symbol and power - geertz islam observed Flashcards
1
Q
Preface – aim
A
- ‘Both to lay out a general framework for the comparative analysis of religion and to apply it to a study of the development of a suppose
- edly single creed, Islam, in two quite contrasting civilisations, the Indonesian and the Moroccan’. (iv)
2
Q
Preface – warnings about social systems
A
- It is ‘invalid, reckless, absurd’ to assume that experiences of a single ‘social system’ are reflective of the country as a whole.
o This is not the aim of anthropologists. Their aim is to ‘discover what contributions parochial understandings can make to comprehensive ones’. (xi)
o However, despite the comprehensive analysis that can be obtained from fieldwork, Geertz maintains that this does not mean anthropological findings are set in stone. Even concrete fieldwork must be subject to critical analysis.
3
Q
Preface – solution to generalising social systems
A
- 1) Specialise and dedicate yourself to work; let people make comments
- 2) Without ‘competence’, make it clear that ‘less minutely focused problems can be made to yield to the same kinds of analysis practiced on the narrow scene’ (xii)
o 2nd option is even more subject to testing
Geertz chooses the 2nd path, combining fieldwork into the history of religion in the two countries, whilst evaluating religion means as a ‘social, cultural and psychological phenomenon’
4
Q
1 – systematic study
A
- ‘The aim of the systematic study of religion is… not just to describe ideas… but to determine just how and in what was particular ideas, acts and institutions sustain, fail to sustain or even inhibit religious faith’ (2)
- Calculating religious change will not be possible ‘if we are unclear as to what in any particular case its vehicles are and how (or even if) in fact they foster it’.
5
Q
1 – religious belief
A
- Religious belief is ‘sustained in this world by symbolic forms and social arrangements’
o An institution is necessary to sustain the language games which mark certain religious beliefs
o ‘Religion may be a stone thrown into the world; but it must be a palpable stone and someone must throw it’
o If one accepts that an institution of some sort is necessary to maintain religion, the direction of religious change can be ascertained as: ‘established connections between particular varieties of faith and the cluster of images and institutions which have classically nourished them are for certain people in certain circumstances coming unstuck’.
♣ AKA: when links between institution and religious symbolism are lost
o In response to religious change, the anthropologist seeks to understand how this may affect ‘men of religious sensibility’ and the effect this may have on their religious cultures and traditions.
6
Q
1 – how do people react to religious change
A
- Unawareness of such change
- Reimagining previous traditions
- Clinging onto original tradition
- Attempting to live both the old and new tradition
- Tring to ‘express their religiousness in secular activities’
7
Q
1 – morocco: berber islam
A
- ‘One after the other, the famous reforming dynasties – Almoravids, Almohads, Merinids – swept out what the French… used to call le Maroc inutile’ (5)
- ‘Rebuilding the great cities of Morocco – Marrakech, Fez, Rabat, Salé, Tetuan – they penetrated Muslim Spain, absorbed its culture’
- ‘The formative period both of Morocco as a nation and of Islam as its creed… consisted of the peculiar process of tribal edges falling in upon an agricultural centre and civilising it’ (5)
8
Q
1 – morocco: berber islam. Shopkeepers vs. farmers
A
- Focus of trade differed according to the profession
- For academics/shopkeepers: ‘trade and craft’ (6)
- Farmers: ‘herding and tillage’ (6)
- However, the two groups nonetheless did interact and ‘provided the central dynamic of historical change in Morocco from the founding of Fez at the beginning of the ninth century to its occupation by the French at the beginning of the twentieth’ (7)
o Reasons for this:
♣ Towns remained tribal
♣ Unfavourable location for grain growing
♣ Bedouin Arabs’ intrusion into the western plains after the 13th century
• All of these prevented ‘the development of a mature peasant culture’ (7)
• City leaders ‘tried always to reach out around them to control the tribes’. H, was ultimately ‘unrewarding’
• All aspects of society were marked by uncertainty. Led ‘tribesmen’ to move to the city
• ‘The political metabolism of traditional Morocco consisted of two but intermittently workable economies attempting, according to season and circumstance, to feed off one another’
♣ Contrast between the ‘fluidity of town life’ and the clearly defined forms of tribal society
9
Q
1 – morocco: berber islam forming social identity
A
- ‘Fulfilments’ of such society were only obtained when ‘in the person of a particular individual’, the ‘leitmotivs…fused’
o This is seen in Moroccan history where in ‘recurring changes of political direction… social identity was forged’
o Idris II would not have succeeded as the ‘first substantial king’ if he was not only a ‘descendant of the Prophet, a vigorous military leader, and a dedicated religious purifier’.
