Material Religion Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

An understanding of religion as a practice of mediation has great potential to open up new methods and theories for a critical study of religion. Leading beyond the privileged medium of the text, this understanding approaches religion as a multi-media phenomenon that mobilizes the full sensorium. The central point of this article is that forms of visual culture are a prime medium of religion, and studying them offers deep insights into the genesis of worlds of lived experience. Pictorial media streamline and sustain religious notions of the visible and the invisible and involve embodied practices of seeing that shape what and how people see. Discussing the implications of the “pictorial turn” for the study of religion, I argue that a more synthesized approach is needed that draws these fields together. The methodological and theoretical implications of this approach are exemplified by turning to my research on video and representations of the “spiritual” in Southern Ghana.

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- Visual Studies, Visual Culture, Ghana, Method and Theory in the Study of Religion

با شیوع کووید-19 در اواخر سال 1398، برای جلوگیری از شیوع بیماری، اماکن مقدس و مناسک جمعی در اکثر نقاط دنیا، و نیز ایران، برای مدتی نامعلوم تعطیل شد. از جمله مقاصد زیارتی همچون مشهد که از محبوب‌ترین زیارتگاه‌های ایرانیان بودند دسترس‌ناپذیر شدند. این وضعیت تجربه‌ای را برای زائران ایرانی ایجاد کرد که پیش‌تر در حافظۀ جمعی و دین زیستۀ ایرانیان معاصر بی‌سابقه بود. این شرایط، مرزهای امر قدسی و عرفی، و محدودۀ عاملیت امر قدسی و عرفی را به‌شدت مسئله‌مند کرد. با توجه به اینکه چنین رخداد و تجربه‌ای در مطالعات جامعه‌شناسی دین در ایران تا کنون مورد بررسی قرار نگرفته، در پژوهش حاضر، ضمن تحلیل 14 مصاحبۀ نیمه‌ساخت‌یافته، تجربۀ زائران مستمر از امر قدسیِ تجسدیافته در مکان مقدس در زمانی واکاوی شد که مکان مقدس به دلیل شیوع بلای طبیعی تهدیدکنندۀ بقا به مدت نامعلومی رسماً از دسترس خارج شده بود. در این پژوهش سه موضع متفاوت در برابر تعطیلی حرم در بین مشارکت‌کنندگان شناسایی شد: موافقان، مخالفان، و مخالفان محافظه‌کار. بررسی تجربۀ عاطفی مشارکت‌کنندگان حاکی است آنها عواطف متناقضی را تجربه کردند. در بررسی مواجهۀ شناختی مشارکت‌کنندگانمشخص شدموافقان تعطیلی حرم در برخورد با ناهماهنگی شناختی و تهدید هویت دیندارانه‌شان راهبردهایی را اتخاذ کردند که عمدتاً بر بازتعریف، بازتفسیر، گزینش، و برجسته‌سازی بعضی خوانش‌های الهیاتی و فقهی در مقابل برخی دیگر از خوانش‌ها و فهم‌ها بود به طوری که بتوانند چالش‌های فوق برای دینداری‌شان را حل و فصل و تعدیل کنند. اقلیت مخالفان، با تفسیری تقدیرگرایانه، حکومت و موافقان تعطیلی را به اصیل و صادق نبودن در ارادت به امام و محافظه‌کاری / مصلحت‌اندیشی سیاسی متهم می‌کردند. معدود مخالفان محافظه‌کار نیز به دلیل اهمیت و جهۀ جهانی و سیاسی حکومت شیعی، به رغم نارضایتی، این مصلحت‌اندیشی را درک می‌کردند. در نهایت، مواجهۀ عملی زائران با این ممنوعیت توصیف شده است.

