Saturday, June 27, 2015
*Post-viva reflections 0
The viva was successful. I am both relieved and very happy about the outcome (no corrections). If my examiners ever come across this blog, I would like to again extend my deepest gratitude for their engagement with my thesis and for a very helpful, incisive, and critical discussion which was tremendously constructive. They made me think about issues that did not occur to me and I find this to be one of the greater gifts a senior scholar could give a junior. I'm still thinking about their questions.
Over the next couple posts, I'll try to revisit some of their questions and hopefully provide some better answers than what I have, perhaps not quite satisfactorily, articulated in person. I will be unlikely to remember all of them, such is the limitation of memory, but try to address the ones that have pinned a place in my thoughts:
Over the next couple posts, I'll try to revisit some of their questions and hopefully provide some better answers than what I have, perhaps not quite satisfactorily, articulated in person. I will be unlikely to remember all of them, such is the limitation of memory, but try to address the ones that have pinned a place in my thoughts:
- To provide a general overview of the thesis in one or two sentences
- Compatability between anthropological and philosophical methods
- The belief and acceptance distinction, and their characteristics, is somewhat arbitrary and also falls into the criticism about Christianity and the English language
- Why continue to use the term 'belief' as opposed to another term such as disposition or discourse
- Why use 'truth' as opposed to 'meaning', and how might they be related.
- Why these particular three case studies
- The case studies are quite old (50s & 90s), does that take anything away from my analysis of them
- belief within the context, "archaeology of knowledge", in each of these disciplines (anthropology, psychology, sociology)
- The relationship between memory, belief, and change over time
- further engagement with Bourdieu - how is my project any different
- The scholars, used in the thesis, were selected to suit my own purposes
- Reflexivity; where am I in this thesis (i.e. how has my own views colored the analysis and proposal for belief)
Wednesday, June 24, 2015
*Countdown reflections 6: Contribution
As part of an incoming class of scholars heading into a job market dominated by the increasingly corporatization of academia, which basically manhandle part-time and adjunct work to maximise their teaching on the dollar, I suppose it is good to reflect on my "contribution" to the field.
This question, while significantly vague and ambiguous enough to warrant one's own responses, could be answered in several ways but perhaps generalisable in two ways. The first is, I suppose, obsessed with the question of "impact" - something British academics know all too well about. This is a question about how one's work influences society, at various levels (local, national, international), and could involve questions about economics and questions of how does your work create "change." In many respects, this question forces a certain liberal agenda of "making a difference" in the world and fosters a weird "whtie saviour complex" as if people educated in the western world is going to go out in a missionary fashion and solve the world's problems. This kind of approach has been heavily criticized and various charities, NGOs have been limited in their success. In fact, some scholars have even argued that these organizations have actually done more damage than good in the areas they've sought to "impact."This places an undue pressure on academia and favours certain departments over others. At any rate, this would long turn into a critique of liberal romanticism structured by neoliberal economics. So, what is my "impact" in this line of thought? How does my work contribute to making an "impact" on the world?
The second way to interpret this question of contribution is to think in terms of the specific areas of one's discipline. For me, in answering this question I'll attempt to answer the above because I think they are interrelated. As I mentioned in the post 'on belief' within this series of 'countdown reflections', a strand of anthropological thought aims to get at the underlying structures of a society and/or culture. And in this capacity, I noted the significance of belief in relation to the consideration of social relations, networks, and broader social web that constructs the social structures by which we are not only intermingled between and amongst persons but in relation to institutions (laws, government, banks, hospitals, military etc. etc.). Within this context, I noted the significance of belief that emanates from and between these social relations and social structures. This fits within several of paradigms of thinking about anthropology - functionalist, structuralist, structural-functionalist, and more. However, because belief is poorly understood and the concept is flattened with regard to the evidence received - language, behaviour, etc. - the subtleties within and between persons, social relations, and social structures are often, in my view, overlooked. This does does an injustice to the complexities of persons and undermines our capacities for thought. This is, in some sense, cultural and conceptual violence to persons of various cultures by presuming a flat deterministic ontology. In this regard, understanding 'belief' in a more sophisticated fashion is necessary to understand the richer complexities of social structures.
This line of approach, for me, gets to an even more pressing social and cultural issue which relates to "impact" and my initial fascinations with religion - mentioned in an earlier post. The work I've done on belief, by exploring its various textures, makes a case for implicit biases and contributes another method - albeit related to many current projects - of investigating morality and ethics. This is an important area of research if we are to understand the structural and systemic prejudices, discriminations, and violences committed against persons of color, women, religious denominations, sexualities and working class persons. The implicit biases, as I argue in my thesis, are implicit beliefs. Those which people are not necessarily aware of but contribute to the reproduction of injustice, which construct a particular culture of power. This builds on Foucault's project to critique seemingly neutral institutions. For me, not only do we need to critique neutral, and not-so neutral, institutions (I would also include social movements here as well) but we must also understand their underlying cultures constituted by 'beliefs' that comprise the intersubjective space in social relations and structures that construct the neutral institutions. If these are not addressed properly, their recurrence is always possible if not inevitable. In other words, the impact by which this work aims to develop is to challenge and make evident the cultures of power that reproduce the structural inequities and further developing ways to address them (this is one of the reasons for focusing on the themes of 'crisis' and 'conversion' as points of investigation). Not only is this relevant to local and national contexts (in the issues mentioned above), but they are also relevant to what Keith Hart calls 'World Society' and what David Graeber refers to as a 'Planetary Bureaucracy'.
Thus far, scholars and activists have been very good at making connections in how social structures support one another to reproduce a culture of power that promotes discrimination, criminalization, and marginalization. This is evidenced by the work done on unveiling the systemic and structural biases established against persons of color - from media representations, police brutality, privatized profit driven prisons, the drug war, housing discrimination, immigration, medical, and judicial practices all of which are involved in complicit perpetuation of a biased network of structures; the civil machinery from slavery were not completely corrected/re-calibrated with civil rights. And because the underlying (residual) cultures of these practices are ill-exposed and under-investigated they continue to perpetuate themselves while we distractingly engage in rhetorical and discursive practices. Simply making the connections between institutions and their relationships are no longer sufficient. The implicit biases substantiating moral codes of justification and the cultures of practice/power must be understood and gutted.
