Building Blocks of Sacralities: A New Basis for Comparison across Cultures and Religions (original) (raw)
Reverse Engineering Complex Cultural Concepts: Identifying Building Blocks of "Religion"
Journal of Cognition and Culture 15, 191-216, 2015
Researchers have not yet done an adequate job of reverse engineering the complex cultural concepts of religion and spirituality in a way that allows scientists to operationalize component parts and historians of religion to consider how the component parts have been synthesized into larger socio-cultural wholes. Doing so involves two steps: (1) distinguishing between (a) the generic elements that structure definitions and (b) the specific features used to characterize the generic elements as “religious” or “sacred” and (2) disaggregating these specific features into more basic cognitive processes that scientists can operationalize and that historians can analyze in situ. Three more basic processes that interact on multiple levels are proposed: perceiving salience, assessing significance, and imagining hypothetical, counterfactual content.
Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, 2010
We can foster collaboration between the academic study of religion and the sciences, particularly the biological and psychological sciences, if we (1) construct a common object of study that can be positioned within an evolutionary paradigm, (2) adopt a building block approach to the study of religion that distinguishes between religions and the more elementary phenomena that comprise them, and (3) operationalize abstract concepts as behavioral interactions in order to gain a better understanding of the process whereby people construct religions and other complex things out of more elementary phenomena that they view as special.<xref ref-type="fn" rid="FN1">1</xref>
A review of recent research suggests that academic and popular distinctions between " religion " and " spirituality " are unfounded. Working from a meaning systems perspective , it is argued that recognizing that " religious " and " spiritual " are part of the same broad category does not go far enough. It is argued that a wider perspective that considers the interplay of many different cultural and social factors on both beliefs and practices is more useful. This broadening of the multi-level, interdisciplinary paradigm to examine all existential cultures, including the secular and non-religious, offers the potential to better understand the complexity and diversity of lived religion. Increased use of idiographic methodologies and a more reflective approach to the constructs used in nomothetic methodologies are advocated as a way to advance the field and better explore beliefs and practices in a more ecologically valid way.
Religious belief is one of the most pervasive and ubiquitous characteristics of human society. Religion has shadowed and illuminated human lives since the earliest times, shaping the worldviews of cultures from isolated tribes to vast empires. Starting from the premise that religion is a concept referring to human activities, which can be analysed and compared across time and cultures, What is Religion? brings the most up-to-date scholarship to bear on humankind's most enduring creation.
Towards Religious-Spirituality: A Multidimensional Matrix of Religion and Spirituality
2013
In the contemporary study of religion there seems to be an exaggeration of the distinction between religion and spirituality, not only to the point of separation, but worse still, in terms of a superiority-inferiority hierarchy that gives rise to a value judgement between spirituality and religion. Could this be a sign of the persisting Western hegemony in the study of religion? This article suggests that the consideration of religion and spirituality as disparate entities may be necessary in some societies but not sufficient for a global perspective. Could there be an integrative model that would lend itself for an inclusive exchange in the study of religion and spirituality? Basing itself particularly within the literature of the psychological study of religion, this essay develops a multidimensional matrix of religion and/or spirituality that attempts to be, at the same time, parsimonious and comprehensive, which includes constructs like religious-spirituality. Religious-spiritua...
The Sacred and the Secular : Distinct or Separate Entities ?
2013
In the contemporary study of religion there seems to be an exaggeration of the distinction between religion and spirituality, not only to the point of separation, but worse still, in terms of a superiority-inferiority hierarchy that gives rise to a value judgement between spirituality and religion. Could this be a sign of the persisting Western hegemony in the study of religion? This article suggests that the consideration of religion and spirituality as disparate entities may be necessary in some societies but not sufficient for a global perspective. Could there be an integrative model that would lend itself for an inclusive exchange in the study of religion and spirituality? Basing itself particularly within the literature of the psychological study of religion, this essay develops a multidimensional matrix of religion and/or spirituality that attempts to be, at the same time, parsimonious and comprehensive, which includes constructs like ‘religiousspirituality’. Religious-spiritu...
Perceiving the Problem of Disenchantment
Journal of Religion in Europe, 2015
In light of the framing of Asprem’s book in terms of Problemgeschichte, we can ask what is meant by a “problem.” Problems, as he uses it, are grounded in human experience, which means that for problems to be problems people have to perceive them as such. The problem of disenchantment thus entails both (1) the perception of the problem and (2) various responses to the problem. Asprem focuses primarily on the way people responded to the problem. But we can also ask how, when, and why people perceived the problem in the first place. If recognizing a problem can be construed in terms of “event perception” then we can view Problemgeschichte as involving the perception of problems at a whole range of levels from our perception of the historical past, our personal past, and what just happened, thus allowing for a fuller integration between sociology and psychology.