- by somayeh varshoe
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- Sociology of Religion, Pilgrimage, Material Religion
- by Daan Beekers
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- Christianity, Material Religion, Religious Heritage, Erfgoedstudies

In Clothing as Devotion in Contemporary Hinduism, Urmila Mohan explores the materiality and visuality of cloth and clothing as devotional media in contemporary Hinduism. Drawing upon ethnographic research into the global missionizing group “International Society for Krishna Consciousness” (ISKCON), she studies translocal spaces of worship, service, education, and daily life in the group’s headquarters in Mayapur and other parts of India. Focusing on the actions and values of deity dressmaking, devotee clothing and paraphernalia, Mohan shows how activities, such as embroidery and chanting, can be understood as techniques of spirituality, reverence, allegiance—and she proposes the new term “efficacious intimacy” to help understand these complex processes. The monograph brings theoretical advances in Anglo- European material culture and material religion studies into a conversation with South Asian anthropology, sociology, art history, and religion. Ultimately, it demonstrates how embodied interactions as well as representations shape ISKCON’s practitioners as devout subjects, while connecting them with the divine and the wider community.

- by Urmila Mohan
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- Performance Studies, Material culture of religion, Anthropology Of Art, Embroidery
- by Tim Hutchings
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- Religion, Sociology of Religion, Atheism, Museum Studies

Als Mitte der 1950er Jahre Dag Hammarskjöld im UN-Hauptquartier in New York mit dem " Room of Quiet " einen Meditationsraum errichteten ließ, war dies ein Novum. 1 Zunehmend fand dieser Raumtyp jedoch Nachfolger, boomte seit den 1990er und fand einen (vorläufigen?) Höhepunkt zur Jahrtausendwende. Die Funktion dieser Räume ist überall die gleiche: Sie alle dienen der individuellen Besinnung und dem (meist stillen) Gebet, ihre Bezeichnung ist allerdings so uneinheitlich wie ihre architektonische Gestaltung, ihr ‚Seelsorge'-Konzept und 1 Auf Wunsch des damaligen UN-Generalsekretär Dag Hammerskjöld wurde 1954 in Zusammenarbeit mit einer Gruppe von Christen, Juden und Muslimen ein Raum der Stille im UN-Hauptquartier initiiert, der 1957 fertig gestellt wurde. Neben der Stil prägenden Gestaltung des Raumes (ein V-förmig zulaufender, indirekt beleuchteter Raum, an dessen Stirnseite sich ein abstraktes Wandbild des schwedischen Künstlers Bo Beskow und in des-sen Mitte ein massiver rechteckiger Eisenstein befindet, der durch einen Scheinwerfer von oben angestrahlt wird), sind es vor allem die Intention und die Begründung dieses Raumes, die Ausstrahlungskraft für die Errichtung anderer Räume ausübte. " We all have within us a center of stillness surrounded by silence. This house, dedicated to work and debate in the service of peace, should have one room dedicated to silence in the outward sense and stillness in the inner sense… the stone in the middle of the room has more to tell us. We may see it as an altar, empty not because there is no God, not because it is an altar to an unknown god, but because it is dedicated to the God whom man worships under many names and in many forms "

- by Stefanie Duttweiler
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- Sociology of Religion, Architecture, Material Religion, Religionssoziologie

For the published version, see Adam Bursi, "Mijn poep, mijn zelf. Identiteit en religie door de lens van ontlasting," in Wie is er bang voor religie? Waarom kennis van religie belangrijk is, ed. Joas Wagemakers and Lucien van Liere (Almere: Parthenon, 2019), 246-252. Please be aware that the published and the preprint version are not 100% the same. This preprint version is deposited under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC) licence. This means that anyone may distribute, adapt, and build upon the work for non-commercial purposes, subject to full attribution.

"Der Körper eines gefolterten Mannes ist seit dem 11ten Jh. visueller und affektiver Mittelpunkt des lateinischen Christentums. Die Darstellbarkeit des Christuskörpers ist gleichzeitig ein altes Streitthema und verweist auf das zentrale Thema der abendländischen Religionsgeschichte - die Fleischwerdung Gottes. Am Beispiel philippinischer Selbstkreuzigungsrituale und der Faszinationsgeschichte des Turiner Grabtuchs untersuche ich Obsessionen, die sich auf die Materialität des Christuskörpers richten und ihn nicht, wie theologisch üblich, metaphorisch und symbolisch entleiben.
Diese bis in die Gegenwart anhaltende Leidenschaft am tatsächlichen Fleisch und Blut Christi und an der Physiologie seiner Schmerzen ist weder archaischer Restbestand noch entstammt sie dem „Untergrund“ katholischer Frömmigkeit (Daxelmüller). Sie folgt vielmehr einer immanent angelegten Logik dieser Religion, die eben ohne die Gründungserzählung von Folter, erlittenem Schmerz, Hinrichtung und leibhaftiger Wiederauferstehung nicht denkbar ist. Die Heilsbotschaft dieser Religion ist untrennbar mit dem menschlichen Körper verbunden. Überdies erzeugt die Behauptung der Doppelnatur Christi eine stete Spannung zwischen Körper und Bild, zwischen unsichtbarem und sichtbarem Körper, und wirkt jenseits der Religionsgeschichte auf vielfältige Konfigurationen europäischer Geistes- und Kulturgeschichte. "