This question, while significantly vague and ambiguous enough to warrant one's own responses, could be answered in several ways but perhaps generalisable in two ways. The first is, I suppose, obsessed with the question of "impact" - something British academics know all too well about. This is a question about how one's work influences society, at various levels (local, national, international), and could involve questions about economics and questions of how does your work create "change." In many respects, this question forces a certain liberal agenda of "making a difference" in the world and fosters a weird "whtie saviour complex" as if people educated in the western world is going to go out in a missionary fashion and solve the world's problems. This kind of approach has been heavily criticized and various charities, NGOs have been limited in their success. In fact, some scholars have even argued that these organizations have actually done more damage than good in the areas they've sought to "impact."This places an undue pressure on academia and favours certain departments over others. At any rate, this would long turn into a critique of liberal romanticism structured by neoliberal economics. So, what is my "impact" in this line of thought? How does my work contribute to making an "impact" on the world?
The second way to interpret this question of contribution is to think in terms of the specific areas of one's discipline. For me, in answering this question I'll attempt to answer the above because I think they are interrelated. As I mentioned in the post 'on belief' within this series of 'countdown reflections', a strand of anthropological thought aims to get at the underlying structures of a society and/or culture. And in this capacity, I noted the significance of belief in relation to the consideration of social relations, networks, and broader social web that constructs the social structures by which we are not only intermingled between and amongst persons but in relation to institutions (laws, government, banks, hospitals, military etc. etc.). Within this context, I noted the significance of belief that emanates from and between these social relations and social structures. This fits within several of paradigms of thinking about anthropology - functionalist, structuralist, structural-functionalist, and more. However, because belief is poorly understood and the concept is flattened with regard to the evidence received - language, behaviour, etc. - the subtleties within and between persons, social relations, and social structures are often, in my view, overlooked. This does does an injustice to the complexities of persons and undermines our capacities for thought. This is, in some sense, cultural and conceptual violence to persons of various cultures by presuming a flat deterministic ontology. In this regard, understanding 'belief' in a more sophisticated fashion is necessary to understand the richer complexities of social structures.
This line of approach, for me, gets to an even more pressing social and cultural issue which relates to "impact" and my initial fascinations with religion - mentioned in an earlier post. The work I've done on belief, by exploring its various textures, makes a case for implicit biases and contributes another method - albeit related to many current projects - of investigating morality and ethics. This is an important area of research if we are to understand the structural and systemic prejudices, discriminations, and violences committed against persons of color, women, religious denominations, sexualities and working class persons. The implicit biases, as I argue in my thesis, are implicit beliefs. Those which people are not necessarily aware of but contribute to the reproduction of injustice, which construct a particular culture of power. This builds on Foucault's project to critique seemingly neutral institutions. For me, not only do we need to critique neutral, and not-so neutral, institutions (I would also include social movements here as well) but we must also understand their underlying cultures constituted by 'beliefs' that comprise the intersubjective space in social relations and structures that construct the neutral institutions. If these are not addressed properly, their recurrence is always possible if not inevitable. In other words, the impact by which this work aims to develop is to challenge and make evident the cultures of power that reproduce the structural inequities and further developing ways to address them (this is one of the reasons for focusing on the themes of 'crisis' and 'conversion' as points of investigation). Not only is this relevant to local and national contexts (in the issues mentioned above), but they are also relevant to what Keith Hart calls 'World Society' and what David Graeber refers to as a 'Planetary Bureaucracy'.
Thus far, scholars and activists have been very good at making connections in how social structures support one another to reproduce a culture of power that promotes discrimination, criminalization, and marginalization. This is evidenced by the work done on unveiling the systemic and structural biases established against persons of color - from media representations, police brutality, privatized profit driven prisons, the drug war, housing discrimination, immigration, medical, and judicial practices all of which are involved in complicit perpetuation of a biased network of structures; the civil machinery from slavery were not completely corrected/re-calibrated with civil rights. And because the underlying (residual) cultures of these practices are ill-exposed and under-investigated they continue to perpetuate themselves while we distractingly engage in rhetorical and discursive practices. Simply making the connections between institutions and their relationships are no longer sufficient. The implicit biases substantiating moral codes of justification and the cultures of practice/power must be understood and gutted.
Tuesday, June 23, 2015
*Countdown reflections 5: Method
The investigation of 'belief' is wrought with issues that present concern for method. One of the primary tasks which a methodology in the study of religion, and in my case belief in particular (unless you are taking Christianity as the object of study), should address is the discussion of overcoming a Christian bias in how we think about 'religion'. In my case, this becomes an endeavour of asking how do we shed these overtones in order to employ 'belief' as an analytical concept for the study of religion? Undoubtedly, this is also an issue implicit with the problems of language.
If we confine the study of 'belief' to the domain of 'religion', and speak only about 'religious belief', the concept becomes particularly eurocentric or rather christocentric. The semantic transformations and its etymology have been well-documented and investigated by anthropologists like Rodney Needham, Malcolm Ruel, and Talal Asad - all of which I give considerable attention to in my disertation. And of course, there are many others who have engaged in this endeavour as well (e.g. Pouillon) and have made significant contributions to the study of religion. I won't rehash the arguments here but simply note that the term 'belief' has had a particularly Christian history during its tenure in the English language and its etymological roots.
As a consequence, noted in the previous post, employing the term 'belief' to describe the attitudes of a non-Christian religion can pepper the study and subtly, if not implicitly, into a Christian model and potentially misrepresent the religion and persons. This creates a demand to find a non-religious concept of 'belief' and how to describe 'belief' in religious contexts. In other words, 'belief' needs to be divorced from its Christian background to be a viable concept for analysis.
The methodology I adopt for my dissertation is dialogical and experimental with the aim of building interdisciplinary bridges. While 'belief' is the dissertation's focus, the broader aim is to develop a bridge between philosophy and the social sciences for their mutual exchange and complementarity; an exercise in commensurability.
It would be superficial to simply conduct a compare and contrast between disciplines. By drawing anthropology, philosophy, and psychology, the dialogical method requires historical context into the disciplines and the key figures who have shaped their respective contexts. In this regard, I take a historical approach to the development of their respective content. In anthropology, and focusing particularly on the anthropology of religion, I start with the problematization of 'belief' - part of which I've described above. Metaphorically, this identifies the "dirty bathwater." Due to the problematic issues with 'belief' in the study of religion, there have been calls for its abandonment (notably Needham). But I think this would be mistake: we should not throw out the baby with the bathwater. And claiming that because 'belief' is a particularly euro-christocentric construct does not render the concept void but rather 'belief' cannot afford to hold its religious connotations as a concept for analysis - also mentioned above.
