Taxonomy Construction and the Normative Turn in Religious Studies
Abstract
:Categorization is the mental operation by which the brain classifies objects and events. This operation is the basis for the construction of our knowledge of the world.
There is only a seeing from a perspective, a “knowing” from a perspective, and the more emotions we express over a thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we train on the same thing, the more complete will be our “idea” of that thing, our “objectivity.”
1. Introducing Structuralism
2. Proto-Structuralist Classification Strategies: Durkheim and Mauss
3. The Emergence of Structuralist Reflexivity: Lévi-Strauss
4. Taxonomic Reflexivity in the Study of Religion
- true/false
- natural/revealed
- with books/without books
- natural/ethical
- collective/individual
- ethnic/universal
- cosmic/historical
- free/dependent
- healthy/sick
- affirming/denying
- magical/religious
- habitual/spontaneous16
5. Classification and Values from Structuralism to Smith
6. The Normative Turn
Schilbrack here refers to a dichotomy central to religious studies lore, that is, to the emergence of and presumed distinction between religious studies methodologies and theological ones (c.f. Cady and Brown 2002). He continues:Now, there is a fair amount of dispute among scholars about whether evaluative approaches ought to be included in the academic study of religions. As I mentioned above, there are some “describers” who hold that the academic study of religions should not include critical approaches that contradict the self-understanding of the religious practitioners, and there are some “explainers” who argue that the academic study of religions should not privilege the practitioners’ perspective. I have argued that neither of these two exclusionary arguments is persuasive and that each side should concede the value and legitimacy of the other. Whether or not the describe-only camp and the explain-only camp can get along, however, both sides often agree with each other on this point: the academic study of religions should not include evaluative approaches. Their opposition to evaluative approaches is often termed as a rejection of “theology”.(ibid. pp. 147–48)
To solve the conundrum, Schilbrack follows his own call to be clear about normative agendas by re-stipulating more appropriate boundaries for the discipline. “I draw the conclusion that the academic study of religion should be distinguished from other ways of studying religion not by excluding evaluative approaches,” he writes, “but rather by excluding claims that cannot be challenged.” In Schilbrack’s revised program of distinction, one need no longer apply simple binaries because “theology” and “religious studies” overlap in complex ways not taken into consideration by such a dichotomy. Rather, he excludes from religious studies boundaries “the unwillingness to offer reasons for one’s claims.” Schilbrack sees his approach as “more completely critical” than those who wish simply to exclude theological inquiries. He thus re-appropriates “the critical” descriptor for use in his new paradigm (ibid. p. 155), effectively shifting the conceptual and discursive terrain of the field.Theology, they say, by definition makes evaluative judgments that some religious views are true and that others are false. Any evaluation of religions will reflect the perspective of just one religious point of view, and some describers argue that this is good reason to exclude such judgments from the academic study of religions. And evaluative judgments typically do not operate by public criteria, but rather by tradition-specific criteria, and some explainers argue that this is good reason to exclude them. Despite the disagreements between the describers and the explainers, many in both camps therefore agree that the academic study of religions is best practiced without raising the judgmental and controversial questions of whether religious teachings are true, moral, real, or just.19
7. Conclusions
Acknowledgements
Conflicts of Interest
References
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1 | Whereas functionalism typically refers to the work of Bronislaw Malinowski and Raymond Firth and studies individuals, social institutions, and sociocultural frameworks that influence individuals, structural-functionalism refers to A. R. Radcliffe-Brown and E. E. Evans-Pritchard’s early work and investigates the role of individuals embedded in social orders, including the construction and maintenance of the social order. The structuralism I’m largely concerned with in this article derives from an entirely different school altogether: French structuralism. Still even more confusingly, after the 1960s some British scholars found the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss useful, applying the term British structuralism to their own scholarship. This new collective was not British structural-functionalism, as previously conceived, but the French variation of structuralism subsumed into British camps (Barnard 2000, p. 61 ff.; Porth et al. 2009). |
