Saturday, November 14, 2009
Interpretative Commentary on Falun Gong: Phenomenology, Sociology, Theology
Following a week in which many of you offered reflection on the difficulty of defining religion itself, we attempt in this most recent installment of the weblog to attempt a comparative consideration of the cultic and religious aspects of Falun gong. In doing this we will employ the historical and theoretical material we have acquired from our reading in Peter Brown, Emile Durkheim, and Daniel O'Keefe to see how it illuminates the cosmology, theory, and practice of Falun gong. Make certain in this assignment that you cite the relevant passages from Brown, Durkheim, and O'Keefe in corroborating your comparative claims. How is Falun gong like a cult, or subcult of a "routinized" religion? How does the dialectic of magic and religion help to explain this emergent spiritual phenomenon? How can Durkheim's researches into the psychology, sociology and symbology of religion assit us in comprehending the powerful appeal of Falun gong?
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Reflections on a Research Topic
OK. Unlike previous weeks where we have explored a question or concern I offered as a provocation, this week I expect you to put forward your thoughts on the salient points that you have obtained from the class to this juncture. What particular issues has it introduced you to and what specific questions has it raised for you about religion, cults, magic, and the other phenomena we have studied? With these outstanding features I would like each of you to give some thought to the critical areas of focus that we should address as we wind our way toward the final presentations for the class.
On another interpretative front:
To provide some additional fodder for our continued reflection on the dialectical relations between religion and magic and cults and religion (as we talked about in some detail this week) here is a rather perceptive paragraph by the anthropologist Marshal Sahlins, who is commenting here on the manner in which the apparently incommensurate worlds of the Hawai'ians and Captain Cook and his men in 1778 actually overlapped meaningfully as each appropriated the other into their pre-existent categories of understanding.
QUOTATION:
The problem [e.g. finding a truer synthesis of
structure and historical event] comes down to the
relation of cultural concepts to human experience, or
the problem of symbolic reference: of how cultural
concepts are actively used to engage the world.
Ultimately at issue if the being of structure _in_
history and _as_ history. But, I begin more simply
by making two elementary observations, neither of them
novel or my own discovery. The first is the venerable
Boasian principle that, "the seeing eye is the organ
of tradition..." Human social experience is the
appropriation of specific percepts by general
concepts: an ordering of men and the objects of their
existence according to a scheme of cultural categories
which is never the only one possible, but in that
sense is arbitrary and historical. The second
proposition is that the use of conventional concepts
in empirical contexts subjects the cultural meanings
to practical revaluations. Brought to bear on a world
which has its own reasons, a world-in-itself and
potentially refractory, the traditional categories are
transformed. For even as the world can easily escape
the interpretive schemes of some given group of
mankind, nothing guarantees either that intelligent
and intentional subjects, with their several social
interests and biographies will use the existing
categories in prescribed ways. I call this double
contingency the risk of categories in action.
.....[T]he experience of human subjects, especially as
communicated in discoure, involves an appropriation of
events in terms of a priori concepts. Reference to
the world is an act of classification, the course of
which realities are indexed to concepts in a relation
of empirical tokens to cultural types. We know the
world as logical instances of cultural classes. Formal
classification is an intrinsic condition of symbolic
action.
Marshall Sahlins, Islands of History (Chicago:
Unversity of Chicago Press, 1987), 145-146.
On another interpretative front:
To provide some additional fodder for our continued reflection on the dialectical relations between religion and magic and cults and religion (as we talked about in some detail this week) here is a rather perceptive paragraph by the anthropologist Marshal Sahlins, who is commenting here on the manner in which the apparently incommensurate worlds of the Hawai'ians and Captain Cook and his men in 1778 actually overlapped meaningfully as each appropriated the other into their pre-existent categories of understanding.
QUOTATION:
The problem [e.g. finding a truer synthesis of
structure and historical event] comes down to the
relation of cultural concepts to human experience, or
the problem of symbolic reference: of how cultural
concepts are actively used to engage the world.
Ultimately at issue if the being of structure _in_
history and _as_ history. But, I begin more simply
by making two elementary observations, neither of them
novel or my own discovery. The first is the venerable
Boasian principle that, "the seeing eye is the organ
of tradition..." Human social experience is the
appropriation of specific percepts by general
concepts: an ordering of men and the objects of their
existence according to a scheme of cultural categories
which is never the only one possible, but in that
sense is arbitrary and historical. The second
proposition is that the use of conventional concepts
in empirical contexts subjects the cultural meanings
to practical revaluations. Brought to bear on a world
which has its own reasons, a world-in-itself and
potentially refractory, the traditional categories are
transformed. For even as the world can easily escape
the interpretive schemes of some given group of
mankind, nothing guarantees either that intelligent
and intentional subjects, with their several social
interests and biographies will use the existing
categories in prescribed ways. I call this double
contingency the risk of categories in action.
.....[T]he experience of human subjects, especially as
communicated in discoure, involves an appropriation of
events in terms of a priori concepts. Reference to
the world is an act of classification, the course of
which realities are indexed to concepts in a relation
of empirical tokens to cultural types. We know the
world as logical instances of cultural classes. Formal
classification is an intrinsic condition of symbolic
action.
Marshall Sahlins, Islands of History (Chicago:
Unversity of Chicago Press, 1987), 145-146.
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