In order to do this, I bring the anthropological discussion of problematizing 'belief' and its recent proposals into discussion with epistemology as a way of taking 'belief' out of a religious context and consider its place within the study of knowledge broadly construed. I found this to be a fruitful endeavour in bringing nuance and texture to the bulky and singular way in which belief has been deployed in the study of religion. That is, epistemology (specifically the belief-acceptance distinction) becomes useful for its analytic capacities for discernment and not its tendency for normative claims of what is justified or unjustified and how people should or ought to believe. This is not, however, to say that epistemology - apart from its penchant for normative judgment - is without its own concerns and I won't go into my qualms with analytic philosophy here but merely note that the epistemology that I introduce is a bit stale; static. There is, however, room for development. At which point, contemporary models of thinking in dual-process models - most famously advocated by Daniel Kahnemann, which I also think is correct in light of my previous work on the self - and the paradigm of embodiment and habitus are important to grasp a richer and more sophisticated account of 'belief.' I avoid the historical discussion on epistemology for two reasons. First, I am only using the distinction and its analytic capacities for discernment; a form of heuristic to engage in dialogue with anthropology. Secondly, to review the historical trajectory of 'belief' within the epistemological landscape would make the dissertation a philosophical/historical project. Moreover, the historical dimension is superseded by the advancements in cognitive science and cognitive psychology.
From the dialogue between anthropology and epistemology, there are common concerns. Primarily in the way of the commonly observed trait of belief's capacity to be inconsistent. This immediately invokes the theory of cognitive dissonance. However, much like the anthropology of religion, to avoid a superficial extraction I engage with its historical development and how the theory has advanced over the past sixty plus years. Cognitive dissonance has developed in significant ways that are, in all likelihood, lost on many who may employ it today. The dialogue between anthropology and epistemology thereby introduces a third party in social psychology to the discussion of belief.
The combination of these disciplines, in my view, brings an insightful way to consider the investigation of 'belief' in religious and non-religious contexts. This brings me to my second point of method: experimental. In order to make the dialogical work useful, it must also be applicable. In this regard, I propose that we focus on the themes of 'crisis' and 'conversion' primarily because they present a dynamic of cognitive and social change. After exploring these themes in their disciplinary discussions (anthropology and psychology), I focus on them in three particular, and quite different, case studies to "test" and "experiment" with application and viability of understanding 'belief' in a more fruitful manner.
If we confine the study of 'belief' to the domain of 'religion', and speak only about 'religious belief', the concept becomes particularly eurocentric or rather christocentric. The semantic transformations and its etymology have been well-documented and investigated by anthropologists like Rodney Needham, Malcolm Ruel, and Talal Asad - all of which I give considerable attention to in my disertation. And of course, there are many others who have engaged in this endeavour as well (e.g. Pouillon) and have made significant contributions to the study of religion. I won't rehash the arguments here but simply note that the term 'belief' has had a particularly Christian history during its tenure in the English language and its etymological roots.
As a consequence, noted in the previous post, employing the term 'belief' to describe the attitudes of a non-Christian religion can pepper the study and subtly, if not implicitly, into a Christian model and potentially misrepresent the religion and persons. This creates a demand to find a non-religious concept of 'belief' and how to describe 'belief' in religious contexts. In other words, 'belief' needs to be divorced from its Christian background to be a viable concept for analysis.
The methodology I adopt for my dissertation is dialogical and experimental with the aim of building interdisciplinary bridges. While 'belief' is the dissertation's focus, the broader aim is to develop a bridge between philosophy and the social sciences for their mutual exchange and complementarity; an exercise in commensurability.
It would be superficial to simply conduct a compare and contrast between disciplines. By drawing anthropology, philosophy, and psychology, the dialogical method requires historical context into the disciplines and the key figures who have shaped their respective contexts. In this regard, I take a historical approach to the development of their respective content. In anthropology, and focusing particularly on the anthropology of religion, I start with the problematization of 'belief' - part of which I've described above. Metaphorically, this identifies the "dirty bathwater." Due to the problematic issues with 'belief' in the study of religion, there have been calls for its abandonment (notably Needham). But I think this would be mistake: we should not throw out the baby with the bathwater. And claiming that because 'belief' is a particularly euro-christocentric construct does not render the concept void but rather 'belief' cannot afford to hold its religious connotations as a concept for analysis - also mentioned above.
In order to do this, I bring the anthropological discussion of problematizing 'belief' and its recent proposals into discussion with epistemology as a way of taking 'belief' out of a religious context and consider its place within the study of knowledge broadly construed. I found this to be a fruitful endeavour in bringing nuance and texture to the bulky and singular way in which belief has been deployed in the study of religion. That is, epistemology (specifically the belief-acceptance distinction) becomes useful for its analytic capacities for discernment and not its tendency for normative claims of what is justified or unjustified and how people should or ought to believe. This is not, however, to say that epistemology - apart from its penchant for normative judgment - is without its own concerns and I won't go into my qualms with analytic philosophy here but merely note that the epistemology that I introduce is a bit stale; static. There is, however, room for development. At which point, contemporary models of thinking in dual-process models - most famously advocated by Daniel Kahnemann, which I also think is correct in light of my previous work on the self - and the paradigm of embodiment and habitus are important to grasp a richer and more sophisticated account of 'belief.' I avoid the historical discussion on epistemology for two reasons. First, I am only using the distinction and its analytic capacities for discernment; a form of heuristic to engage in dialogue with anthropology. Secondly, to review the historical trajectory of 'belief' within the epistemological landscape would make the dissertation a philosophical/historical project. Moreover, the historical dimension is superseded by the advancements in cognitive science and cognitive psychology.
From the dialogue between anthropology and epistemology, there are common concerns. Primarily in the way of the commonly observed trait of belief's capacity to be inconsistent. This immediately invokes the theory of cognitive dissonance. However, much like the anthropology of religion, to avoid a superficial extraction I engage with its historical development and how the theory has advanced over the past sixty plus years. Cognitive dissonance has developed in significant ways that are, in all likelihood, lost on many who may employ it today. The dialogue between anthropology and epistemology thereby introduces a third party in social psychology to the discussion of belief.
The combination of these disciplines, in my view, brings an insightful way to consider the investigation of 'belief' in religious and non-religious contexts. This brings me to my second point of method: experimental. In order to make the dialogical work useful, it must also be applicable. In this regard, I propose that we focus on the themes of 'crisis' and 'conversion' primarily because they present a dynamic of cognitive and social change. After exploring these themes in their disciplinary discussions (anthropology and psychology), I focus on them in three particular, and quite different, case studies to "test" and "experiment" with application and viability of understanding 'belief' in a more fruitful manner.
