often ignored and even explicitly denied in the case of missions (Abbink in this volume, Beidelman 1982: xv). It might be worthwhile to consider whether i...
Religion in the Making, 1998
Preface Contributors Introduction, Arie L. Molendijk PART ONE. Institutionalization: National Set... more Preface Contributors Introduction, Arie L. Molendijk PART ONE. Institutionalization: National Settings Sciences of Religion in France during the July Monarchy (1830-1848), Michel Despland The Foundations of the Study of Religion in the British Context, Peter Byrne Transforming Theology: The Institutionalization of the Science of Religion in the Netherlands, Arie L. Molendijk PART TWO. Emerging Disciplines: Boundary Disputes The Science of Religion and Theology: The Question of Their Interrelationship, Sigurd Hjelde J.G. Frazer and the Cambridge Ritualists and the "Scientific" Study of Religion, Robert Ackerman The Ironies of Fin-de-Siecle Rebellions against Historicism and Empiricism in the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Fifth Section, Ivan Strenski Rethinking the Rise and Fall of the Psychology of Religion, David M. Wulff PART THREE. Rethinking Religion: Conceptual Innovations How Religion Became Scientific, Robert J. Baird Religion Posed as a Racial Category. A Reading of Emile Burnouf, Adolph Moses, and Eliza Sunderland, Miriam Peskowitz The Emergence of the Academic Science of Magic: The Occult Philosophy in Tylor and Frazer, Wouter J. Hanegraaff British Roots of the Concept of Ritual, Barbara Boudewijnse Survivals: Conceiving of Religious History in an Age of Development, Hans G. Kippenberg Index of Names Index of Subjects
Ethnography, 2019
As anthropologists we are increasingly confronted with attempts – be it by employers, the media, ... more As anthropologists we are increasingly confronted with attempts – be it by employers, the media, or policy makers – to regulate our work in ways that are both epistemologically and ethically counterproductive and threaten our scientific integrity. This document is written out of concern about the problems that occur when protocols for data management, integrity, and ethics, developed for sciences that employ a positivistic, hypothesis-testing and replicable style of research, are applied to different scientific practices, such as social and cultural anthropology, that are more explorative, intersubjective and interpretative. In social and cultural anthropology, issues of scientific governance and its ethics are strongly case-specific. Still, concerns about the imposition of scientific protocols from other disciplines require anthropologists to develop some general guidelines for data management, integrity and ethics of anthropological research. Rather than fixed rules, these are bro...
Etnofoor, 1992
... My puzzle-ment about his behaviour was clarified when my guide and interpreter, Thomas, grave... more ... My puzzle-ment about his behaviour was clarified when my guide and interpreter, Thomas, gravely announced that his (Thomas') reputation had been irrevocably damaged: people ... I was rumoured to be the mumiani, the white vampire, and Thomas my murderous assistant. ...
Anthropological Theory, 2022
Renewed calls for decolonizing anthropology in the 21st century raise the question of what work e... more Renewed calls for decolonizing anthropology in the 21st century raise the question of what work earlier waves of decolonization since the 1960s have left undone. Some of this work should focus on the classification of human differences, which figured prominently in all phases of the discipline’s history: as a methodology in its racist phases, as an object of study during its late colonial phase of professionalization, as self-critical reflexivity in the 1980s and 1990s, and as a renewed critique in the 21st century. Can a universal methodology of studying classifications of human kinds arise from the discipline’s past of colonial stereotyping? I argue affirmatively, through an approach that recognizes time as the epistemic condition that connects past and present positions to present and future methodologies. Firstly, my analysis distinguishes the parochial embedding in colonial culture of Durkheim and Mauss’ ideas about classification from their more universal intentions. This is t...