This article is a case study of a lay Buddhist community that employs a business model called “living hall” (Shenghuo guan 生活馆) to facilitate the practice of Tibetan Buddhism among its members. The living hall model is explored in the context of the politics of religion in the People’s Republic of China (prc) and the dynamics of Tibetan Buddhism among Han Chinese in the past decades. The author investigates the model’s origin, its implementation in a contemporary Buddhist community, and its interaction with the discourse on Buddhism in the prc. The article joins a recent academic endeavor to illuminate the different modalities in which lay practitioners carry out Buddhist practice outside the sphere of institutionalized Buddhism. The article sheds light on the delicate dynamics between religion and state control in the prc and the role of entrepreneurs and materiality within lay Tibetan Buddhism.

- by Kai Shmushko
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- Buddhism, Chinese Buddhism, Contemporary Religion, Anthropology of China

The purpose of this article is to illustrate and assess Chidester’s use of the ‘senses’ as an analytical term in his study of religion. Under ‘senses’ Chidester includes not only the five conventional senses of Aristotle, but also analyzes metaphorical uses of the senses in religious discourse, the visions and dreams of mystics and shamans, and eventually new media as extensions of the human senses. Chidester’s analysis of the senses in European Christian discourses on the one hand, and in colonial and postcolonial African indigenous religion and imperial religious studies on the other hand, is compared and assessed. Although he does not offer a systematic comparison of these case studies, I argue that his analysis lends itself to an explicit comparison of the senses as material aspects of religion and show how his contextualized and historically nuanced analysis of the senses in religion and religious studies informs a critical study of religion. Since critical assumes judgment, values need to be explicated in terms of critical theories, which in my view need further elaboration.

The human body serves as a symbolic bridge between communities of the living and the divine. This is clearly evident in mythological stories that recount the creation of humans by deities within ancient and contemporaneous societies across a very broad geographical environment.
In certain circumstances, parts of selected humans can become an ideal proxy for connecting with the supernatural, as demonstrated by the cult of human skulls in Near Eastern Neolithic communities, as well as the cult of relics of Christian saints from the early Christian era.
To go deeper into this topic, this volume aims to undertake a cross-cultural investigation of the role played by both humans and human remains in creating forms of relationality with the divine in antiquity. Such an approach will highlight how the human body can be envisioned as part of a broader materialization of religious beliefs that is based on connecting different realms of materiality in the perception of the supernatural by communities of the living.

- by nicola laneri
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- Religion, Archaeology, Material Culture Studies, Material culture of religion
- by Petra Carlsson Redell
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- Theology, Michel Foucault, Material Religion, Non-representational theory

The Wicker Man (1973) demonstrates how religious authority can be dismantled and deconstructed once we enter another space. In this regard, space once again refers to the politics of a concrete geographical space informing and... more

- by Tim Bouwhuis
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- Semiotics, Legitimacy and Authority, Protestantism, Material Religion

In an attempt to assist postgraduate students in the production of new knowledge about religion and religions David Chidester (2013:5-7) has offered for more than a decade a compulsory course on critical concepts at the University of Cape Town. In order to produce 'new' or 'original' knowledge in religious studies students are encouraged to 'look at something new in an old way' or to 'look at something old in a new way', but are simultaneously advised that a mere 'looking at' religious phenomena would not produce new knowledge. New knowledge in religious studies, Chidester (2013:6) is convinced, would be produced, when our analyses, arguments, interpretations and explanations are 'theoretically informed and methodologically rigorous'.
In this presentation I will take a critical 'look at' Chidester's theoretically informed use of 'the fetish' as a concept that has guided his own search for new knowledge on religion and religions, select case studies from his oeuvre to illustrate his use and application of this analytical term and identify a tension in his work that I will argue need further elaboration.