Monday, June 22, 2015
*Countdown Reflections 4: On belief
I would not have selected the topic of 'belief' if I did not think, as Weber did, that beliefs and values were, in a way, real material forces that impact the world. All of the world's religions, the various political ideologies, and the goals, values, morals, and meanings of persons have consequence. The practice of fumi-e by the Japanese to root out Christians was connected, on one hand, to the authorities who wished to eradicate Christianity, and on the other, to beliefs of the sacred in early Japanese Christians. The refusal to participate in ancestral rites by early Korean scholars who adopted Christianity and the king's subsequent anger, and persecution of Christians, can also make these connections between convictions and practice. We can look to the rhetoric supporting U.S. foreign policy; the religious justifications for slavery; the rhetoric from political leaders, dictators, kings and what have you; the convictions of contemporary white supremacists; black panthers; and religious extremists like ISIS and the 969 movement. Their actions and thoughts are not simply born out of habituated practice; the failure to articulate a reason for one's actions does not entail a lack or dispossession of belief nor is an outright denial of having belief entail the same either. The relationship between belief and practice is a complicated one; something I hope to have developed in my dissertation.
One of the complications with belief, as anthropologist Rodney Needham notes, is its invisibility. It's not something that can be immediately measured. This raises an issue with the beginning foundations of science, empiricism, and positivism and consequently a major concern for the scientific and social scientific study of religion. While behaviour can be observed, beliefs as well as values and meanings cannot. However, when we are discussing the relationship between individual and society, we cannot dismiss the social relations that comprise our networks (noting Beattie) constitutive of what we could abstractly call "society" (noting Leach). And even still, social relations would not make much sense outside of our expectations we have of one another, our intentions, ideas, and beliefs as "historically situated actors." In this sense, these "things" of the mind are no less material than behaviour. Inductively, cognition and the "life of the mind" - to borrow Hannah Arendt's phrase - are a critical component of, what Radcliffe-Brown argued, the web of social relations and referred to as "social structure."
While structuralists like Levi-Strauss was concerned with the parallels of what was social and psychological in their aim to unveil the underlying logic of social and symbolic systems (a project that has been shaped by anthropologist Marshall Sahlins, and continued by Joel Robbins through a Dumontian project of values and philosopher John Searle with his notion of "status functions"), structural-functionalist sought to situate beliefs and values in terms of their function within social systems and their role in social relations. In this sense, 'culture' and 'religion' - a cultural system - were aimed towards being developed as an analytic concept that could capture this sense of an "ordered system." Anthropologist Clifford Geertz would argue that not only do cultural meanings and values construct a view of the world but provide a set of morals for action. He would go on to give his famous definition of 'religion' as:
Quite correctly, many scholars have noted the discrepancies between systems of meaning that seemed to construct an overview of a culture or a society (one example of which is Lienhardt's classic text on the Dinka) and the uncertainty of whether the persons within that society do indeed have those beliefs. In this regard, the politics of representation looms over the construction and abstraction of "culture" and "society." And yet, I do not think this is necessarily a motive for dismissing the constructive project. Robert Bellah's Civil Religion draws on the rhetoric of U.S. presidents and their employment of religious language to construct a view of "civil religion" - one that does not imply that they are indeed personally held beliefs but instead give insight into the trends of religion and politics in the U.S. This in itself is a valuable endeavour in discursive analysis and how an institution, like government, can be viewed as a source that continues to produce and reproduce a fragrance that titillates the people.
Nevertheless, the criticism stands. How are we to investigate the beliefs and values that are constitutive of the "lived experience" of persons in social relations and broader social structures? In this regard, the investigation of belief as a connector between persons of social relations and onto the broader network of social structures, as well as persons and institutions, in the discussion on (in)dividual and society continues to be relevant. Not simply in terms of its function within social relations but also in terms of meaning and power (which I do not think are exclusive categories). Granted that these are situated within historical contexts and subject to discursive practices, as Asad aptly and incisively point out, the psychological/social phenomena of belief still configure within "historically situated" bio-historical persons within the social structures compelling the movement of cultural histories.
One of the complications with belief, as anthropologist Rodney Needham notes, is its invisibility. It's not something that can be immediately measured. This raises an issue with the beginning foundations of science, empiricism, and positivism and consequently a major concern for the scientific and social scientific study of religion. While behaviour can be observed, beliefs as well as values and meanings cannot. However, when we are discussing the relationship between individual and society, we cannot dismiss the social relations that comprise our networks (noting Beattie) constitutive of what we could abstractly call "society" (noting Leach). And even still, social relations would not make much sense outside of our expectations we have of one another, our intentions, ideas, and beliefs as "historically situated actors." In this sense, these "things" of the mind are no less material than behaviour. Inductively, cognition and the "life of the mind" - to borrow Hannah Arendt's phrase - are a critical component of, what Radcliffe-Brown argued, the web of social relations and referred to as "social structure."
While structuralists like Levi-Strauss was concerned with the parallels of what was social and psychological in their aim to unveil the underlying logic of social and symbolic systems (a project that has been shaped by anthropologist Marshall Sahlins, and continued by Joel Robbins through a Dumontian project of values and philosopher John Searle with his notion of "status functions"), structural-functionalist sought to situate beliefs and values in terms of their function within social systems and their role in social relations. In this sense, 'culture' and 'religion' - a cultural system - were aimed towards being developed as an analytic concept that could capture this sense of an "ordered system." Anthropologist Clifford Geertz would argue that not only do cultural meanings and values construct a view of the world but provide a set of morals for action. He would go on to give his famous definition of 'religion' as:
(1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic"What should be applauded in this definition is the integration of emotions/moods within the framework of meaning. However, the definition - in many ways - falls too much on the side of 'myth' as opposed to 'ritual'; a binary that shaped the landscape of the study of religion (Tylor v. Robertson Smith). In other words, it gives primacy to meaning over practice. The definition makes no mention of rituals or behaviour and thereby only really captures part of the picture - if we stay within a broader structural framework. This defintion would become skewered by Talal Asad by arguing that religious practitioners do not necessarily hold a systematic structural account of their religious beliefs. Many do things without knowing a particular reason why other than that it's tradition. The assumption that persons do have a coherent systematic account of their religious beliefs is a relatively modern phenomena, which was derived from a Christian monkish discipline (I'm guessing prior to the emergence of the western academy), and that particular attention should also be paid to the historical dynamics of power and how they have shaped religion. In this regard, there is a criticism of the discursive practices within the broader historical trajectory in the anthropology and study of religion. Much like the follies of the earlier psychologists of religion, the anthropology of religion constructed models of 'religion' based on its own understandings of Christianity. This creates potential problems for the project of describing and constructing religion as a coherent cultural system. One of the dangers in conducting a study of a non-Christian religion, and attempting to describe its social structures and its system of symbols, is the susceptibility of reconstructing the religion in terms of a Christian framework and thereby presenting a distorted picture.