2 | I will distinguish in the following between critical religious studies scholars (i.e., those scholars who argue for the exclusion of theological approaches from the academic study of religion) and the normativists (i.e., those scholars who, among other endeavors, seek to afford for a more nuanced approach to defining “theology” and even allow that some forms of the subdiscipline should have a place in religious studies). |
3 | British social anthropologist Mary Douglas offers a quintessential definition of culture from a structuralist perspective: “a series of related structures which comprise social forms, values, cosmology, the whole of knowledge and through which all experience is mediated” (Douglas 1966, p. 128). |
4 | For instance, Douglas writes that “primitive culture must be taken to be unaware of itself, unconscious of its own conditions” (Douglas 1966, p. 91; for more on the unconscious and hidden aspects of culture, see Hall 1989). Although cognizant of the problems with the ethnocentric and imperialist origins of descriptive terminologies such as primitive, she offers an insightful take on the necessity of terms to differentiate societal types while also insisting on “the unity of human experience” (Douglas 1966, pp. 74–78 ff., esp. 77; c.f. Geertz 1973, p. 62). |
5 | To structuralist anthropologists, cultural and regional differences mattered, but not as much as the deeper structures they viewed as underwriting and connecting all human societies. |
6 | |
7 | For more on the centrality of classification to the structuralist endeavor, see Durkheim and Mauss’s concept of the classificatory function (Durkheim and Mauss [1903] 1963, p. 4). Classification systems have “a considerable prehistory” and scholars must inquire as to the developments that lead to the formation of particular taxonomic paradigms. Further, humans are deeply classificatory and taxonomy-constructing beings and the classification of things—including phenomena, events, behaviors, animals, and people—has serious ramifications for social arrangements (Durkheim and Mauss [1903] 1963, p. 11; c.f. Cosman [1912] 2001, p. xxv and Durkheim [1912] 2001, p. 112). No known society exists that does not classify things and people to some degree and for some social and functional purchase (Mauss [1901] 2005, p. 66). Durkheim argued that the abandonment of social categories may ultimately even lead to the breakdown of society (Durkheim [1912] 2001, pp. 18–19). |
8 | Myth and ritual play important roles in structuralist paradigms. Lévi-Strauss’s systematic and mechanistic structural language, in fact, is even more evident in his discussion of myth, which he sees as existing within and making use of structure (Lévi-Strauss 1973, p. 26). Ritual derives from “an asymmetry” between cultural and religious phenomena (ibid. p. 32). Myth and ritual proceed directly out of structure. |
9 | Douglas also leaves room for the creativity of cultural actors (see esp. Douglas 1966, pp. 5, 76–77 ff.). For an opposing view, see Hall (1989). |
10 | The structuralists argue that to be social is to classify. Classification is an inherently social function that encompasses totemism, kinship arrangements, rituals, and other practices. “Society is possible only if the individuals and things that compose it are distributed into different groups, that is, classes, and if these groups themselves are classified in relation to each other” (Durkheim [1912] 2001, p. 339). |
11 | Even in Tristes Tropiques (Lévi-Strauss 1961), Lévi-Strauss waxes reflexive, speaking of the embeddedness of his own thought processes in “structural affinities” and as influenced by “deep-lying motives” (ibid. p. 56). Geertz, in a vein of meta-analytical criticism toward Lévi-Strauss, also applies structuralist paradigms to the structuralists themselves. Lévi-Strauss’s books are, in Geertz’s words, “variant expressions of the same deep underlying structure: the universal rationalism of the French Enlightenment” (Geertz 1973, p. 356). At the end of his epic Tristes Tropiques, and foreshadowing Smith’s argument, Lévi-Strauss reflects on the role of the anthropologist in determining what is and is not worthy of study (Lévi-Strauss 1961, p. 383 ff.). While Douglas also writes about the self-application of anthropological theorizing (Douglas 1966, esp. p. 28), Geertz gestures toward the anthropologist’s focus on self by way of the study of the other: “Bent over his own chips, stones, and common plants, the anthropologist broods, too, upon the true and insignificant, glimpsing in it, or so he thinks, fleetingly and insecurely, the disturbing, changeful image of himself” (Lévi-Strauss 1973, p. 54; on Lévi-Strauss’s version of structuralism, see pp. 346–59). |
12 | For a review of Smith’s biography and the origins of his concepts of taxonomy and comparison, see the essay “When the Chips are Down” in his Relating Religion: Essays in the Study of Religion (Smith 2004). See also Levene (2012, p. 1010). |
