Material Religion

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.

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.

Religions are deeply, stubbornly physical and sensual. This course aims to re-imagine our understanding of religion by grounding traditions in physical encounters between human bodies and sensual objects.

Playing drums, telling stories, touching stones, creating wildly colorful altars, dancing, eating and drinking special substances are all basic religious activities. Examples will range across Native American, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Christian, and Jewish rituals and symbols, and materials will traverse fields from art history to anthropology, philosophy to poetry, science to religious studies. We will toggle between broad theories of religions and specific case studies.

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.

Jodi Shaw theorizes the sacred in South Indian Hindu temples by maneuvering affect theory and her current ethnographic work in Cidambaram into dialogue. Shaw directs our attention to the pre-verbal and extra-linguistic elements of temple encounters in order to shape a sense of the sacred as "visceral conversations."

https://jugaad.pub/unfinished-ness-ritual-temple/

The Introduction to this book is available here: https://www.academia.edu/34095644/Introduction_to_Materiality_and_the_Study_of_Religion_The_Body_of_St_Cuthbert.pdf

Material culture has emerged in recent decades as a significant theoretical concern for the study of religion. This book contributes to and evaluates this material turn, presenting thirteen chapters of new empirical research and theoretical reflection from some of the leading international scholars of material religion. Following a model for material analysis proposed in the first chapter by David Morgan, the contributors trace the life cycle of religious materiality through three phases: the production of religious objects, their classification as religious (or non-religious), and their circulation and use in material culture.

The chapters in this volume consider how objects become and cease to be sacred, how materiality can be used to contest access to public space and resources, and how religion is embodied and performed by individuals in their everyday lives. Contributors discuss the significance of the materiality of religion across different religious traditions and diverse geographical regions, paying close attention to gender, age, ethnicity, memory and politics. The volume closes with an afterword by Manuel Vásquez.

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 "

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.

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.

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 constructing politics of comfort and authority.

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.

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.

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 Theos, king of Commagene, in the first century BC.

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.

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.

Artigo originalmente publicado em Religião & Sociedade,  v. 24, n.1, p. 46-64, 2004.

O artigo analisa os pedidos feitos a Santo Antônio de Pádua (ou de Lisboa) em um santuário católico da cidade do Rio de Janeiro. A partir de material coletado em pesquisa de campo, a análise focaliza as características gerais do ato de pedir e os padrões que aparecem no pedidos escritos. Sobre esse último ponto, foi possível perceber que "saber pedir a coisa certa ao santo certo" aparecia no santuário em dois sentidos: no primeiro, tratava-se de deter conhecimentos suficientes para realizar um pedido eficaz, isto é, que consiguisse obter resultados. No segundo sentido, tratava-se de realizar um pedido apropriado, que se mantivesse dentro dos limites adequados a um bom cristão e a um bom devoto, e que seguisse uma "etiqueta do pedido" em operação no local.


Abstract:
To know how to ask for:  the etiquette of the request to the saints.

The article analyses the requests posed to Saint Anthony of Padue (or Lisbon), through data collected during fieldwork at a catholic sanctuary in Rio de Janeiro city, Brazil. The analyse focus first on general characteristics of the act of  asking for the saints, then in the existence of some patterns on the written requests. From this last point, it was possible to see that the idea of "to ask the right saint for the right thing" has two local senses. The first one was to do a request with efficacy, which means to be able to manipulate knowledge about the saint's life and specialities, and to use some expressions in the request, to obtain results. But "to do the right request" has also another sense. It means also to do a request using some parameters of being a good catholic, to respect some limits in the request, to follow an "etiquette of the request" that operates locally.

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.

Focusing on the divine image in Mesopotamia, this essay explores the construction and implications of the anthropomorphized divine body; the nature of the relationship between the image (specifically the ṣalmu) and its divine referent; and the means by which the authoritative and authorized status of a divine image might be established, in order that the image might successfully presence the deity.

Taking the ninth century BCE Sun God Tablet (SGT) from Sippar as case study, Sonik specifically examines the embedding of images within the pictorial stream of tradition as a means of establishing their authoritative status. Such an embedding might be accomplished through both pictorial and written strategies: pictorial compositions may be deliberately designed to incorporate archaizing motifs or elements, visually announcing their ties to the (or even a specific period of the) ancient and esteemed past; written accounts, for their part, might trace or deliberately construct an object’s relationship to a more ancient model or even authoritative prototype with origins in the divine sphere

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 object. Ultimately, the category refers to a subset of the material world in which a thing is not necessarily made to be a votive, but instead becomes charged with votive meaning once dedicated to a deity or deities. This volume, one of the first collections devoted exclusively to the subject, builds on the assumption that a shared conceptual framework underpins votive objects, and that by merit of their consecration they have become a category representing a special stage in the life of a material.

The contributors to this comparative study examine ex votos across a range of locations and time periods, including the classical Mediterranean world, medieval Europe, the period of the Catholic Reform, and on to Mexico, Shinto and Buddhist Japan, and Muslim Iran. Voluminous and diverse, Ex Voto will appeal in a wide range of fields, including history, religion, and anthropology.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.