Quite correctly, many scholars have noted the discrepancies between systems of meaning that seemed to construct an overview of a culture or a society (one example of which is Lienhardt's classic text on the Dinka) and the uncertainty of whether the persons within that society do indeed have those beliefs. In this regard, the politics of representation looms over the construction and abstraction of "culture" and "society." And yet, I do not think this is necessarily a motive for dismissing the constructive project. Robert Bellah's Civil Religion draws on the rhetoric of U.S. presidents and their employment of religious language to construct a view of "civil religion" - one that does not imply that they are indeed personally held beliefs but instead give insight into the trends of religion and politics in the U.S. This in itself is a valuable endeavour in discursive analysis and how an institution, like government, can be viewed as a source that continues to produce and reproduce a fragrance that titillates the people.
Nevertheless, the criticism stands. How are we to investigate the beliefs and values that are constitutive of the "lived experience" of persons in social relations and broader social structures? In this regard, the investigation of belief as a connector between persons of social relations and onto the broader network of social structures, as well as persons and institutions, in the discussion on (in)dividual and society continues to be relevant. Not simply in terms of its function within social relations but also in terms of meaning and power (which I do not think are exclusive categories). Granted that these are situated within historical contexts and subject to discursive practices, as Asad aptly and incisively point out, the psychological/social phenomena of belief still configure within "historically situated" bio-historical persons within the social structures compelling the movement of cultural histories.
Saturday, June 20, 2015
When the social order exhausts itself...
"No social order ever disappears before all the productive
forces for which there is room in it have been developed; and new
higher relations of production never appear before the material
conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old
society itself.
Therefore, mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve; since looking at the matter more closely, we always find that the task itself arises only when the material conditions necessary for its solution already exist, or are at least in the process of formation."
Therefore, mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve; since looking at the matter more closely, we always find that the task itself arises only when the material conditions necessary for its solution already exist, or are at least in the process of formation."
-Karl Marx in a preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859)
read the entire piece here
contemporary commentary here by Chris Hedges
*Countdown Reflections 3: Picking a focus
After roughly mapping my academic trajectory - a mixture of philosophy and social science in a drive to understand what was, in retrospect, an anthropology of thinking/psychology of learning/ sociology of knowledge - I needed a dissertation topic. My fascination with religion, on one hand comes from a Marxist ("The abolition of religion as the illusory the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions" [1844]) and Nietzschean critique of power that indicted religion as a master morality that enslaved the masses to a blind slave morality. Both of which placed religion as a constraint to a secular egalitarian socialist democracy. Religious fanaticism as a social movement - tied to certain social and political positions - and how individuals developed that zealous fervor were something that demanded to be understood in further depth in order to progress. I won't lie: Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, the moral majority movement, and 'Jesus Camp' (2006) all freak me out - the rhetoric sounds all too familiar. I'd even put Jim Jones in with this group if he didn't have a socialist bent and pressed his followers to drink some sacred kool-aid. Righteous religious indignation can be a scary thing and Christianity has been a force tied up with several abhorrent enterprises throughout history (while all religions have had their violent histories, none have played as big a part in the development of present systemic and structural injustices and inequalities as Christianity - a strong claim, I know, but one that I am willing to defend).
On the other hand, after reading more evolutionary anthropology and psychology, neuroscience, as well as taking lessons from history of religions' remarkable resilience in the face of violence and active efforts for its eradication, it seemed apparent that religion and the concept of 'god' was not going away anytime soon. If secularism was going to happen, if at all, it was going to take much longer than scholars anticipated; if Marx is correct, we will see glimpses when the social order exhausts itself... At any rate, I had to revise my position. If religion is here to stay, the polemics of abandonment no longer has merit. Instead, as we see today, the polemic creates a greater gap; resistance grows stronger and identity intensifies. Arguably, this is the case with white supremacists around the world. If Roof and Breivik are any indications, we are witnessing this same kind of intensification (I exclude Islamic extremists because there is another set of factors, in addition to this polemic, that further drives this movement dating back to, I would argue, at least the 80s U.S. foreign policy and in some ways as far back as WWII). So one of the pressing issues is, albeit romantic, how do we reconcile different religions - rather than belittle, condescend, and inflame - in a pluralist society? (*interestingly enough, Michael Walzer just wrote a book on this very issue)
After debating with myself, the decision was to focus on the topic of 'belief.' In order to understand how religion permeates through individual and society, we needed to understand 'belief' better. This brings me back to my earlier pursuits in understanding the self and what I mentioned above as an anthropology of thinking/psychology of learning/sociology of knowledge. My fascination with religion was a fascination with understanding how religious and poltical ideologies are transmitted and become embodied knowledge - by extension, this delves into the embodiment of moral persuasions, ethics, and implicit biases.
On the other hand, after reading more evolutionary anthropology and psychology, neuroscience, as well as taking lessons from history of religions' remarkable resilience in the face of violence and active efforts for its eradication, it seemed apparent that religion and the concept of 'god' was not going away anytime soon. If secularism was going to happen, if at all, it was going to take much longer than scholars anticipated; if Marx is correct, we will see glimpses when the social order exhausts itself... At any rate, I had to revise my position. If religion is here to stay, the polemics of abandonment no longer has merit. Instead, as we see today, the polemic creates a greater gap; resistance grows stronger and identity intensifies. Arguably, this is the case with white supremacists around the world. If Roof and Breivik are any indications, we are witnessing this same kind of intensification (I exclude Islamic extremists because there is another set of factors, in addition to this polemic, that further drives this movement dating back to, I would argue, at least the 80s U.S. foreign policy and in some ways as far back as WWII). So one of the pressing issues is, albeit romantic, how do we reconcile different religions - rather than belittle, condescend, and inflame - in a pluralist society? (*interestingly enough, Michael Walzer just wrote a book on this very issue)
After debating with myself, the decision was to focus on the topic of 'belief.' In order to understand how religion permeates through individual and society, we needed to understand 'belief' better. This brings me back to my earlier pursuits in understanding the self and what I mentioned above as an anthropology of thinking/psychology of learning/sociology of knowledge. My fascination with religion was a fascination with understanding how religious and poltical ideologies are transmitted and become embodied knowledge - by extension, this delves into the embodiment of moral persuasions, ethics, and implicit biases.
*Countdown Reflections 2: Background
After my initial proposal was deemed unfeasible with my present status (if I pressed it, inevitably arduous labour and absurd bureaucracies would have been in store - which also meant pushing my connections, my parents' connections, and finding the right people to talk to so that I could get through these hoops; something I definitely did not want to go through), I had to rethink what I was going to do and it had to be soon. Time was precious and even though, at least, 3 years were ahead of me, I didn't want to waste any of it without a dissertation topic. The block to my initial proposal became an impetus to retrace the steps in my thinking/intellectual history, the process, and re-hash my fascinations with religion; all the while chuckling to myself with the irony of being in a theology and religion department.
