Chapter 27 Flashcards
social science expectation of religion
vs. reality
science asserted that religion would fade due to the triumph of science and rationalism
reality: modernity (deracination and threats of cultural extinction) –> explosive expansion of religion
(so it was facilitated by the forces that were supposed to dissolve them: increased print and electronic media, increased literacy)
explosive expansion causes:
1. secular global processes (migration, multinational capital, media revolution)
2. proselytizing activity
what is transnational religion a form of?
it is a transnational civil society
+ transnational religions are epistemic communities (Haas)
classic language of international relations and security studies, and domestic politics
vs. liminal space
classic language = distinction inside and outside (Walker) -> no words and metaphors for liminal space
liminal space: cuts across inside/outside, a space that is neither within the state nor an aspect of the international system but animates both
What are epistemic communities
- Peter Haas
+ how do they influence the view on world politics
communities (in the liminal and cross-cutting arena) whose commonality depends on common worldviews, purposes, interests, and praxis, rather than on sovereign territorial space
leads to a world politics view that encompasses both transnational civil society and sovereignty-sharing states
how does transnational civil society affect the state ‘‘system’’
NOT: provide state-like entity to to impose order and justice by monopolizing force (as world government might)
YES: create a pluralistic transnational polity: shape perceptions and expectations that contribute to world public opinion and politics
how can transnational civil society be the site of conflict as well as cooperation?
plurality of transnational spaces entails difference as well as commonality with respect to epistemes, identities, and expectations
Dale Eickelman
explaining the increase and intensification in religious discourse in Oman an its entry into everyday life and politics
spread of modern literacy and new media -> communication of ideas + exposure of large numbers of Omanis to’‘modern standard’’ Arabic -> altered style and content of authoritative religoious discourse and the role this plays in shaping and constraining domestic and regional politics
earlier religious transnationalism
vs. new religious transnationalism
earlier: transnationalism of Islam and Christianity, religion accompanied trade, conquest and colonial domination
new religious transnationalism: Christianity continues to flow out of the west, but there is also influence on the west (‘‘their’’ product on ‘‘our’’ market)
how is new religious transnationalism carried?
much is carried by religion from below:
popular religious upsurge of ordinary and quite often poor, oppressed, and culturally deprived people, rather than by religion introduced and directed from above
religion: practice or belief?
religion is mostly used in reference to practice than to belief
Daniel Levine : recent writings transnational dimensions of religious change in Latin America
he found:
focus on overt political acts
driven by fears about religion’s possible links to revolution, by false images of a repetition of the Iranian Revolution, or by hopes that religious change would somehow fuel a thoroughgoing cultural and social transformation
bad name of religion?
enlightenment rationalism gave religion a bad name (was seen as false knowledge)
-> modernist social science can’t imagine religion as a positive force, as practice and worldview that contribute to order, provides meaning, and promotes justice
In what way can religion play a positive role?
Religious associations give structure and meaning to human relations
- security: how people understand their condition affects their sense of security as much as or more than do their objective conditions (religion -> feeling of security)
- religious communities make possible physical and cultural survival
- religion + effects are sometimes not visible until they are destroyed
*if religion can be an opiate that reconciles humans to injustice, it can also provide the vision and energy that engender collective action and social transformation
*states cannot, without the means of society, construct the ties that bind humans together in obligation
Daniel Levine and David Stoll on the role of religion
Stoll:
Stresses role of new Protestantism among uprooted populations and recent migrants to cities : they construct new institutions and practices to negotiate the shock of transfer
Stoll + Levine:
earnest liberationists + Pentecostal congregations of the Latin American poor, they were empowered by religious self-teaching, which gave them new orientations, social skills, and collective self-confidence
relation conflict and religion
religions often provide the language and symbols, but also the motives for cultural conflicts between and within states (!they are never the source/main/only cause of war)
low level conflict: when practices of an immigrant religious group challenge the prevailing religious conventions and constitution of the host country
- e.g. Muslims in Londen demanded enforcement of blasphemy laws
more serious conflicts: when a religious minority lays claim to a separate political identity
- such conflicts are exacerbated when transnational brethren of local religious minorities seeking political autonomy prove help
original idea of war + reality
original notion: war as an encounter between states
Weber: states’ monopolize the use of force
now: democratization of weapons and force -> original idea a fairy tale of modernization
increasingly: wars present themselves as conflicts among civilian populations where more civilians than soldiers die
cultural regimes to handle/foster domestic peace among religious groups
- homogenizing assimilation
- multi-cultural pluralism
these two approaches to conflict resolution are points on a continuum rather than opposites
future negotiations about cultural security are likely to engage both alternatives
homogenizing assimilation
typical American story of assimilating immigrants
Americanizing them, making them more alike, more homogeneous
multi-cultural pluralism
numerous movements recognize and celebrate religious as well as ethnic and racial identities and call for educational diversity
political recognition of difference and pluralist settlements seem harder and harder to oppose or deny
information + travel technologies allow immigrants to stay in touch with their home communities
-> indefinite survival of separate collective identities even among groups living in the same place and exchanging goods and services on a daily basis
William McNeill on the idea of ethnic uniformity
high level of ethnic uniformity that modern European nations took for granted was very unusual. religious pluralism ws the starting point for older civilizations
in older civilizations: immigrants culture wasn’t seen as a threat to the host country (e.g. had poly-ethnicity that allowed religions to live side by side)
!homogeneity isn’t the only mode that can govern how religious communities live with each other
possibilities consideration of the relationship between security and religion
- religious communities as conciliatory components of viable civil societies
- religious communities as sources of mutual alienation, distrust, and conflict
authority and power of transnational civil society communities
formally organized religious transnational entities are in a position to license and de-license the activities of its organizational nits in particular national sites
religious networks and communities and/vs state sovereignty
religious networks and communities and transnational civil society render state claims to monopoly sovereignty problematic
this challenge + challenge from global markets -> thinning of state effect, function, and finality
transnational religious communities and maps
- transnational religious communities don’t follow state boundaries
- you should see them as arenas: transparant plastic overlays of the political maps
- arenas don’t replace or supsede political maps, they provide alternatives
!19th-20th century: attempts to make boundaries and religious arenas overlap (such attempts seem to be atavistic (long habit))
the state is waning
+ more likely alternative
suggests that the state wil vanish and be replaced by other forms of political organization
more likely: progressive contraction of state activities and claims that would allow non-governmental phenomena to share functions and meaning now monopolized by states
new alliances and goals possible as
- domestic civil society joins up with transnational society
- states in concert employ elements in transnational civil society to limit particular states’ sovereignty
According to Susanne Rudolph, secularism has failed. this means that religions:
overlap in complex ways with the nation-state, but don’t replace it
religions don’t replace the nation-state
they provide: a pluralistic transnational polity (idea of a body/politic of a political community that exists across different state territories) ……
Religions are back because?
print and electronic media have helped spread the teachings of religions
- print and electronic media
- increased literacy
- urbanization
(counter intuitive argument that the things that were supposed to ‘‘end’’ religion helped it grow)
while previously the metropolis irrigated the periphery, the flow is now reversed
religions, according to the author:
- can provide the symbols and language to justify wars
!religion is never the sole cause for a war
What is the relation between sovereignty and religion?
- communities may have authority and power, but they don’t claim sovereignty
- sovereignty, according to Rudolph, is becoming transnational
- religion challgenges state’s monopoly of sovereignty
- religions manage a part of kinship transactions, market behaviours and polical demands