Anthropological Theory, 2022
Renewed calls for decolonizing anthropology in the 21st century raise the question of what work e... more Renewed calls for decolonizing anthropology in the 21st century raise the question of what work earlier waves of decolonization since the 1960s have left undone. Some of this work should focus on the classification of human differences, which figured prominently in all phases of the discipline's history: as a methodology in its racist phases, as an object of study during its late colonial phase of professionalization, as self-critical reflexivity in the 1980s and 1990s, and as a renewed critique in the 21st century. Can a universal methodology of studying classifications of human kinds arise from the discipline's past of colonial stereotyping? I argue affirmatively, through an approach that recognizes time as the epistemic condition that connects past and present positions to present and future methodologies. Firstly, my analysis distinguishes the parochial embedding in colonial culture of Durkheim and Mauss' ideas about classification from their more universal intentions. This is then developed into a threefold reflexive and timeful methodology of studying classification's nominal-descriptive, constructive, and interventionist dimensions-a process of adding temporality to the study of classification. Subsequently, Ant enor Firmin's 19th-century critique of racial classifications, and W. E. B. Du Bois's theory of double consciousness help to show how this threefold methodology addresses the insufficiently theorized process of being classified and discriminated against through racial categories wielded by the powers that be. These arguments radicalize the essay's timeful perspective by concluding that we need to avoid modernist uses of time as classification and adopt the aforementioned threefold
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 2014
This book began to take shape in December 1988. The setting was the Department of Cultural Anthro... more This book began to take shape in December 1988. The setting was the Department of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam. A conference was held in memory of the anthropologist Bob Scholte, whose sudden death in the preceding year shook his students and colleagues profoundly. The Conference was intended to follow lines of critical and reflexive inquiry initiated by, among others, Scholte himself. It appeared to be a particularly auspicious moment for such an event, as critical, feminist and symbolic perspectives in anthropology seemed to converge. Political critique, reflexive analysis and the experience of multiple voices had combined to produce doubts about the authority of the anthropological expert, whose line of descent includes sexist, racist and imperialist ancestors. As anthropological authority was questioned and the anthropologist's voice toned down, there seemed to be a promise for a conversation with other voices. Yet, despite the potential present at the Conference to engage in fruitful conversation, more often than not it resembled a show-j down, a confrontation between (academic) identities. The configuration on of opponents changed continuously and pitted neo-Marxists, j feminists and postmodernists against their respective others. No one ; could deny the academic vigour displayed at the event. But at the same time, the confrontations reinforced the impression of a stalemate in anthropology.' As we write this Introduction, we have become increasingly aware that the Conference portrayed to a certain extent the current state of the art of anthropology and reverberated the debates which are occurring in the other human sciences. The feeling of crisis could easily be attributed to the ingression of postmodernist thought and its tendency to undermine all efforts at legitimation of the scientific project. But this explanation ignores the fact that postmodernism in anthropology is a product of a history of critical and reflexive initiatives. Anthropology's root, its preoccupation and confrontation with 'postmodern' attempts to reformulate the professional task of the anthropologist. These attempts, it seems to us, call for a restatement of the reflexive critique of anthropology which Bob Scholte introduced (1974). Before we do this, a word on the relevance of these papers for nonanthropological readers. The history of anthropology has its own
Politique Africaine, 2001
... Associate editors: Nicholas Thomas, The Australian National University, Canberra and Emiko Oh... more ... Associate editors: Nicholas Thomas, The Australian National University, Canberra and Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, University of Wisconsin, USA. ... Sri Lanka: Politics, Culture and History MICHAEL ROBERTS VOLUME 15 Consumption and Identity edited by JONATHAN FRIEDMAN ...
By bringing the active challenge to ethnographic authority by people written about to the fore, t... more By bringing the active challenge to ethnographic authority by people written about to the fore, the authors of this chapter hope to raise some doubts about the matter-of-factness with which ethnographers maintain their identity as scholarly writers who do their research in some 'field' far away from 'home'. Focusing on the study of religion in Africa, they present two cases in which the tactical behaviour of both the anthropologists and their interlocutors challenges the hegemony of their attitudes towards each other's production of knowledge. The authors first discuss an element of anthropological fieldwork which, in practice, has been rare: the initiation of the researcher into secrets held by local religious leaders. Here, ethnographers (act as if they) accept the hegemony of the 'other' cultural practice while being initiated. Second, they describe a case from van Dijk's own fieldwork and show how the researcher was obliged to go through a peniten...
From certain recent discussions about the relationship between missionaries and anthropologists, ... more From certain recent discussions about the relationship between missionaries and anthropologists, one gets the impression that this relationship is to be judged by an 'essential' difference between the two. Some say that the missionary cannot be equated with the anthropologist as the former comes to teach, while the latter comes to learn (Abbink 1985, Beidelman 1982: 16 n. 34, Delfendahl 1981, Hughes 1978: 65). Often, the next step in the argument is that the missionary is guilty of a form of cultural imposition characteristic of colonialism (Beidelman 1982: 5-6). It is striking that in these discussions the concept of 'mission' is never made explicit; that both anthropology and mission, as .professions, are usually not studied in any theoretical depth; and that the historical transformations of both enterprises are often ignored and even explicitly denied in the case of missions (Abbink in this volume, Beidelman 1982: xv). It might be worthwhile to consider whether i...
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 2014
Our primary objective is to follow through on Fabian’s suggestion that an analysis of how ethnogr... more Our primary objective is to follow through on Fabian’s suggestion that an analysis of how ethnographic knowledge is produced may provide a more critical understanding of anthropological claims and practice. We argue that the coproduced nature of ethnographic knowledge is a phenomenon whose scope and implications have not been fully appreciated, partially because of an overemphasis on represen- tations and on objects of inquiry (White 2012). Thus we contend that anthropology must continue to attend to the question of how anthropology knows, not only how it comes to know what it claims to be true but also how it can be sure of what it advances as truth.