I won't go into my personal background growing up as a 1.5 Korean-American (born in Korea, migrate to U.S.), oscillating between two distinct countries, although - to be narcissistic - if I took my self as an object of reflexive study, it would be pretty interesting! Catholic yet still participating in the customs of "filial piety", tradition, and rituals. But I digress, identity is complicated and warrants much more than a blogpost.
Before college, I became quite curious with how and why people think the way they do. If we evolved to be the way we are with specific capacities that enabled the diverse expressions of being human across different cultures and yet maintaining a singularity as a species, then how do we approach the human as a subject of inquiry. I gave it thought, and my limited exposure to what I could study, my conclusion was to study the brain. Without the brain, we were not much and it seemed that we understood very little about it. So I enlisted as a Biology major with specialization in Neuroscience (and to quell my mother, like a good son, I enrolled in pre-med). After a year or so, however, I dropped pre-med real quick; I had no intention of becoming a medical doctor and prolonging people's lives was not something I was interested in. I'd rather work towards bettering the quality of life and change the structures of society that prescribe the inhibiting parameters for human flourishing and human thought. So, to make a long story a bit shorter, I changed my major to psychology and then again to a joint major in philosophy and psychology. This allowed me to read a lot of philosophy and psychology on the subject while giving me enough space to do lab work in neuroscience. During this time I was influenced by Marx, Freud, Nietzsche, Hume and the Scottish Enlightenment (and as the major demanded, I went through the typical readings in ancient and modern philosophy), and would go on to develop a strong desire to learn more about East Asian thinkers - there wasn't much room to do this, so I did what I could on my own (<insert comment on white curriculum>). I also read quite a bit of work in psychology (social, personality, developmental, cognitive, and neuropsychology). Somewhere during this time, I began reading evolutionary anthropologist/psychologists. Pascal Boyer's 'Religion Explained' (2001) was illuminating and I was captivated by this line of thought, which led me to read more on the side. But before I could understand religious identity I wanted to understand human psychology in general. I wrote a thesis on the self and the emergence of identity through the accumulation of memory.
As an MA student in philosophy, I would continue to work on trying to understand the self and the construction of identity. My thesis argued that philosophers only got half the picture. Because they argued from a phenomenological perspective, their constructions and reflections were, by default, limited. I took David Hume, Richard Rorty, and Galen Strawson and compared their accounts of the self with, what was at the time, contemporary "science": a combination of genetics, twin studies (identical twins separated at birth and then re-united), developmental psychology, primatology, neuroscience, personality psychology, memory studies, lesion studies, etc. In this sense, I argued against those who said that the self was an illusion: a centerless social construction. The philosophers, I mentioned above, argued this position and Rorty, in particular, argued for us to create a new vocabulary that would change the self; within this argument was a real bastardization of Nietzsche and Freud while obsessing over this emphasis on being "original." I reacted against it. Genetics played a bigger role than we thought in creating the parameters for how our personality, intelligence, and more would manifest. Not in a deterministic manner but it also wasn't all just due to culture either. In a sentence, there was a biological individualized (historically unique) center and from that center a socially constructed personalized identity emerged via experience. In this sense, I argued for what is now recognizably a dual-process model of self; using the horrific terms of an "actual" and "metaphorical" self, the argument was a nature via nurture view of the self. And it was this side of a nurtured perspective that gave reign to the construction of an identity relevant to one's social and cultural structures comprised of social relations. I know many have an aversive reaction to the term "human nature", which tends to be equated with essentialism - racism, sexism, and colonialism. But I would argue that these are two different things and, in my mind, I provided a naturalist account against essentialism. In retrospect, I suppose it is somewhat of a Boasian perspective: we all shared a biology that plays a significant role in our development but we have to understand persons within their cultural and historical contexts.
After the MA, I applied to doctoral programs in anthropology but to no avail. I returned to my parents place with a humanities degree and no prospect or idea for the future. I just followed where my mind went and blazed it through academia. Ended up getting a job in a psychiatric hospital (worked as a mental health worker), worked in a criminal defense law office, became a philosophy adjunct, worked as a janitor for Energy Solutions Arena - somewhere in this timeline I enrolled at the University of Utah to do more in anthropology and really focus on religion. Work and school. In earnest, I didn't really like most of the courses in anthropology, but there were a few that really drew me in and the courses on the Anthropology of Mormonism and Native American Religions were probably the two that really did it for me - I might have learned the most in those two courses and they have certainly impacted my thinking in ways the other courses did not. Being the way that I am, I also took courses in psychology and philosophy. Both of which were not as impressive, but I learned from them nonetheless primarily in the way of being exposed to interesting literature. The theory of cognitive dissonance - something I didn't pay much attention to previously - became a point of interest and I developed an interest in combining psychology with anthropology: did interviews with Mormon missionary sisters in Temple Square (which would ultimately get me kicked out lol), spent two to three months attending a Korean Mormon church, and did interviews with gay Mormons in Salt Lake City. Each was an attempt to blend the methods from anthropology and psychology. My interests began to snowball in this overlap and the relationship between individual and society increasingly became an interesting area of study for me.
I won't go into my personal background growing up as a 1.5 Korean-American (born in Korea, migrate to U.S.), oscillating between two distinct countries, although - to be narcissistic - if I took my self as an object of reflexive study, it would be pretty interesting! Catholic yet still participating in the customs of "filial piety", tradition, and rituals. But I digress, identity is complicated and warrants much more than a blogpost.
Before college, I became quite curious with how and why people think the way they do. If we evolved to be the way we are with specific capacities that enabled the diverse expressions of being human across different cultures and yet maintaining a singularity as a species, then how do we approach the human as a subject of inquiry. I gave it thought, and my limited exposure to what I could study, my conclusion was to study the brain. Without the brain, we were not much and it seemed that we understood very little about it. So I enlisted as a Biology major with specialization in Neuroscience (and to quell my mother, like a good son, I enrolled in pre-med). After a year or so, however, I dropped pre-med real quick; I had no intention of becoming a medical doctor and prolonging people's lives was not something I was interested in. I'd rather work towards bettering the quality of life and change the structures of society that prescribe the inhibiting parameters for human flourishing and human thought. So, to make a long story a bit shorter, I changed my major to psychology and then again to a joint major in philosophy and psychology. This allowed me to read a lot of philosophy and psychology on the subject while giving me enough space to do lab work in neuroscience. During this time I was influenced by Marx, Freud, Nietzsche, Hume and the Scottish Enlightenment (and as the major demanded, I went through the typical readings in ancient and modern philosophy), and would go on to develop a strong desire to learn more about East Asian thinkers - there wasn't much room to do this, so I did what I could on my own (<insert comment on white curriculum>). I also read quite a bit of work in psychology (social, personality, developmental, cognitive, and neuropsychology). Somewhere during this time, I began reading evolutionary anthropologist/psychologists. Pascal Boyer's 'Religion Explained' (2001) was illuminating and I was captivated by this line of thought, which led me to read more on the side. But before I could understand religious identity I wanted to understand human psychology in general. I wrote a thesis on the self and the emergence of identity through the accumulation of memory.
