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Religions
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Material Religion and Violent Conflict
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Material Religion and Violent Conflict

A special issue of Religions (ISSN 2077-1444).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 March 2020) | Viewed by 20233

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Lucien van Liere

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Department of Philosophy & Religious Studies, Utrecht University, Drift 13, 3512BL, Utrecht, The Netherlands
Interests: religion and violence; secular perspectives on religion; memory studies; material religion; discourse analysis

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Violence committed or justified by religious actors is widely studied in academia. Since 9/11, an enormous flow of both academic and popular literature has seen the light, often addressing the topic of religion and violence from interdisciplinary angles. Although many of these studies are very fruitful—most of them having a strong focus on contextual analysis—not much attention has been given to the material dimensions of violent conflict. How can we understand the specific role of pictures, images, and (sacred) objects in enhancing or de-escalating conflict?

Recently, bringing matter into the study of religion has been gaining prominence (Morgan, 2009; Meyer, 2012; King 2014; Plate 2015; Chidester 2018). This so-called ‘material turn’ also impacts the study of violent conflict. It is clear that pictures, images, and (sacred) objects—whether they are considered ‘sacred’ or not—play an important role in sensory processes of conflict-framing. You can think of Terry Jones uploading a video unto the internet showing him barbecuing a Quran (Lindkvist, 2013), or the Mohammed Cartoons (Jorgensen, 2012), or the iconoclasms of Islamic State (Isakhan and Zaradona, 2017), or pictures of martyrs ritually functioning in many traditions, the portrayal of violated bodies in picturing conflicts, or responses to the perceived disparagement of the Buddha in the tense context of Myanmar. The other way around is also true: Images are also used to create resilience in tense situations (Mitchell, 2015). Furthermore, materiality plays an important role in the (collective) remembrance of violence. Pictures, images, and (sacred) objects mediate sensory relationships that impact conflict processes and how episodes of violence are remembered. Not many scholars, however, have already accepted the challenge that comes with this fresh focus on ‘religious matters’ for the analysis of religion-related violent conflict.

In this Special Issue, we will approach violent conflict by analyzing ‘things’ as a key to understanding conflict positions. What do pictures, images, and (sacred) objects do? When do things mediate, communicate, contest, and appeal social relationships? How, why, and when do religious actors engage and mobilize ‘things’ to physically and symbolically position themselves in conflict situations? How do these ‘things’ sensually declare these positions? Do conflicts play a role in the ‘sacred-making’ of things? And last but not least: How do digital technologies shape and reshape things, images, and pictures as conflict-matter?

Contributions that address methodology, conceptual approaches or case-studies and show how material analysis can help to understand religion-related violence are very welcome. With this Special Issue, we will help to better understand the material dimensions of religion-related violent conflict.

Dr. Lucien van Liere
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • material religion
  • violent conflict

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Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