10
Q
1 – morocco: cultural center and islam
A
- ‘The critical feature … is that its cultural center of gravity lay not… in the great cities, but in the mobile, aggressive… now fragmented tribes who not only harassed and exploited them but also shaped their growth’ (9)
- Arabo-Spanish influence could not stop the Islamic civilisation, which originated from the tribes
- ‘Islam in Barbary was – and to a fair extent still is - … the Islam of saint worship and moral severity, magical power and aggressive piety’ (as true in Fez, Marrakech, Atlas, Sahara) (9)
11
Q
1 – Indonesia: social structure
A
- Not tribal, but rather a ‘peasant society’, especially in Java (9)
- Rice industry = prominent. Emphasis on a diligent attitude to cultivation and labour
- ‘In Morocco, civilisation was built on nerve; in Indonesia, on diligence’ (11)
12
Q
1 – Indonesia: religion
A
- Indonesia was originally Indic, not Muslim (until the 14th century)
- Whilst Morocco was a ‘virgin area’, Indonesia was marked by its ‘Hindu-Buddhist Javanese state, which though it had by then begun to weaken, had cast its roots so deeply into Indonesian society… that its impress remained proof not just to Islamization, but to Dutch imperialism and… to modern nationalism.
- still showed influence from ‘Indian pantheism’, which gave it a ‘theosophical tinge’
13
Q
1 – Indonesia: identity
A
- It is common for communities/individuals to remain firm in their identity when originally facing change. (As seen during Berber dynasties in Morocco, where ‘whatever… local peculiarities, (was) at least generally driven by Islamic ideals and concepts’
o For Indonesia ‘it was the age of the great Indic states – Mataram, Singosari, Kediri, Madjapahit – which, though also importantly shaped by local traditions, were generally guided by Indic theories of cosmic truth and metaphysical virtue. In Indonesia, Islam did not construct a civilisation, it appropriated one’ (11) - As a result of the transformation of an already Indic, peasant society to ‘a more complex (and Islamic) culture’, Islam in Indonesia has a certain multi-faceted nature.
- Whilst in Morocco, the power of Islam lies in its position as a ‘force for cultural homogenization’, in Indonesia, it has rather been a force for ‘cultural diversification’. (12)
Aka. Islam in Indonesia lacks the ‘uniformity’ of Islam in Morocco
14
Q
1 – Indonesia: invasion of Java
A
- Java: ‘the tinge became at once a great deal deeper and much less evenly suffused’ (12)
o 17th-19th cent, Dutch invade. Lead to a ‘curious process of cultural and religious diversification… under the general cover of overall Islamisation’ (13)
o The focus of trade for ‘indigenous trading classes’ shifted from international to more domestic concerns.
o ‘Ruling classes were reduced to the status of civil servants, administering Dutch policies at the local level’ (13)
15
Q
1 – Indonesia: reaction to invasion of Java
A
- Gentry: ‘increasingly subjectivist, cultivating an essentially illuminationist approach to the divine’
- Peasantry: ‘absorbed Islamic concepts and practices’
- Trading classes: ‘relying more and more heavily upon the Meccan pilgrimage as their lifetime to the wider Islamic world, developed a compromise between what flowed into them along this line… and what they confronted in Java to produce a religious system not quite doctrinal enough to be Middle Eastern and not quite ethereal enough to be South Asian’
16
Q
1 – Islam as a two-sided process in both Morocco and Indonesia
A
- For both Morocco and Indonesia, ‘Islamisation has been a two-sided process’ (14)
o Conflict between desire to remain uniform and universal in its theoretical/ritualistic aspect and its simultaneous aim to approach Islamisation with an element of flexibility whilst maintaining ‘the identity of Islam’ and the ‘particular directives communicated by God to mankind through the preemptory prophecies of Muhammed’ (14-15)
♣ This tension has not only allowed for Islamist expansion, but has also led to it ‘legitimately be(ing) called a crisis’ (15)
• Morocco: Sunni (orthodox, as depicted in Koran) vs. practical Islam (what people actually believe)
• This is largely due to the increasing presence of religious diversity/pluralism. It is becoming more difficult for Muslims to ‘inform the faith… and to be informed by it’ (15)
• Struggle to inform people of the faith in a way that will appeal to them whilst respecting the true beliefs of Islam
17
Q
1 – techniques of conversion
A
- Morocco: ‘aggressive fundamentalism’ (16)
o It established a ‘purified, canonical, and completely uniform creed’ - Indonesia: ‘adaptive, absorbent, pragmatic… a matter of partial compromises’
o ‘The Islamism which resulted did not even pretend to purity, it pretended to comprehensiveness’
o Islam in Indonesia = ‘Fabian’, in Morocco = ‘Utopian’
♣ For M, ‘Utopia is preserved by rendering it even more utopian’ (17)
♣ For I, ‘Fabianism ends in elevated vagueness’ (17) - However, in both cases, the strength of Islam is threatened.