Relics play a major role in the devotional practice of millions around the world, regardless of religion. This essay sought to convey an understanding of how relics were used within Christianity and Islam, not so much as to evaluate their uses, but to communicate the method and purpose of use, and the history which informs them. Initially, the essay established the scholarly definition and boundaries of relic study, establishing a groundwork from which to begin understanding relic uses. Then, the historical and contemporary use of relics in Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy and Protestantism were examined to provide an insight into the history of relics within Christianity and the attitudes surrounding them. This same approach was replicated for Islamic traditions, focusing on Sunnism, Shi’ism and Sufism. It was found that despite playing fundamentally different roles in each religion theologically, both religions demonstrated a striking similarity in how their respective traditions use and debate relics.

- by Cam Basile
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- Medieval Islam, Material Religion, Eschatology, Medieval Christianity
- by Shih-shan Susan Huang 黃士珊
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- Buddhism, Print Culture, Daoism, Sinology

In Mountain, Water, Rock, God, Luke Whitmore situates the disastrous flooding that fell on the Hindu Himalayan shrine of Kedarnath in 2013 within a broader religious and ecological context. Whitmore explores the longer story of this powerful realm of the Hindu god Shiva through a holistic theoretical perspective that integrates phenomenological and systems-based approaches to the study of religion, pilgrimage, place, and ecology. He argues that close attention to places of religious significance offers a model for thinking through connections between ritual, narrative, climate destabilization, tourism, development, and disaster, and he shows how these critical components of human life in the twenty-first century intersect in the human experience of place.

- by David Haberman
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- Religion, Hinduism, Human Geography, Development Studies

This is the sixth chapter of 'Images of Mithra', a collaborative work written by members of the 'Empires of Faith Project' (2013-18, British Museum / University of Oxford). This chapter looks at the construction of a god by Antiochus I... more

- by Dominic Dalglish
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- Material Religion, Mithras, Greek and Roman Gods & Goddesses, Commagene

The Psychology of Place Attachment confirms the cognitive-emotional bond that humans, since early times, have with a specific place. A material place is not only shaped physically and psychologically/spiritually by its inhabitants, but it in turn also shapes them, as it mediates the meanings ascribed to it through its sensuous presence. Appreciating Ps 128 through the "readerly lens" of place attachment (also as part of the ma' a alôt-collection and Psalter as a whole), it was found that the poet(s) of this wisdom (-Torah ethical) psalm intuitively grasped the psychological benefits that a place exerts on its inhabitants. The experiences of memory, belonging, positive emotions, privacy and reflection, comfort and security, entertainment and aesthetics are reflected in the psalm. Both the small, intimate household and larger community Zion/Jerusalem, mediate Yahweh's presence and blessing, also as a retributive response to a wise lifestyle. Zion/Jerusalem and all it encompasses, become the centre of the universe, the place par excellence for a fulfilled life.

- by Hendrik Viviers
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- Place Attachment, Material Religion

This essay draws on recent archaeological research into domestic religion and magic throughout the Roman Empire in order to explain the significance of a handful of paintings and statues of gladiators in Pompeii from locations beyond the amphitheatre. I demonstrate that these images are limited to transitional spaces – immediately next to front doorways or in the corridor leading to the apodyterium of the Suburban Baths – often in combination with a household shrine. Like the phallic, animal, and martial imagery decorating other entrances in Pompeii – or many less conspicuous rituals around Mediterranean doorways, which I briefly survey – I argue that these figures must be understood in the context of a desire to prevent intruders from crossing the threshold. The particular scene of the end of the gladiatorial combat was suitable for placement near doorways, as opposed to other images of gladiators, precisely because it implicated viewers in a moment of uncertainty. The protective power of these images was reactivated by pedestrians recalling past experiences at the arena, when the life of a gladiator had been spared – or not – and being briefly reminded, even if only subconsciously, of the potential for danger and threats ahead.