13 pages, 3713 KiB  
Article
On Being Consumed: The Martyred Body as a Site of Divine—Human Encounter in the Letters of Ignatius of Antioch
by Peter-Ben Smit
Religions 2020, 11(12), 637; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel11120637 - 26 Nov 2020
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2689
Abstract
The manner in which humans and the divine are brought into communion with each other, a key aspect of many religious traditions, is frequently, if not always, material (or sacramental) in character. Meals and food play an important role in this; such meals [...] Read more.
The manner in which humans and the divine are brought into communion with each other, a key aspect of many religious traditions, is frequently, if not always, material (or sacramental) in character. Meals and food play an important role in this; such meals can include the consumption of the deity (theophagy), as well as the consumption of the human being by the deity. This paper takes its cue from the discussion of constructions of divine–human communion and explores this subject in the letters of Ignatius of Antioch (early second century CE). It shows how in the literary heritage of this bishop, the body as the physical site of martyrdom is of key importance, in particular due to its consumption in the Roman arena. This martyrdom is the way in which Ignatius hopes to enter into perfect communion with the divine. The body thus becomes, in its annihilation, the instrument through which divine–human communion is established. As this all relates to a case of martyrdom, Ignatius’ ideas about the body are also subversive in character: the punishment of his body is, through his theological imagination, transformed into a means of achieving Ignatius’ goal in life: attaining to God. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Material Religion and Violent Conflict)
9 pages, 2287 KiB  
Article
Rhizomatic Religion and Material Destruction in Kham Tibet: The Case of Yachen Gar
by Daan F. Oostveen
Religions 2020, 11(10), 533; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel11100533 - 19 Oct 2020
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2929
Abstract
This article looks at the Tibetan Buddhism revitalization in China in particular, in Kham Tibet, and the way how it was both made possible and obstructed by the Chinese state. As a case, we look at the Yachen Gar monastery in the West [...] Read more.
This article looks at the Tibetan Buddhism revitalization in China in particular, in Kham Tibet, and the way how it was both made possible and obstructed by the Chinese state. As a case, we look at the Yachen Gar monastery in the West of Sichuan. The Yachen Gar monastery became the largest Buddhist university in China in the past decades, but recently, reports of the destruction of large parts of the Buddhist encampment have emerged. This article is based on my observations during my field trip in late 2018, just before this destruction took place. I will use my conceptual framework of rhizomatic religion, which I developed in an earlier article, to show how Yachen Gar, rather than the locus of a “world religion”, is rather an expression of rhizomatic religion, which is native to the Tibetan highlands in Kham Tibet. This rhizomatic religion could emerge because Yachen is situated both on the edges of Tibet proper, and on the edges of Han Chinese culture, therefore occupying an interstitial space. As has been observed before, Yachen emerges as a process which is the result of the revival of Nyingmapa Tibetan Buddhist culture, as a negotiation between the Tibetan communities and the Chinese state. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Material Religion and Violent Conflict)
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12 pages, 1407 KiB  
Article
The Politics of Purity, Disgust, and Contamination: Communal Identity of Trotter (Pig) Sellers in Madina Zongo (Accra)
by Rashida Alhassan Adum-Atta
Religions 2020, 11(8), 421; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel11080421 - 14 Aug 2020
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 3879
Abstract
The interplay of food, people, and market in the multi-religious and multi-ethnic neighborhood of Madina Zongo, Accra, results to some extent in food exchange. In a plural setting like Madina Zongo, an important aspect of their co-existence is the sharing of food; in [...] Read more.
The interplay of food, people, and market in the multi-religious and multi-ethnic neighborhood of Madina Zongo, Accra, results to some extent in food exchange. In a plural setting like Madina Zongo, an important aspect of their co-existence is the sharing of food; in so doing people claim their identities and mark boundaries; consequently, food in this sense becomes a potential for conflict. My primary aim in this paper is to focus on pig feet (trotter) sellers by drawing attention to their conflicting experiences and encounters in selling trotter. Pig feet (trotter) is a commodity that comes through a global network and is considered haram and unclean by Muslims. Actions by religious practitioners, thereby, play a pivotal role in provoking these experiences and, for this reason, it is prone to triggering tensions. In this paper, I explore the embodied encounters between these traders in the market (inhabited by people of different religious traditions) and, to some extent, the buyers and how this triggers religious sensibilities and at the same time evokes strong responses among those frequenting the space (e.g., market women and customers) and those (trotter sellers) who live in predominantly Muslim neighborhoods. In my analysis on tensions and pollution, I take into consideration groundworks by authors such as Mary Douglas’ Purity and Danger, Sara Ahmed’s and Deborah Durham’s notion of disgust and the anthropology of imagination, and inspired works on materiality such as the Latourian Actor-Network Theory (ANT) which draws attention to the agency of the non-human. This paper studies how religiously contested and so-called “contaminated” foodstuffs such as pig feet (trotter) result in boundary-making practices among members of the market and Zongo community. I argue that ideas of purity are influenced largely by cultural and religious convictions which seems not to be compromised by religious practitioners. The paper also investigates strategies people/sellers develop to negotiate these social relations. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Material Religion and Violent Conflict)
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18 pages, 260 KiB  
Article
The Image of Violence and the Study of Material Religion, an Introduction
by Lucien van Liere
Religions 2020, 11(7), 370; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel11070370 - 20 Jul 2020
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 3019
Abstract
This article studies the intersection of religion, materiality and violence. I will argue that pictures of violated bodies can contribute substantially to imageries of religious bonding. By directing attention towards the relation between pictures of violence, religious imagery and materiality, this article contributes [...] Read more.
This article studies the intersection of religion, materiality and violence. I will argue that pictures of violated bodies can contribute substantially to imageries of religious bonding. By directing attention towards the relation between pictures of violence, religious imagery and materiality, this article contributes to current research on religion-related violence and on material religion, two disciplinary fields that have not yet been clearly related. By focusing on the picturing of (violated) bodies as both sacred and communal objects, I will make clear how pictures of violence relate to social imageries of (religious) communities. Two short case-studies show how pictures of violence are recreated in the imagery of communities, causing new episodes of violence against anonymous representatives of the perpetrators. This article develops a perspective on the role pictures play in framing religious conflicts, which is often neglected in studies of religion-related violence. The study of religious matter, on the other hand, could explore more deeply the possibilities of studying the medialization of contentious pictures of human bodies in the understanding of conflicts as ‘religious’. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Material Religion and Violent Conflict)
16 pages, 1980 KiB  
Article
Roasting a Pig in Front of a Mosque: How Pork Matters in Pegida’s Anti-Islam Protest in Eindhoven
by Margaretha A. van Es
Religions 2020, 11(7), 359; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel11070359 - 15 Jul 2020
Cited by 12 | Viewed by 6821
Abstract
This article provides an analysis of a public protest by the far-right group Pegida-Netherlands, where the participants attempted to demonstratively eat pork near a mosque in Eindhoven on 26 May 2019. This led to fierce responses: hundreds of young Muslim counter-protesters prevented the [...] Read more.
This article provides an analysis of a public protest by the far-right group Pegida-Netherlands, where the participants attempted to demonstratively eat pork near a mosque in Eindhoven on 26 May 2019. This led to fierce responses: hundreds of young Muslim counter-protesters prevented the Pegida supporters from reaching the mosque, shouting insults at them and throwing stones at the police. Based on field notes from the event and a variety of other research material, this article shows how pork becomes a means of provocation in a larger entanglement between people and their perceived intentions, other objects, times and places. Furthermore, the author argues that the clash between protesters and counter-protesters can be seen as a theatrical performance set up by Pegida to share its worldview with a wide audience, and critically analyzes the role of pork in Pegida’s attempt to ‘reclaim Dutch territory’ that has been ‘lost to Islamization’. Last but not least, this article discusses how provocations bring about counter-provocations. As such, this article shows the value of a material approach to the study of conflicts, and critically evaluates Pegida-Netherlands’ official stance of non-violence vis-à-vis the implications of its protest language. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Material Religion and Violent Conflict)
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