18
Q
1 – emphasis on techniques of believing
A
- Emphasis of both is not on dogma, but rather ‘how to believe’ (16)
o ‘Religiousness is not merely knowing the truth, or what is taken to be the truth, but embodying it, living it, giving oneself unconditionally to it’ (17)
♣ Aka. It is a facet of its culture (thanks footnotes)
o Both Morocco and Indonesia created ‘images of ultimate reality’. They include symbols which ‘glowed with their own authority’ (17)
o Belief in both countries involved an element of ‘solemn self-deception’. Indeed, religious belief was a facet of their relative cultures, rather than a uniform adherence to dogma.
o Emphasis is on ‘holding religious views rather than being held by them’
o Both ‘alternate between religiousness and… religious-mindedness’ (18)
19
Q
1 – development of RE in M/I
A
- Geertz seeks to show the development of religion in M/I, rather than simply describe how it is, now that it is established
o Must describe the timeline
o However, he must also ‘isolate and relate’ the ‘major conceptual themes’ to one another (20) - ‘Particular kinds of faith flourish in particular kinds of societies’
o M Islam: ‘rigorous, dogmatic’
o I Islam: ‘reflective… strikingly phenomenal’ (20)
20
Q
1 – the role of the west in religious change
A
- The West has functioned as an ‘external stimulus’ for the ‘internal’ transformation of Asian and African culture. (21)
o Greater sense of hope and ‘possibilities’: economically, politically, socially.
o Religious change that has followed has been ‘on the one hand a response and on the other an incitement’
o ‘Modernity, like capital, is largely made at home’ (21)
21
Q
2 – pigeon-hole design
A
- ‘All social sciences suffer from the notion that to have named something is to have understood it’ = ‘the pigeonhole disease’ (the idea that whatever is in a pigeonhole must be a pigeon – for anthropology, it is assuming that just because a discovery seems to have been made, that it is not subject to critique) (23)
o By naming and classifying certain practices/aspects of culture, anthropologists are suggesting ‘relationships among things categorised together which have not in fact actually been discovered and asserted but only sensed and insinuated’ (23)
o This is potentially problematic for Geertz, as in seeking to compare religion in Indonesia and Morocco, he attempts to draw parallels that may not in fact be equally applicable to both countries.
♣ Describes both countries as ‘mystical’ in their approach to religion, whilst acknowledging that this may mean two different things
♣ Argues that one should not be ‘generalising the notion of mysticism’ in order to discover ‘abstract resemblances’ (24)
♣ One must ‘analyse the nature of that diversity… and then ‘(pursue) the different meanings the concept takes in different contexts’ (24) - ‘The interest of facts lies in their variety, and the power of ideas rests not on the degree to which they can dissolve that variety but the degree to which they can order it’ (24)
22
Q
2 – metaphorical individuals, Indonesia general
A
- Sunan Kalidjaga, credited with conversion of Java
- Cannot be sure he existed, but his presence as an ‘exemplary hero’ (25) in Indonesian society is clear
- ‘the son of a high royal official of Madjapahit… the last of the Indonesian Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms’ (25)
- other princes turned to Islam, Madjapahit was left with a ‘hieratic shell which soon collapsed entirely’ (26)
- 1630s – Demak becomes the centre of ‘Islamic coastal civilisation’
- Matram becomes independent and takes over Demak and other north coast kingdoms
- Mataram became a ‘Muslim Madjapahit’ (26)
- Kalidjaga was alive during the transformation of Java from Indic to Islam
- He moved to Djapara, went to Tjeribon, married Sunan Giri and arrived in Demak – it is in Demak where he ‘played a central political role in the rise, breakaway and expansion of Mataram’ (27)
23
Q
2 – metaphorical individuals, Indonesia, effect
A
- ‘His career was thus his country’s history: abandoning the dying… desanctified Madjapahit, he passed through the politico-religious upheavals of the transitional harbour states to arrive at the renascent spirituality of Mataram’ (27)
- Kalidjaga ‘connects Indic Java and Muslim Java’ (27). Described as a ‘bridge between two high civilisations… that of the Majdapahit Hindu-Buddhism in which he grew up and that of the Mataram Islam which he fostered’
- ‘For the Javanese he is… the meaningful link between a world of god-kings’
24
Q
2 – Kalidjaga conversion
A
- In Djapara, he was referred to as ‘Lord Young Man Sahid’
- Abandoned his poor mother after spending all her money. Became a thief
- Sunan Bonang attracted Sahid’s attention, Sahid tries to rob him of his clothes/jewels.
- Bonang tells Sahid that ‘desire is pointless. Look! There is a tree of money’ (28)
- Sahid indeed saw the tree has become gold and realised the reality of materialism and how they were ‘nothing compared to the power of Sunan Bonang’
- Sahid turns away from materialism to a desire for spiritual knowledge. Told by Bonang to wait for him at the river, Sahid waits for years (20/30/40?). Endures storms etc. but continues to wait.
- Bonang eventually returns and tells Sahid that ‘as a result of your long meditation, you know know more than I do’ (29). Sahid is consequently enlightened and able to answer all religious based questions he is asked by Bonang.
- Interesting that the presentation of ultimate dedication to Islam is not associated with regularly attending Mosque etc.
- Bonang tells him to proselytise Islam. Gives him the name Kalidjaga (‘he who guards the river’)
- ‘his conversion was… a willed spiritual and moral change which eventuated in an almost accessorial change in belief’
- Islam was ‘assigned’ to him. Inner change led him to Islam, not vice versa.