Re-casting the sacred: feminist challenges to the masculinization of the sacred in social theory
Australian Religion Studies Review, 2002
One of the aims of social theory in religion has been to explore axiomatically and theoretically the social and cultural dimensions of the realm of the sacred. The work of Emile Durkheim has been pre-eminent in this task. Critical feminist theory has however detailed the ways in which Durkheimian accounts of religion have been heavily gendered, and the sacred masculinized. Feminist theories of religion have responded to this by positing a re-casting of the relationship between gender and divinity. One of the central problematics in this field of enquiry is whether to reclaim the profane as the site of resistance and biophillia and from which to center women's religious agency; or to re-claim the sacred as the primary site for the construction of an ethics of sexual difference and gendered identity. This essay is an initial consideration of this problematic with particular reference to the social conditions of religion in post-modernity.
Recent research has demonstrated that academic and popular distinctions between 'religion' and 'spirituality' are unfounded. Each concept can mean many different things, with considerable overlap between the two terms, and the distinctions that are made are primarily theological and/or political. Emic distinctions in this area can hinder etic understanding and obscure the complexity and diversity of phenomena. It is argued that recognising that 'religious' and 'spiritual' are part of the same broad category does not go far enough and that religious/spiritual worldviews are also not fundamentally different to other worldviews. They are socially-constructed 'Meaning Systems', which help practitioners create their own worlds and give purpose to their lives. These ‘Meaning Systems’ are constructed out of the cultural and social resources available to an individual. All humans use their experiences to create the best mental models of reality that they can. The same psychological and sociological processes are involved in the creation of 'nonreligious' belief systems as in the creation of 'religious' ones. Recognising that both 'religion' and 'nonreligion' are part of the same human efforts to understand ourselves and our world can enrich and assist the study of each.
Emerging Transitions in the Meaning of Religious Constructs: The Case of the Philippines
Religions
Recent data from two local empirical studies on religion (Baring et al. 2018) and the sacred (Baring et al. 2017) show how an imminent shift in Filipino youth attitudes articulates new perspectives on religion, religiosity, and spirituality. This paper presents an analysis of three emerging peculiar characterizations of religious experience by young students culled from two previous empirical studies. These newfound descriptions indicate a departure from traditional binary religious categories (e.g., sacred–profane, religious–spiritual) typically employed in many studies. The first describes a peculiar interpretation of religious experience indicating an epistemological shift from an exclusive definition to a diffused interpretation of religious–spiritual categories: as “personal religiosity” and “institutional spirituality”. Personal religiosity reports an unexpected combination of personal ethical forms of de-institutionalized religious views of students. Institutional spiritualit...
The Emerging Meanings of Religiousness and Spirituality: Problems and Prospects
Journal of Personality, 1999
This article examines traditional and modern psychological characterizations of religiousness and spirituality. Three ways in which religiousness and spirituality are polarized by contemporary theorists are examined: organized religion versus personal spirituality; substantive religion versus functional spirituality; and negative religiousness versus positive spirituality. An alternative approach to understanding religiousness and spirituality is presented that integrates rather than polarizes these constructs, and sets boundaries to the discipline while acknowledging the diversity of religious and spiritual expressions. Directions for future investigations of these two constructs are presented.
Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2020
Although many researchers in psychology, religious studies, and psychiatry recognize that there is overlap in the experiences their subjects recount, disciplinary silos and challenges involved in comparing reported experiences have left us with little understanding of the mechanisms, whether biological, psychological, and/or sociocultural, through which these experiences are represented and differentiated. So-called mystical experiences, which some psychologists view as potentially sui generis, provide a test case for assessing whether we can develop an expanded framework for studying unusual experiences across disciplines and cultures. Evidence for the special nature of “mystical experience” rests on the operationalization of a metaphysically untestable construct in two widely used self-report scales: the Mysticism Scale and the Mystical Experiences Questionnaire. Consideration of the construct in light of research on alterations in sense of self induced by psychoactive drugs and meditation practices suggests that “positive experiences of undifferentiated unity” are not sui generis, but rather a type of “ego dissolution.” To better understand the nature and effects of unusual experiences, such as alterations in the sense of self, we need self-report measures that distinguish between generically worded experiences and the way they are appraised in terms of valence, significance, cause, and long-term effects in different contexts.
