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.
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