13 | I might at this point note the ironies of social theorists themselves caught up in authoritative theoretical structures, filtering through and appropriating the academic myths at their disposal (c.f. Lincoln 1999, p. 209), or caught in their own partially self-spun webs of significance (c.f. Weber, as explained by Geertz 1973, p. 5). |
14 | To be fair, Smith does in other writings offer more substantive descriptions of “religion.” In Map is Not Territory: Studies in the History of Religions, for instance, he defines religion as “a distinctive mode of human creativity” that seeks after the “power to manipulate and negotiate one’s ‘situation’ so as to have ‘space’ in which to meaningfully dwell” (Smith 1993, p. 291). |
15 | Natalie Carnes (2017, p. 684) summarizes the critical religious studies scholar position, writing that “not all religionists are so ready to forget the way theological and crypto-theological commitments birthed, shaped, and determined the discourse of religious studies and did so in a way that privileged Western Christianity.” |
16 | See Smith (1982, p. 6). |
17 | In describing native classification processes as constituted by “a completely logical process” that ultimately serve as the very origins of “scientific” methods to follow (Durkheim and Mauss [1903] 1963, pp. 32, 81), Durkheim and Mauss might plausibly be read as subtly countering popular discursive depictions of primitivism and backwardness in cultural others. |
18 | I can’t take credit for this turn of phrase. It comes from a discussion with Nancy Levene in her office back in 2011, whose 2012 work I draw on in the final section of this article. Additionally, Parimal Patil encouraged a reflexive scholarly stance toward the study of religion in his 2012 keynote address at the Religious Studies Department at Indiana University’s graduate student conference, “On Religion: Definition, Delimitation, and Application.” |
19 | Further, oppositions to evaluation fall into what Schilbrack labels as empiricist and critical positions, which proceed out of or are related to logical positivism in philosophy. As an empiricist, Donald Wiebe saw overtly confessional and theological stances (as well as more subtle or implied ones) as out of place in the academy. And in the latter position, Russell McCutcheon distinguishes between critics and caretakers, privileging the first category but actually conceding that all scholarly endeavors are underwritten by normative commitments of different types (Schilbrack 2014, pp. 150–53; c.f. Omer 2011). |
20 | Lewis’s position is certainly complex. For while he advocates for the inclusion of theology within religious studies, he also rejects the strategies of other scholars, namely Rudolf Otto, whom he views as problematically removing himself from dialogue with certain types of audiences or publics. Otto, according to Lewis, closes off discussion rather than allows for self-scrutiny (Lewis 2015, pp. 60–61). For a claim that Why Philosophy Matters may unduly referee between “what counts as religious studies” and what does not, see Carnes (2017: esp. pp. 685–86). On Carnes’s view, Lewis acts similarly to the critical religious studies scholars in his engagement in disciplinary boundary maintenance. |
21 | Personal correspondence with the author (November 10, 2016). |
22 | For a similar situation, see the debate between Atalia Omer and Russell McCutcheon (Omer 2011; McCutcheon 2014, esp. 195–213), a debate which continued between Omer (2013) and K. Merinda Simmons (2013). |
23 | Smith’s writings have been influential across the religious studies camps. Smith is a strong influence on McCutcheon’s own theorization on the study of religion. For a few examples of Smith’s frequent appearance in the latter’s work, see McCutcheon (2014), a collection of essays written by the author between 1990 and 2013. Smith shows up, in multiple chapters and in varying degrees of detail, some twenty-four separate instances. Smith’s usefulness is illustrated by the fact that some normativists are also finding him useful for thinking methodology in religious studies. Schilbrack, for instance, refers to Smith on the subject of defining religion in his Philosophy and the Study of Religions (Schilbrack 2014, pp. 90–91, 105, 106, etc.; c.f. Martin 2017, p. 9 on this point). Lewis also engages with Smith on the subject of religion’s contestedness in his book (e.g., Lewis 2015, pp. 127, 131, 143n17). But more interaction with Smith could be brought to bear on the discussion about normativity and the boundaries of religious studies. |
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Cooper, T.W. Taxonomy Construction and the Normative Turn in Religious Studies. Religions 2017, 8, 270. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel8120270
Cooper TW. Taxonomy Construction and the Normative Turn in Religious Studies. Religions. 2017; 8(12):270. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel8120270
Chicago/Turabian StyleCooper, Travis Warren. 2017. "Taxonomy Construction and the Normative Turn in Religious Studies" Religions 8, no. 12: 270. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel8120270