2010 Presidential Address: "Religion" in the Humanities and the Humanities in the University
Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 2011
Two basic problems that scholars of religion routinely confrontspecifying an object of study and figuring out how to study it-can be construed as opportunities. Scholars of religion typically overcome the difficulties inherent in specifying their object of study by offering a stipulative definition. Doing so, however, artificially stabilizes our object of study and obscures what I believe we ought to be studying: the processes of valuation whereby people decide on the meaning of events and determine what matters most. If we take processes of valuation as our subject matter, we can use historical methods to track how those processes unfold over time in various domains. In addition, as a subject-oriented discipline, we have the luxury of exploring how the processes that lead to the formation of our instable subject matter work at different, albeit connected, levels of analysis. This is an ability that I think at least some scholars in subject-oriented disciplines can and should cultivate as a contribution to interdisciplinary collaborative projects. An analysis of the making of "religion" in the modern university is offered as an example of how we might track a process of valuation over time. A twentieth century (neo-Darwinian) perspective on evolution is offered as a framework for understanding processes of valuation at multiple levels of analysis. I WANT TO THANK Kwok Pui-lan for her introduction and especially for highlighting the different positions I have held and the roles
2007
The ambition of the present paper is to theorise processes of re-enchantment in the modern western world by drawing on Max Weber’s and Emile Durkheim’s classical sociological insights on modernity, meaning and religion. Our aim in doing so is not only to demonstrate how much the latter have to offer to such an analysis, but especially to argue for the need of a rejuvenation of sociology of religion by shrugging off its traditional Christian bias and going beyond its narrow focus on secularisation and religious decline.
2010 AAR Presidential Address: "Religion" in the Humanities and the Humanities in the University
Journal of the American Academy of Religion 79/2, 287-314., 2011
Two basic problems that scholars of religion routinely confront— specifying an object of study and figuring out how to study it—can be construed as opportunities. Scholars of religion typically overcome the difficulties inherent in specifying their object of study by offering a stipulative definition. Doing so, however, artificially stabilizes our object of study and obscures what I believe we ought to be studying: the processes of valuation whereby people decide on the meaning of events and determine what matters most. If we take processes of valuation as our subject matter, we can use historical methods to track how those processes unfold over time in various domains. In addition, as a subject-oriented discipline, we have the luxury of exploring how the processes that lead to the formation of our instable subject matter work at different, albeit connected, levels of analysis. This is an ability that I think at least some scholars in subject-oriented disciplines can and should cultivate as a contribution to interdisciplinary collaborative projects. An analysis of the making of “religion” in the modern university is offered as an example of how we might track a process of valuation over time. A twentieth century (neo- Darwinian) perspective on evolution is offered as a framework for understanding processes of valuation at multiple levels of analysis.
Christianity and the Material, Medieval to Modern
2020
Quite recently it was said that the humanities and social sciences had taken a “linguistic turn.” Today a “material turn” has taken place, perhaps in reaction to the ruling post-structuralism of the 1980s and 1990s, or as an extension of post-modern approaches. The dangers posed by human-induced climate change and the success of cognitive-scientific subdisciplines that address consciousness, social interaction, and communication run parallel to “new materialists” across numerous disciplines in the humanities and social sciences (archeologists, anthropologists, and historians of art, architecture, science, and religion) intent on turning an earlier anthropocentrism on its head. These new materialists experiment with sometimes extreme views of material agency, even while they examine symbolic systems in past and present, thus approaching “culture” as “human behavioral ecology” or pursuing “cognitive archeology” – with methods that presuppose the physical co-dependence of human reflect...
Experience as Site of Contested Meaning and Value: The Attributional Dog and Its Special Tail
Religion 40, 317-323, 2010
Religious Experience Reconsidered was premised on the idea that experience is a site of contested meaning and value for subjects (and scholars). Although the concept of specialness has drawn considerable attention, my goal in writing the book was to update efforts to use attribution theory to bridge between religious studies and the psychology of religion. I intended the focus on micro-social processes to complement analysis at the macro-social level. The need for a broader, more generic second order term, such as specialness, emerged in the context of working out an attributional approach and can and should be extended more broadly. While anything can be set apart as special and an analysis of the politics of deeming is essential, we can still ask if there is empirical evidence to suggest that humans are more likely to set some things apart than others within or across cultures. When we take experience as a site for study, we do not have to limit ourselves to describing the range of views held by our subjects, but can also legitimately seek to explain experience in terms that make sense to us as researchers. The breaking of taboos against explaining experience in naturalistic terms will only have apocalyptic consequences if we assume a special/ordinary binary; viewed on a continuum, we can still find special meaning and value in experiences that are not protected by taboos.
In G. Larsson, J. Svensson & A. Nordin (Eds.), An Introduction to the Building Block Approach to Religion: Critical Applications and Future Prospects. Equinox Publishing (forthcoming)., 2019
In this chapter, I present an empirical and methodological example of an interdisciplinary study on religious cognition that is much aligned with the building blocks approach suggested by Taves and Asprem (2017). While autism is the focal point of the research project, the study also highlights a generational shift in the ascription of non-ordinary powers, which in these millennials appears to depart from occult phenomena in Western popular culture; termed 'occulture' by Christopher Partridge (2004, 2005). Besides illustrating how emic ascriptions of things set apart from the ordinary may vary between different generations, the chapter also provides a multilevel model of how unusual embodied experiences – which appear to be especially prevalent on the autism spectrum – are understood in terms of occult schemas derived from popular culture.