As an MA student in philosophy, I would continue to work on trying to understand the self and the construction of identity. My thesis argued that philosophers only got half the picture. Because they argued from a phenomenological perspective, their constructions and reflections were, by default, limited. I took David Hume, Richard Rorty, and Galen Strawson and compared their accounts of the self with, what was at the time, contemporary "science": a combination of genetics, twin studies (identical twins separated at birth and then re-united), developmental psychology, primatology, neuroscience, personality psychology, memory studies, lesion studies, etc. In this sense, I argued against those who said that the self was an illusion: a centerless social construction. The philosophers, I mentioned above, argued this position and Rorty, in particular, argued for us to create a new vocabulary that would change the self; within this argument was a real bastardization of Nietzsche and Freud while obsessing over this emphasis on being "original." I reacted against it. Genetics played a bigger role than we thought in creating the parameters for how our personality, intelligence, and more would manifest. Not in a deterministic manner but it also wasn't all just due to culture either. In a sentence, there was a biological individualized (historically unique) center and from that center a socially constructed personalized identity emerged via experience. In this sense, I argued for what is now recognizably a dual-process model of self; using the horrific terms of an "actual" and "metaphorical" self, the argument was a nature via nurture view of the self. And it was this side of a nurtured perspective that gave reign to the construction of an identity relevant to one's social and cultural structures comprised of social relations. I know many have an aversive reaction to the term "human nature", which tends to be equated with essentialism - racism, sexism, and colonialism. But I would argue that these are two different things and, in my mind, I provided a naturalist account against essentialism. In retrospect, I suppose it is somewhat of a Boasian perspective: we all shared a biology that plays a significant role in our development but we have to understand persons within their cultural and historical contexts.
After the MA, I applied to doctoral programs in anthropology but to no avail. I returned to my parents place with a humanities degree and no prospect or idea for the future. I just followed where my mind went and blazed it through academia. Ended up getting a job in a psychiatric hospital (worked as a mental health worker), worked in a criminal defense law office, became a philosophy adjunct, worked as a janitor for Energy Solutions Arena - somewhere in this timeline I enrolled at the University of Utah to do more in anthropology and really focus on religion. Work and school. In earnest, I didn't really like most of the courses in anthropology, but there were a few that really drew me in and the courses on the Anthropology of Mormonism and Native American Religions were probably the two that really did it for me - I might have learned the most in those two courses and they have certainly impacted my thinking in ways the other courses did not. Being the way that I am, I also took courses in psychology and philosophy. Both of which were not as impressive, but I learned from them nonetheless primarily in the way of being exposed to interesting literature. The theory of cognitive dissonance - something I didn't pay much attention to previously - became a point of interest and I developed an interest in combining psychology with anthropology: did interviews with Mormon missionary sisters in Temple Square (which would ultimately get me kicked out lol), spent two to three months attending a Korean Mormon church, and did interviews with gay Mormons in Salt Lake City. Each was an attempt to blend the methods from anthropology and psychology. My interests began to snowball in this overlap and the relationship between individual and society increasingly became an interesting area of study for me.
Friday, June 19, 2015
*Countdown Reflections - 1: Scrapped proposal
The viva defence for my PhD is coming up and I figured I'd map out a few thoughts and why I wrote a dissertation on 'belief'.
When I first started, my initial proposal was to do fieldwork at Hanawon - a South Korean transition/re-education facility for North Korean defectors for their assimilation into capitalist South Korean society (a brief glimpse here). The aim of the proposal was to consider how 'religion' was presented to North Koreans and how they understood it. The theoretical reasoning drew on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (the predecessor to Lakoff and Johnson's The Metaphors We Live By) which maps out the claim that language and "culture" influence thought. This discussion plays out in religion and 'religious emotions' or 'religious experiences' in the perennialist-constructivist debate which centres around the extent to which a conceptual framework (and exposure to that framework) is necessary to have these 'religious emotions' or 'religious experiences' and how this framework influences 'religious cognition.' One curiosity was the extent in which they might map one view over the other. Considering the similarities between the deification of Kim Il Sung and Jesus, would the introduction of Christianity (forms of Protestantism and Catholicism) be one of 'syncretism' or something else? How would they respond to such overtures in this facility? How would they respond to a more direct exposure to Buddhism or other emerging religious movements like Mormonism, Won Buddhism, Islam, and Chundogyo?
The North Korean demographic transitioning into South Korea was an opportune site to investigate the issues of religion, freedom of conscience (along with its suppression) and the relationship between religion and capitalism. On one hand, it was an opportunity to see how S. Korea's brand of capitalism would be presented and in turn how it would be received, respond to, understood, and learned. This would range from very basic concepts, like money, to learned habits we took for granted (e.g. using an ATM or going to the bank). With capitalism, they were being presented to another conceptual framework in the realm of practice for South Korean society. They are given lessons in how to shed certain identity markers of being North Korean (e.g.dialect/accent/vocabulary) primarily due to the discrimination and biases they would face otherwise. This facility would be a place to begin learning new techniques of the body; reforming/reshaping habitus in a two-stage process: first at this facility and second as a new citizen; simulation and "real" - both socially constructed realities while the latter gives weight to responsibility, trust, and consequence. Over sixty years, have passed since the stalemate of Korea. In evolutionary terms, there is an allopatric division; a superficially constructed barrier that divides a geography preventing genetic and cultural exchange. For cultural evolutionists it would be interesting to consider whether, and I have heard many in South Korea argue, the north and south are different countries with different cultures. And of course, for Koreans, it will differ depending on who you ask.