- by Joe Sheppard
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- Magic, Pompeii (Archaeology), Material Religion, Gladiators

In this article I consider the ways in which shrine building, adornment, and the resulting experience of secrecy that emanates from shrines supports the building of new transnational networks and diasporas that are beginning to encourage a conceptual expansion of the African-Atlantic world. To achieve this I focus on how strategic choices in ritual flexibility and experimentation in shrine-building work to support the transnationalization of religions such as Vodún as they move from space to space, and how the religion's material culture and repertoire re-localize as social and national spaces shift. In so doing, I argue that processes of secrecy, which in Vodún are typically tethered to religious objects such as shrines, encourage -instead of restrict -the global expansion of West African religions.

- by Timothy Landry
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- Africa, Material Religion, Benin, Anthropology of Religion

This paper explores the architecture and sculpture of Jackson Hlungwani's New Jerusalem site at Mbhokota in the Limpopo Province in South Africa, against the background of the theology, architecture, and art of the African independent churches in South Africa, The paper examines Hlungwani's idiosyncratic approach to Christianity and its manifestation in a reworking of ancient stone ruins and the production of an entirely individual body of sculpture. It demonstrates how Hlungwani marries aspects of his Tsonga tradition with biblical imagery, and suggests that it was this marriage that enabled Hlungwani to reconcile the sale of his sculpture with his religious beiiefs. The paper also establishes that Hlungwani's iconography is completely independent of orthodox Christian dogmas and is created in the context of an awareness of "art."

- by Anitra Nettleton
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- Material Religion
- by Shih-shan Susan Huang 黃士珊
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- Religion, Illustrations, Medical Imaging, Globalization
- by Peter Doll
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- Material Religion

The paper is scheduled to be published as a chapter in a collection in 2017

- by Evgeny Grishin
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- Material Religion, Material Culture, Russian Old Believers, Russian icons
- by Shih-shan Susan Huang 黃士珊
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- Archaeology, Illustrations, Art History, Visualization

This second part of the study of Daoist seals focuses on types, building on Wang Yucheng’s earlier studies. They come in four: 1) seal script; 2) heavenly scripts; 3) talisman-inspired; and 4) graphic. The underlining criterion is the Daoist strategy of image-making: it sheds light on the interlocking relationship of Daoist texts and images. The first type is purely script-based, while the fourth is purely graphic. Between the two is the core zone of Daoist visual culture as it blends image with text.

- by Shih-shan Susan Huang 黃士珊
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- Print Culture, Art History, Medieval History, Daoism

Derived from Latin ex voto suscepto “in pursuance of a vow,” an ex voto embodies the hopes, dreams, and anxieties of the person who deposits it. Almost anything, regardless of size, weight, form, or original function, can become a votive... more

- by Ittai Weinryb
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- Religion, Art History, Material Culture Studies, Material culture of religion

Gemeinschaftliche und individuelle Erfahrungen in den Bereichen der Kunst und der Religion werden oft als »unaussprechlich« erlebt und beschrieben, als unmittelbar und gleichzeitig, als schwankend und flüchtig. Sie überschreiten die Ordnung von Raum und Zeit – und sind doch bedingt durch die konkreten rituellen Dimensionen der Auf- und Ausführungen und des sinnlichen (aisthetischen) Erlebens. Die interdisziplinären Beiträge des Bandes widmen sich diesen Erfahrungen und ihren Repräsentationen in verschiedenen Medien wie z.B. Tanz, Musik und Film und fragen besonders nach transkulturellen Dimensionen. Zentrales Beispiel ist dabei die Schnittstelle zwischen Deutschland und Südasien.

Because of its material characteristics, the sonic poses a challenge to the influential paradigm of religion as mediation. This article makes a case for a neo-phenomenological analytic of atmospheres in order to do justice to the sonic in anthropological approaches to religion. Approaching the sonic as atmospheric half-things, I propose a different understanding of religious mediation from the one developed in contexts where images, objects, and technical media dominate. Based on research on the recitation of Urdu devotional poetry among Mauritian Muslims, it is suggested that sonic religion does not function as a stable in-between connecting humans and the divine. Instead, it operates through processes of resonant bundling, intertwining different strands of lived experience, including religious traditions.