Within this context, we can ask how the separation over the years have influenced thought, ethics, and mannerisms. What preconceptions do they have of each other? And particularly with North Koreans, what are the discrepancies between their life in the north and their experience in the south (views of ethics, morals, metaphysics)? The migration from north to south is, in this sense, a rupture of one set of social structures and the imposition of another. Between this transition they must navigate their identities, duties, and aspirations; meanings and power. The study would have situated habitus directly in the midst of social change manifested at the individual and group (those at Hanawon) level by which rules and improvisation would be focussed. The use of Bourdieu's habitus and the paradigm of embodiment would be significant as it would be a liminal space in which North Koreans would, not only, be subject to learning forms of "morality" but the site would also be a place in which improvisations manifest - reproduction/freedom and structure/improvisation. In this regard, there would be various ways to consider the dynamics of morality, ethics, self, and the intersections/interplay of social structures within this process. Ideally, the project would be longitudinal: conducting research within the facility and following up with them a year or two afterwards - were they disillusioned, what kind of difficulties were they facing, did their attitudes to religion change or remains the same, etc. Not only would this contribute to a greater understanding of belief, practice, and habitus but it also begs comment on the effect of capitalism on their thinking - in terms of morals and ethics. Would there be a trend correlated with the number of years living in society? If so, what kind of changes and what are the experiences/memories that shaped their thinking? How have they understood the conceptual frameworks of religion and capitalism, post-Hanawon?
Several South Korean scholars have noted that one of the greatest challenges for future unification will be the differences in thinking, beliefs, values, and practices between the north and south. On a practical level of impact, it would seem that this proposal would contribute quite meaningfully to this challenge as well as contribute to theoretical issues regarding morality, religion and political economy and issues regarding the relationship individual and society (Interdependent v. Independent self-construals, Durkheim's notion of homo duplex, and Bourdieu's project of accounting for the space between structure and experience). It would also be worth asking questions about the marginalization and the construction of an impoverished class.
It would have been interesting to start with this set of questions and assumptions and dive into fieldwork. As most anthropologists will attest, the project changes over time.... But alas due to complications (what I was told to be "homeland security" issues), I was forced to change my topic rather quickly and think of a new proposal. Being in a theology and religion department, there was significant room for manoeuvrability and because I occupied a somewhat odd intellectual space (a hodgepodge of philosophy, psychology, and anthropology) I wanted to revisit my fascination with religion to begin with...
When I first started, my initial proposal was to do fieldwork at Hanawon - a South Korean transition/re-education facility for North Korean defectors for their assimilation into capitalist South Korean society (a brief glimpse here). The aim of the proposal was to consider how 'religion' was presented to North Koreans and how they understood it. The theoretical reasoning drew on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (the predecessor to Lakoff and Johnson's The Metaphors We Live By) which maps out the claim that language and "culture" influence thought. This discussion plays out in religion and 'religious emotions' or 'religious experiences' in the perennialist-constructivist debate which centres around the extent to which a conceptual framework (and exposure to that framework) is necessary to have these 'religious emotions' or 'religious experiences' and how this framework influences 'religious cognition.' One curiosity was the extent in which they might map one view over the other. Considering the similarities between the deification of Kim Il Sung and Jesus, would the introduction of Christianity (forms of Protestantism and Catholicism) be one of 'syncretism' or something else? How would they respond to such overtures in this facility? How would they respond to a more direct exposure to Buddhism or other emerging religious movements like Mormonism, Won Buddhism, Islam, and Chundogyo?
The North Korean demographic transitioning into South Korea was an opportune site to investigate the issues of religion, freedom of conscience (along with its suppression) and the relationship between religion and capitalism. On one hand, it was an opportunity to see how S. Korea's brand of capitalism would be presented and in turn how it would be received, respond to, understood, and learned. This would range from very basic concepts, like money, to learned habits we took for granted (e.g. using an ATM or going to the bank). With capitalism, they were being presented to another conceptual framework in the realm of practice for South Korean society. They are given lessons in how to shed certain identity markers of being North Korean (e.g.dialect/accent/vocabulary) primarily due to the discrimination and biases they would face otherwise. This facility would be a place to begin learning new techniques of the body; reforming/reshaping habitus in a two-stage process: first at this facility and second as a new citizen; simulation and "real" - both socially constructed realities while the latter gives weight to responsibility, trust, and consequence. Over sixty years, have passed since the stalemate of Korea. In evolutionary terms, there is an allopatric division; a superficially constructed barrier that divides a geography preventing genetic and cultural exchange. For cultural evolutionists it would be interesting to consider whether, and I have heard many in South Korea argue, the north and south are different countries with different cultures. And of course, for Koreans, it will differ depending on who you ask.
Within this context, we can ask how the separation over the years have influenced thought, ethics, and mannerisms. What preconceptions do they have of each other? And particularly with North Koreans, what are the discrepancies between their life in the north and their experience in the south (views of ethics, morals, metaphysics)? The migration from north to south is, in this sense, a rupture of one set of social structures and the imposition of another. Between this transition they must navigate their identities, duties, and aspirations; meanings and power. The study would have situated habitus directly in the midst of social change manifested at the individual and group (those at Hanawon) level by which rules and improvisation would be focussed. The use of Bourdieu's habitus and the paradigm of embodiment would be significant as it would be a liminal space in which North Koreans would, not only, be subject to learning forms of "morality" but the site would also be a place in which improvisations manifest - reproduction/freedom and structure/improvisation. In this regard, there would be various ways to consider the dynamics of morality, ethics, self, and the intersections/interplay of social structures within this process. Ideally, the project would be longitudinal: conducting research within the facility and following up with them a year or two afterwards - were they disillusioned, what kind of difficulties were they facing, did their attitudes to religion change or remains the same, etc. Not only would this contribute to a greater understanding of belief, practice, and habitus but it also begs comment on the effect of capitalism on their thinking - in terms of morals and ethics. Would there be a trend correlated with the number of years living in society? If so, what kind of changes and what are the experiences/memories that shaped their thinking? How have they understood the conceptual frameworks of religion and capitalism, post-Hanawon?
Several South Korean scholars have noted that one of the greatest challenges for future unification will be the differences in thinking, beliefs, values, and practices between the north and south. On a practical level of impact, it would seem that this proposal would contribute quite meaningfully to this challenge as well as contribute to theoretical issues regarding morality, religion and political economy and issues regarding the relationship individual and society (Interdependent v. Independent self-construals, Durkheim's notion of homo duplex, and Bourdieu's project of accounting for the space between structure and experience). It would also be worth asking questions about the marginalization and the construction of an impoverished class.
It would have been interesting to start with this set of questions and assumptions and dive into fieldwork. As most anthropologists will attest, the project changes over time.... But alas due to complications (what I was told to be "homeland security" issues), I was forced to change my topic rather quickly and think of a new proposal. Being in a theology and religion department, there was significant room for manoeuvrability and because I occupied a somewhat odd intellectual space (a hodgepodge of philosophy, psychology, and anthropology) I wanted to revisit my fascination with religion to begin with...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)