- by Uri Kaplan
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- Buddhism, Material Culture Studies, Buddhist Studies, Material culture of religion

In recent years, the “material turn” has gained prominence in the humanities and social sciences, and it has also stimulated a shift toward a rediscovery of materiality in the scientific study of religion\s. The material turn aims to dissolve conventional dichotomies and, by emphasizing the concept of assemblage, insists that humans and things are fundamentally co-constitutive. This “New Materialism” addresses ontological alterity, and it radically decenters static anthropocentric arrangements and the position of the human subject as such. The insider–outsider distinction, however, as well as the emic–etic categorization, is based on fundamental dichotomies between the researcher and the researched, and between descriptive and analytical understandings of human beings. This article discusses the possibility and significance of a non-anthropocentric approach to religion, and examines to what extent it is analytically helpful to apply the insider–outsider and emic–etic distinctions while pursuing the goal of dissolving hierarchical and binary thinking. It furthermore argues that these issues can be properly answered only with reference to their methodological implications.

- by Peter J. Bräunlein
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- Posthumanism, Material Religion, Religious Studies, New Materialism

Two topics of current critical interest, agency and materiality, are here explored in the context of their intersection with the divine. Specific case studies, emphasizing the ancient Near East but including treatments also of the European Middle Ages and ancient Greece, elucidate the nature and implications of this intersection: What is the relationship between the divine and the particular matter or physical form in which it is materially represented or mentally visualized? How do sacral or divine "things" act, and what is the source and nature of their agency? How might we productively define and think about anthropomorphism in relation to the divine? What is the relationship between the mental and the material image, and between the categories of object and image, image and likeness, and likeness and representation? Drawing on a broad range of written and pictorial sources, this volume is a novel contribution to the contemporary discourse on the functioning and communicative potential of the material and materialized divine as it is developing in the fields of anthropology, art history, and the history and cognitive science of religion.

This chapter investigates religious commemorative culture that has sprung up in Belarus in the wake of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. More specifically, it focuses on commemorative icons and religious artwork and how they are used in coming to grips with the consequences of radiation contamination. The author pays attention to the conflicting interpretations of the disaster and its proper commemoration by different individuals, interest groups, and religious institutions. According to her analysis, the struggles between various parties over legitimate representation pertain also to how gender comes to play in the imagery of Chernobyl icons and religious art.

- by Elena Romashko
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- Eastern European Studies, Gender Studies, Medical Anthropology, Iconography

An understanding of religion as a practice of mediation has great potential to open up new methods and theories for a critical study of religion. Leading beyond the privi- leged medium of the text, this understanding approaches religion as a multi-media phenomenon that mobilizes the full sensorium. The central point of this article is that forms of visual culture are a prime medium of religion, and studying them offers deep insights into the genesis of worlds of lived experience. Pictorial media streamline and sustain religious notions of the visible and the invisible and involve embodied prac- tices of seeing that shape what and how people see. Discussing the implications of the “pictorial turn” for the study of religion, I argue that a more synthesized approach is needed that draws these fields together. The methodological and theoretical implica- tions of this approach are exemplified by turning to my research on video and repre- sentations of the “spiritual” in Southern Ghana.

- by Birgit Meyer
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- Visual Studies, Visual Culture, Ghana, Film, Moving images

What is a relic? While the concept is largely subjective, it is primarily associated in Western thought with religious relics, mainly comprised of sacralised human remains. Meanwhile, the word ‘relic’ has also
become synonymous with the remains of past cultures, especially with those of a material nature. In this article the authors will discuss the nature of relics and research in this field, including the methods
and analyses employed, identifying areas for development and exploring the current outlook for future research.

- by Georges Kazan
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- Cultural Heritage, Medieval Archaeology, Archaeometry, Relics (Religion)
- by Fabio Rambelli
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- Japanese Religions, Material Religion, Material Culture
- by Joerg Ruepke
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- Cultural History, Roman History, Early Christianity, Roman Religion